THE
AGE OF REASON:
HEING
AN FNVESTIGATION
OF
TRUE AND FABULO US
THEOLOGY.
BOSTON :
JOSIAFI P. MENIDTUIM.
+6
THE
A GE OF REASON:
B E IN G.
AN INVESTIGATION
O F
TRUE AND FABULOUS THEOLOGY
BY
THOMAS PAINE,
“Secretary to the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the
American Revolution.”
B O S T O N :
J O S I A H P. M. E N D U M,
IN V E S T IGA To R OFFIC E.
TO MY
FELLO W CITIZENS
OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
I PUT the following work under your protection. It
contains my opinion upon Religion. You will do me the
justice to remember, that I have always strenuºusly sup-
ported the Right of every Man to his opinion, however
different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies
to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his pres-
ent opinion, because he precludes himself the right of
changing it.
The most formidable weapon, against errors of every
kind, is Reason. I have never used any other, and I trust
I never shall.
Your affectionate friend and fellow citizen,
THOMAS PAINE.
Luxembourg, (Paris,) 8th Pluvioise, e
Second year of the French Republic one and indivistb
January 27, O. S. 1794.
From the Boston Post of January 29, 1856.
THE BIRTH-DAY OF A PATRIOT.
THOMAS PAINE.
This day is memorable as the one hundred and nine-
teenth anniversary of the birth-day of one of our revolu-
tionary heroes, THOMAS PAINE, who was born in the
town of Thetford, England.
Mr. Paine could boast of no illustrious pedigree,
as his parents were humble in their occupation and
mode of life. His father was a Quaker, and by trade
a staymaker. His mother was of the established
church. Early in life their son was educated in the
common branches of English study, and in a smatter
ing of the Latin language; but, at the age of thirteen
he was taken from school, and made an assistant to his
father in his trade. Three years passed, and he start-
ed for London, where he remained a few weeks.-
Thence he went to Dover, and shipped on board a pri.
vateer named the Terrible, and commanded by Capt.
Death. His connection with this vessel did not last
long, for we soon after find him on board another pri-
vateers-man, which appears to have made him avers,
to the naval profession, and to abandon it altogether.
In 1759 Mr. Paine settled at Sandwich, where he mar
ried Mary Lambert the daughter of an exciseman, in a
ii THE BIRTH-DAY OF A PATRIOT.
few months. She died the next year. Leaving stay.
making, and changing his residence once or twice, till
he reached Thetford again, he accepted the appoint.
ment to a place in the excise. Having been dismissed
from his office, he repaired to London, and became
teacher in an academy for about ten months, when he
was reinstated as an exciseman. In 1768 he removed
to Lewes, where he opened a grocer's shop, and was
married to Miss Elizabeth Olive in 1771. In this town
he became quite prominent as a debater, as a social
companion, and as a man of independence.
In 1774 he failed in business, was again removed
from his office, and separated from his wife by mutual
consent. To London he went once more, and there he
became acquainted with Dr. Franklin, who advised
him to go to America, whither he went near the close
of the year, and arrived at Philadelphia with a letter
of introduction from the doctor to an intimate friend.—
-Up to this date, at the age of 37 he had been “a me-
chanic, a sailor a tradesman, an exciseman, a store.
keeper, a teacher, a pamphleteer, and a politician.”—
His companions were Rittenhouse, Geo. Clymer, Dr.
Rush and Franklin.
In 1775 Mr. Paine became editor of the Pennsylva-
nia Magazine, and contributed a number of elegant
pieces, both in poetry and prose. It was by means of
this position that he became known to Dr. Rush. His
two masterly periodicals, “Common Sense,” and “The
Crisis,” which were interspersed between the years
1776 and 1783, during the war, were written with such
perspicuity and energy, they were issued at such op.
Portune intervals, and administered in such an unequal,
led manner, that the American people were thereby in
THOMAS PAINE. ini
cited to strive not only for relief and redress, but for
national independence. His glowing ideas and elo-
quent appeals welded the popular thoughts into an in-
domitable resolution, transformed that mental resolve
into a successful current of living action. Nor did the
Declaration of Independence put an end to his labors
in the cause of liberty. He continued his pamphlets
free to a newly free people, receiving no compensation
therefor. In 1776 he was a volunteer under General
Washington, and in April, 1777, was elected by Con-
gress Secretary to the Committee for Foreign Affairs,
which station he resigned in about two years. He was
soon after chosen Clerk of the Pennsylvania Legislature.
In 1781 he accompanied Col. Laurens to France for the
purpose of negotiating a loan. The embassy obtained
six million livres as a present and ten millions as a loan.
France had previously declared in our favor. A very
short time before this, when our financial condition was
near its low water mark, and Washington feared a dis-
solution of our army through want of pay, Mr. Paine
originated a private subscription and headed it with
$500, all the money he could raise, including his sala-
ry. This project procured three hundred thousand
pounds, which bridged us on to the capture of Corn-
wallis. Congress granted to him a sum of $3000 in
1785. Pennsylvania gave him five hundred pounds
currency, and New York conveyed to him over 300
acres of rich land, well cultivated, and a large stone
house with extensive outbuildings, situated in New
Rochelle.
In April, 1787, Mr. Paine sailed for France. He had
been made a member of the American Philosophical
Sºciety and appointed Master of Arts by the Universi
AV THE BIRTH-DAY OF A PATRIC. T.
ty of Philadelphia. These positions 1eadily allowe,"
him to introduce to the notice of the Academy of Sci.
ences in Paris, the model of an iron bridge which gave
him much credit. He next went to London and onward
to Thetford, to visit his aged mother, where he wrote a
pamphlet on the state of the nation, entitled “Pros-
pects on the Rubicon.” He passed the year 1788 in
erecting his iron bridge.
Early in the year 1791 Mr. Paine issued his first num-
ber of “Rights of Man,” in reply to Burke. In May
he repaired to France where he came near losing his
life by having no cockade in his hat, at a given signal
for all the friends of liberty to cover their heads in si-
lence. He returned to London in July, where he wrote
an address and declaration on the French Revolution, in
which he acted his part and felt a great interest. In
1792, appeared the second number of Rights of Man.
He sought no concealment for his name as author of
these startling productions, though a public prosecu-
tion hung over them as seditious libels. In Septem-
ber he learned of his election as a Representative to
the National Convention in France. In spite of the
English attempt to retain him, he embarked for Calais,
where he was cordially received by the National Guard,
and a national cockade was given to him. A salute
was fired from the battery in honor of his arrival. The
cry of “vive Thomas Paine,” came from the crowd as
he passed to the town hall to be presented to the May
or and others. A play was performed in the theatre,
and a box reserved for him. Several other places elect.
ed him as their deputy, but he accepted that of Calais,
as first tendered. He went to Paris, took his seat in
the national assembly, and was appointed on the com
THOMAS PARINEe V
mittee to frame a new constitution. He interposed in
behalf of an Englishman who struck him a violent
blow for an expression of opinion, and his interposi-
tion saved his opponent's life. He also gave him mo-
ney to pay his expenses to England. His ideas were
humane in all cases, even where he labored to save
the life of Louis XVI., much to his own inconvenience
and peril. Of the parties into which the Convention
was divided he adhered to that opposed to Robespierre
and his compeers. This violent faction had him arrest.
ed and imprisoned for eleven months. Observing how
things were tending to anarchy, and that all forms of
religion were on the eve of a wreck, he had prepared
the first part of his Age of Reason, to endeavor to stay
the national rush into ruin; and on his way to the Lux-
embourgh, deposited it in the hands of his friend, Joel
Barlow. He had providentially completed this part
only six hours before his arrest.
During his imprisonment he wrote the most of the
second part of his Age of Reason. While in prison he
experienced another providential occurrence in the
shape of a violent fever, which benumbed his senses
for a month. Among those who were selected for the
guillotine, and whose doors were chalked with a mark
he was numbered ; but, his door being open at the time,
Ieceived the mark on the wrong side for his persecu-
tors; for, when they came around for their victims, the
cell-doors being shut, his mark was inside, and out of
sight. Thus he escaped. Soon after his recovery he
heard of Robespierre's fall. This escape was quite as
providential as was that of Bonaparte when surrounded
by the rapidly uncoming rollers of the Red Sea, during
his attempt to reconnoitre that region. On his release
VI THE BIRTH-DAY OF A PATRIOT.
from prison, he was an Invited guest at the house of
Mr. James Monroe, (the then American Minister to
France,) for eighteen months. The national con
vention unanimously voted for him to resume his seat
in that body. Wherever his lot fell, he was active,
candid, and effective. He was ever fearless in the ex
pression of his opinions, and in defining his position —
In 1797 he joined the society of Theophilanthropists,
whose object was to promote morality, religious tolera
tion, and a belief in one God. His undisguised man
ner of promulgating his theological sentiments lost him,
many friends; but his bitterest foes have contributeo
much to his celebrity and to the immortality of his
fame.
After several attempts to obtain a safe passage across
the Atlantic, for English cruisers were numerous ano
zealous in pursuit of him, he finally succeeded and
reached Baltimore in October, 1802, when the political
newspapers along the entire seaboard teemed with ap
plause or abuse. His property was then worth £6000
sterling. He soon visited Washington, and was cor-
dially received by the President, Thomas Jefferson.—
He also visited the heads of the departments and the
various political leaders during his stay. It was not
long before he went to New York, between which city
and New Rochelle he passed the small residue of his
life,
Mr. Paine wrote and published many other articles
than those cited; and all of them obtained a great de-
gree of motoriety. While residing in Broome street,
New York city, he published his examination of cer.
tain Scriptural prophecies. This was in 1807. In May,
1809, he removed into a small house in Columbia
THOMAS PAINE. VI;
street; and on the eighth of June he died, in full pos.
session of his mental faculties, with tranquillity and
almost without a struggle, at the advanced age of 72.
His remains were deposited near New Rochelle. A
beautiful monument marks the spot. His was a life
of much usefulness and activity. Calumny has blis-
tered her relentless hand in trying to stamp him as
profane, intemperate and mendacious. The real truth
appears to be that he was never habituated to profan-
ity, to drunkenness, nor to falsehood ; and that his ca,
lumniators are unconsciously his eulogists. His motto
WaS sº-
“THE WoRLD Is My Country; to Do Good
MY RELIGION.”
AGE OF REASON.
PART I.
1T 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 every thing appertain-
ing to compulsive systems of religion, and compul-
sive articles of faith, has not only precipitated my
intention, but rendered a work of this kind exceed-
ingly necessary, lest, in the general wreck of super-
stition, 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 exam-
ple of making their voluntary and individual pro-
fession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do

6 A GE OF REASON. [PART 1
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 mer-
cy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures
happy. -
But, lest it should be supposed that I believe ma-
ny 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 oth-
er than human inventions, set up to terrify and en-
slave mankind, and monopolise power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn
those who believe otherwise; they have the same
right to their belief that I have to mine. But it is
necessary to the happiness of man, that he be men-
tally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist
in believing or in disbelieving; it consists in pro-
fessing to believe what he does not believe.
It is impossible to calculate the morak mischief,
if I may so express it, that mental lying has produc-
ed in society. When a man has so far corrupted
and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to sub-
scribe 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 no
rality than this?
PART I.] AGE OF REASOIN. 7
Soon after I had published the paniyhlet “CoM-
ston SENSE,” in America, I saw the exceeding pro-
bability that a revolution in the system of govern-
ment would be followed by a revolution in the sys-
tem of religion. The adulterous connexion of
church and state, wherever it had taken place,
whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so ef.
ſectually prohibited by pains and penalties every
discussion upon established creeds, and upon first
principles of religion, that until the system of gov-
ernment 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 in-
ventions and priestcraft would be detected; and
man would return to the pure, unmixed, and una-
dulterated belief in one God, and no more.
Every national church or religion has established
itself by pretending some special mission from God,
communicated to certain individuals. The Jews
have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ,
their apostles, and saints; and the Turks their Ma
home t, as if the way to God was not open to every
man alike.
Each of those churches show certain books, which
they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews
say, that their word of God was given by God to
Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their
word of God came by divine inspiration; and the
Turks say, that their word of God, (the Koran,) was
brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those
churches accuse the other of unbelief; and, for my
own part, I disbelieve them all.
As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I
will, before I proceed farther into the subject, offer
some other observations on the word revelation.
Revelation, when applied to religion, means some-
thing communicated immediately from God to man
No one will deny or dispute the power of the AJ-
8 AGE OF REASON. [PART 1
mighty to make such a communication, if he pleas-
es. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that some-
thing has been revealed to a certain person, and not
revealed to any other person, it is a revelation to
that person only. When he tells it to a second per-
son, 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; af.
ter this, it is only an account of something which
that person says was a revelation made to him ; and
though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it
cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same
manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and
I have only his word for it that it was made to him.
When Moses told the children of Israel that he
received the two tables of the commandments from
the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe
him, because they had no other authority for it than
his telling them so; and I have no other authority
for it than some historian telling me so. The corn-
mandments carry no internal evidence of divinity
with them ; they contain some good moral precepts,
such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver, or a le-
gislator, could produce himself, without having re-
course to supernatural intervention.* -
When I am told that the Koran was written in
Heaven, and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the
account comes too near the same kind of hearsay
evidence and second-hand authority as the former.
* It is, however, necessary to except the declaration
which says, that God visits the sins of the fathers upon he
children; it is contrary to every principle of moral jus-
tice
PART I.] A GE OF REASON. 9
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 an-
gel told him so, I have a right to believe them or
not; such a circumstance required a much strong-
er evidence than their bare word for it 5 but we
have not even this—for neither Joseph Lor Mary
wrote any such matter themselves; it is only re-
ported by others that they said so—it is hearsay up-
on hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief
upon such evidence.
It is, however, not difficult to account for the
credit that was given to the story of Jesus Christ
being the Son of God. He was born when the
heathen mythology had still some fashion and re-
pute in the world, and that mythology had prepar-
ed the people for the belief of such a story. Al-
most 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 hun-
dreds; 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 mytholo-
gy, never credited the story.
It is curious to observe how the theory of what
is called the Christian church, sprung out of the
tale of the heathen mythology. A direct incorpo-
ration took plug in the first instance, by making

IUy AGE OF REASON. [PART I
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 suc-
ceeded that of Diana of Ephesus; the deification of
heroes changed into the canonization of saints; the
mythologists had gods for every thing; the Christ
ian mythologists had saints for every thing; 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 reve-
nue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy
to abolish the amphibious fraud.
Nothing that is here said can apply, even with
the most distant disrespect, to the real character of
Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and an amiable
man. The morality that he preached and practis-
ed 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 ages before; by the Quakers since; and by
many good men in all ages, it has not been exceed-
ed by any.
Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his
birth, parentage, or any thing else; not a line of
what is called the New Testament is of his own
writing. The history of him is altogether the work
of other people; and as to the account given of his
resurrection and ascension, it was the necessary
counterpart to the story of his birth. His historians
having brought him into the world in a supernatur-
al 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
H. is told, exceeds everything that went before it.
he first part, that of the miraculous conceptione

part 1.] AGE OF REASON. 11
was not a thing that ridmitted 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 Ue detected. They could not be ex-
pected 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 demon-
stration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or
the sun at noon day, to all Jerusalem at least. A
thing which every body is required to believe, re-
quires that the proof and evidence of it should be
equal to all, and universal; and as the public visi-
bility 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 evi-
dence 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 de-
monstration himself. So neither will I, and the rea-
son 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 superna-
tural 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 ac-
count is related, were written by the persons whose
I2 AGE OF REASON. |PART 1
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 times this resurrection and ascension is said
to have happened, and they say it is not true. It
has long appeared to me a strange inconsistency to
cite the Jews as a proof of the truth of the story. It
is just the same as if a man were to say, I will prove
the truth of what I have told you, by producing the
people who say it is false.
That such a person as Jesus Christ existed, and
that he was crucified, which was the mode of exe-
cution 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 im-
probable that the Roman government might have
some apprehensions of the effects of his doctrines
as well as the Jewish priests; neither is it improb-
able that Jesus Christ had in contemplation the de-
livery of the Jewish nation from the bondage of the
Romans. Between the two, however, this virtuous
reformer and revolutionist lost his life.
It is upon this plain narrative of facts, together with
another case I am going to mention, that the Christ-
iam Mythologists, calling themselves the Christian
• Church, have erected their fable, which for absurd-
rty and extravagance is not exceeded by any thing
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
PART 1.] AGE OF REASON. 13
confined him afterwards under Mount AEtna, and
that every time the Giant turns himself, Mount AEt-
na belches fire.
It is here easy to see that the circumstance of the
mountain, that of its being a volcano, suggested the
idea of the fable; and that the fable is made to fit
and wind itself up with that circumstance.
The Christian Mythologists tell us, that their Sa-
tan 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 Mytholo-
gists differ very little from each other. But the lat-
ter 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 AEtna ; and, in order to make all parts
of the story tie together, they have taken to their aid
the traditions of the Jews; for the Christian mythol-
ogy is made up partly from the ancient mythology,
and partly from the Jewish traditions.
The Christian Mythologists, after having confin-
ed Satan in a pit, were obliged to let him out again,
to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is then in-
troduced into the garden of Eden in the shape of a
snake or a serpent and in that shape he enters into
familiar conversation with Eve, who is no way sur-
prised to hear a snake talk; and the issue of this
Vete-a-tete is, that he persuades her to eat an apple,
and the eating of that apple damns all mankind.
After giving Satan this triumph over the whole
treation, 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
J4 AGE OF REASON. [PART 1
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
n;ischief. 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 mak-
ing 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 bounti-
fulness of the Christian mythology P
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, these Christian Mythologists bring the
two ends of their fable together. They represent
this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be
at once both God, Man, and also the Son of God, ce-
lestially begotten, on purpose to be sacrificed, be-
cause they say that Eve in her longing had eaten an
apple.
Putting aside every thing that might excite laugh-
ter by its absurdity, or detestation by its profane-
ness, and confining ourselves merely to an examin-
ation of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a sto-
ry more derogatory to the Almighty, more incon-
sistent with his wisdom, more contradictory to his
power, than this story.
In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon,
the inventers 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 Al-
mighty. 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 fill they repre-
pART I.] A GE OF RIEASON. 15
sent him only as an angel of limited existence, as
they represent the rest. After his fall, he becomes,
by their account, omnipresent. He exists every
where, 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 me-
cessity either of surrendering the whole of the cre-
ation to the government and sovereignty of this Sa-
tan, 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 inventers of this story told it the contra-
ry 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 ab-
surd—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 any thing 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 thern from
examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the
story. The more unnatural any thing is, the more
is it capable of becoming the object of dismal admi
ration.
But if objects for gratitude and adimiration are
our desire, do they not present themselves every
_6 AGE OF REASON. [PART 1.
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 2 Whether
we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the uni-
verse still goes on. Are these things, and the bless-
ings they indicate in future, nothing to us? Can
our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects
than tragedy and suicide 2 Or is the gloomy pride
of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flat.
ter it but a sacrifice of the Creator?
I know this bold investigation will alarm many,
but it would be paying too great a compliment to
their credulity to forbear it upon 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 ex-
tensive in all countries; and it will be a consolation
to men staggering under that suspicion, and doubt-
ing 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
New Testament.
These books, beginning with Genesis and ending
with Revelation, (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, prop-
er 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, historical.
ly appears to be as follows:–
When the church Mythologists established their
system, they collected all the writings they could
find, and managed them as they pleased. It is a
matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such
of the writings as now appear under the name of
the Old and New Testament, are in the same state
PART I.] i-GE OF REASU, N. 17
u, Yºhich those collectors say they found theim, 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 vot-
ed otherwise, all the people, since calling themselves
Christians, had believed otherwise—for the belief
of the one comes from the vote of the other. Who
the people were that did all this, we know nothing
of; they called themselves by the general name of
the Church ; and this is all we know of the matter.
As we have no other external evidence or au-
thority for believing those books to be the word of
God than what I have mentioned, which is no evi-
dence 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 ap-
plied to any thing done upon earth, of which man
is himself the actor or the witness; and conse-
quently 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 Ga.
18 AGE OF REASONº. LPART a
za, if he ever did so, (and whether he did or not is
nothing to us,) or when he visited his Delilah, or
caught his foxes, or did any thing else, what has
revelation to do with these things? If they were
facts, he could tell them himself; or his secretary,
if he kept one, could write them, if they were worth
either telling or writing; and if they were fictitious,
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 im-
mensity 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 their country, they put it at the head
of their history, without telling (as it is most proba-
ble) 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 address-
ed to nobody; it has neither first, second, or third
person; it has every criterion of being a tradition,
it has no voucher. Moses does not take it upon
himself by introducing it with the formality that he
uses on other occasions, such as that of saying,
“The Lord spake unto Moses, saying.”
Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the
Creation, I am at a loss to conceive. Moses, I be-
lieve, 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 cau-
tion that Moses observes, in not anthenticating the
PART I.] AGE OF REASON. 19.
account, is a good negative evidence that he neither
told it nor believed it. The case is, that every na
tion of people has been world-makers, and the Is.
raelites had as much right to set up the trade of
world-making as any of the rest; and as Moses waſ
not an Israelite, he might not choose to contradict
the tradition. The account, however, is harmless;
and this is more than can be said of many othet
parts of the Bible.
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the volup
tuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous execu
tions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which
more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more
consistent that we called it the word of a Demon,
than the word of God. It is a history of wicked-
ness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize man-
kind; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it as
I detest every thing that is cruel.
We scarcely meet with any thing, 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 senti-
ment reverentially expressed of the power and be-
nignity of the Almighty; but they stand on no high-
er 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 tri-
ble of ethics. They are inferior in keenness to the
proverbs of the Spaniards, and not more wise and
economical than those of the American Franklin.
All the remaining parts of the Bible, generally
known by the name of the Prophets, are the works
of the Jewish poets and itinerant preachers, who
mixed poetry, anecdote, and devotion together—and
20 AGE OF REA 301N. [PART 1,
those works still retain the air and style of poetry
though in translation.*
There is not, throughout the whole book called
the Bible, any word that describes to us what we
call a poet, nor any word that describes what we
call poetry. The case is, that the word prophet, to
which latter times have affixed a new idea, was the
Bible word for poet, and the word prophesying
* As there are many readers who do not see that a com
position is poetry, unless it be in rhyme, it is for their in
formation 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 po-
etical 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, apper-
tains altogether to poetry. It is fictitious, and often ex-
travagant, 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 poet-
ical measure. The instance I shall produce is from Isaiah :
“Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth 1”
*T is God himself that calls attention forth.
Another instance I shall quote is from the mournful Jer-
emiah, 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.
pART I.] AGE {}}F REASON, 21
meant the art of making poetry. It also meant the
art of playing poetry to a tune upon uny instru
ment 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 contemptu-
ous, 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 prophesy-
ung.
The account given of this affair in the book of
Samuel, is, that Saul met a company of prophets; a
whole company of them! coming down with a psal
tery, a tabret, a pipe, and a harp, and that they pro-
phesied, and that he prophesied with them. But it
appears afterwards, that Saul prophesied badly;-
that is, performed his part badly; for it is said, that,
an “evil spirit from God”* 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 pro-
phesy, 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

* As those men, who call themselves divines and com-
mentators, 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 prophesv.
22 AGE OF REASON, LPART 1.
is here used and applied, if we give to it the sense
which latter times have affixed to it. The manner
in which it is here used strips it of all religious
meaning, and shows that a man might then be a
prophet, or might prophesy, as he may now be a po-
et or a musician, without any regard to the morali-
ty or immorality of his character. The word was
originally a term of science, promiscuously applied
to poetry and to music, and not restricted to any
subject upon which poetry and music might be ex-
ercised.
Deborah and Barak are called prophets, not be-
cause they predicted any thing, 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 Abra-
ham, 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 pro-
phets. They might as well tell us of the greater
and the lesser God; for there cannot be degrees in
prophesying, consistently with its modern sense
But there are degrees in poetry, and therefore the
phrase is reconcileable to the case, when we under-
stand by it the greater and the lesser poets.
It is altogether unnecessary, after this, to offer
any observations upon what those men, styled
prophets, have written. The axe goes at once
to the root, by showing that the original meaning
of the word has been mistaken, and consequently
all the inferences that have been drawn from those
books, the devotional respect that has been paid to
them, and the labored commentaries that have
been written upon them, under that mistaker:
meaning, are not worth disputing about. In many
things, however, the writings of the Jewish poets

rART 1.] AGE OF REASON. 23
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 impos-
sibility of any change taking place, by any means
or accident whatever, in that which we would
honor with the name of the word of God; and
therefore the word of God cannot exist in any
written or human language.
The continually progressive change to which
the meaning of words is subject, the want of
a universal language which renders translation
necessary, the errors to which translations are
again subject, the mistakes of copyists and print-
ers, together with the possibility of wilful alter-
ation, 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 pos-
sibility would nevertheless exist of my being im-
posed upon. But when I see throughout the
greatest part of this book, scarcely any thing but
a history of the grossest vices, and a collection
of the most paltry and contemptible tales, I cannot
dishonor my Creator by calling it by his name.
Thus much for the Bible; I now go on to the
book called the New Testament. The JVew Testa-
ment! 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 un-
doubtedly have written the system himself or pro-
cured it to be written in his life time. But there is

24 AGE OF REASON, [PART I
no publication cxtant 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.
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 sys-
tems 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 grea’
trait in his character is philanthropy.
The manner in which he was apprehended
PART 1.] A GE OF REASON 25
shows that ho was not much known at that time;
and it shows also, that the meetings he then held
with his followers were in secret; and that he
had given over or suspended preaching publicly.
Judas could not otherwise betray him than by
giving information where he was, and pointing
him out to the officers that went to arrest him;
and the reason for employing and paying Judas
to do this could arise only from the 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 apprehend-
ed, 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 cru-
cified.
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 any thing else ?
The declaratory sentence which, they say, was
passed upon Adam, in case he eat of the apple,
was not, that thou shalt surely be crucified, but thou
shalt surely die—the sentence of death, and not the
manner of dying. Crucifixion, therefore, or any
other particular manner of dying, made no part of
the sentence that Adam was to suffer, and conse-
quently, even upon their own tactics, it could make
no part of the sentence that Christ was to suffer
in the room of Adam. A fever would have done
as well as a cross, if there was any occasion for
either.
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

4.
26 AGE OF REASON. [PART 1.
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 lon-
gevity be true, men die faster since the crucifixion
than before ; and with respect to the second ex-
planation, (including with it the natural death of
Jesus Christ as a substitute for the eternal death or
damnation of all mankind) it is impertinently repre-
senting 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
Call Se. - -
If Jesus Christ was the being which those My-
thologists 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 tran-
sportation from Heaven, and the way back to his
original country was to die. In fine, every thing
in this strange system is the reverse of what it pre-
tends to be. It is the reverse of truth, and I be.
tome so tired with examining into its inconsist-
ences and absurdities, that I hasten to the con-
clusion of it, in order to precede something better.
How much, or what parts of the books called
PAar I.] AGE OF REASON, 27
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 lan-
guage they were originally written. The mat-
ters they now contain may be classed under
two heads—anecdote and epistolary correspond-
*In Ce.
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, ex-
cept the book of enigmas, called the Revelation,
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 proba-
bility is at least equal, whether they are genuine or
forged. One thing, however, is much less equivo-
cal, 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 purgatory, and of the releasing
of souls therefrom, by prayers, bought of the
28 AGE OF REASON, IPART 1
church with money; the selling of pardo, s, dis.
pensations, and indulgences, are revenue laws,
without bearing that name or carrying that appear-
ance. But the case nevertheless is, that those
things derive their origin from the paroxysm of
the crucifixion and the theory deduced therefrom,
which was, that one person could stand in the
place of another, and could perform meritorious
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 accom-
plished 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 every thing else she has told us;
or for the miracles she says she has performed 2
That she could fabricate writings is certain, because
she could write: and the composition of the writ-
ings in question is of that kind that any body might
do it; and that she did fabricate them is not more
inconsistent with probability, than that she could
tell us, as she has done, that she could and did
work miracles.
Since then no external evidence can, at this long
distance of time, be produced to prove whether the
church fabricated the doctrines called redemption
or not, (for such evidence, whether for or against
would be subject to the same suspicion of being
fabricated) the case can only be referred to the
internal evidence which the thing carries 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
rART 1.] AGE OF REASON. 29
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 ine in prison, another per
son can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for
me; but if I have committed a crime, every cir
cumstance 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 jus-
tice; 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 cor-
responds again with the system of second redemp-
tions, obtained through the means of money given
to the church for pardons, the probability is, that
the same persons fabricated both 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 con-
sistently 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 im-
mense distance from his Creator, and who must
make his approaches by creeping and cringing to
intermediate beings, that he conceives either a con-
temptuous disregard for every thing under the
name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or turns
what he calls devout. In the latter case, he con-
sumes his life in grief, or the affectation of it; his
rayers are reproaches; his humility is ingratitude;
f. calls himself a worm ; and the fertile earth a
30 AGE OF REASON. [PART I.
dunghill; and all the blessings of life, by the thank-
less name of vanities; he despises the choicest gift
of God to man, the GIFT of REAson; and having
endeavored to force upon himself the belief of a
system against which reason revolts, he ungrate-
fully 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
Every thing; his selfishness is never satisfied; his
ngratitude is never at an end. He takes on him-
self to direct the Almighty what to do, even in the
government of the universe; he prays dictatorially;
when it is sun-shine, he prays for rain, and when
it is rain, he prays for sun-shine; he follows the
same idea in every thing that he prays for; for
what is the amount of all his prayers, but an
attempt to make the Almighty change his mind,
and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he
were to say—thou knowest not so well as I.
But some perhaps will say—Are we to have no
word of God—No revelation I answer, Yes:
there is a word of God; there is a revelation.
HE word of GoD Is THE CREATION we Be-
Hold : And it is in this word, which no human
invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speak
eth universally to man.
uman language is local and changeable, and is
therefore incapable of being used as the means of
unchangeable and universal information. The idea
that God sent Jesus Christ to publish, as they say,
the glad tidings to all nations, from one end of the
earth to the other, is consistent only with the igno-
rance of those who knew nothing of the extent
of the world, and who believed, as those world-
saviours believed, and continued to believe, for
several centuries, (and that in contradiction to the
discoveries of philosophers, and the experience of

PART 1.] AGE OF REASON, 31
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 any timing
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 under-
stand each other; and as to translations, every man
who knows any thing of languages, knows that it
was impossible to translate from one languago to
another, not only without losing a great part of the
original, but frequently of mistaking the sense; and
besides all this, the art of printing was wholly un-
known at the time Christ lived.
It is always necessary that the means that are to
accomplish any end, be equal to the accomplish-
ment of that end, or the end cannot be accomplish-
ed. It is in this, that the difference between finite
and infinite power and wisdom discovers itself.
Man frequently fails in accomplishing his ends,
from a natural inability of the power to the pur-
pose; 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 a universal language, is incapable of being used
as a universal means of unchangeable and uniform
information, and, therefore, it is not the means that
God useth in manifesting himself universally to
Iſláh, -
It is only in the creation that all our ideas and
conceptions of a word of God can unite. The
Creation speaketh a universal language, independ-
ently of human speech or human language, multi-
plied and various as they be. It is an ever-existing
Driginal, which every man can read. It cannot be
forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be
lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppreſised

$2 AGE, OF REASON, [PART 1.
It does not depend upon the will of man whether
it shall be published or not ; it publishes itself from
oue end of the earth to the other. It preaches to
all nations and to all worlds; and this word of G
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 P. We see it in the un-
changeable order by which the incomprehensible
whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate
his munificence P. We see it in the abundance
with which he fills the earth. Do we want to con-
template his mercy? We see it in his not with-
holding 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 Cre-
ation.
The only idea man can affix to the name of God,
is that of a first cause, the cause of all things. And,
incomprehensible and difficult as it is for a man to
conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the be-
lief of it, from the tenfold greater difficulty of dis-
believing 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 im-
possible to conceive a time when there shall be no
time. In like manner of reasoning, every thing
we behold carries in itself the internal evidence
that it did not make itself. Every man is an evi-
dence to himself, that he did not make himself;
neither could his father make himself, nur 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
PART I.] AGE OF REASON. 33
first cause eternally existing, of a nature totally dif-
ferent 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 any thing;
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 2
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 infer
ences they make are drawn from that volume.
I insert, in this place, the 19th Psalm, as para-
phrased into English verse by Addison. I recol-
lect not the prose, and where I write this I have
not the opportunity of seeing it.
The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame
Their great original proclaim.
The unwearied sun, from day to day
Does his Creator's power display,
And publishes to every land,
The work of an Almighty hand.
Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wond’rous 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.
5
34 AGE OF REASON. [PART 1.
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,
For ever singing as they shine,
THE HAND THAT MADE Us Is D1 v INE.
What more does man want to know than that
the hand, or power, that made these things is
divine, is omnipotent? Let him believe this with
the force it is impossible to repel, if he permits his
reason to act, and his rule of moral life will follow
of course.
The allusions in Job have all of them the same
tendency with this Psalm ; that of deducing or
proving a truth, that would be otherwise unknown,
from truths already known.
I recollect not enough of the passages in Job, to
insert them correctly: but there is one occurs to
me that is applicable to the subject I am speaking
upon. “Canst thou by searching find out God?”
“Canst thou find out the Almighty to perſection ?”
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 a nd
wisdom. He has manifested in the structure of the
Creation that I behold, is to me incomprehensible
pAut 1.] AGE OF REASON, 35
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 cre-
ated 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 affirm-
atively, 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 convey any
idea of what God is. Those writings are chiefly
controversial; and 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, how-
ever, is far inferior to the allusions in Job, and in
the 19th Psalm ; but it is similar in idea, and the
modesty of the imagery is correspondent to the
modesty of the man.
As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to
me as a species of atheism—a sort of religious de-
nial of God. It professes to believe in a man
36 AGE OF REASON, [PART 1.
rather than in God. It is a compound made up
cliiefly of manism with but little deism, and is as
near to atheism as twilight is to darkness. It intro-
duces between man and his Maker an opaque body,
which it calls a Redeemer, as tlie moon introduces
her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and
it produces by this means a religious or an irreli-
gious eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit
of reason into shade.
The effect of this obscurity has been that of
turning every thing 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 wis-
dorſ 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 super-
stition.
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 con-
formable to the original system of theology. The
internal evidence of those orations proves to a de-
monstration that the study and contemplation cf
the works of Creation, and of the power and wis-
doin of God, revealed and manifested in those
PART 1.] AGE OF REASON. 37
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 per-
son who mechanically performs the work does not
always, and but very seldom, perceive the con-
nexion.
It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the
sciences human invention; it is only the application
of them that is human. Every science has for its
basis a system of principles as fixed and unalter-
able 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 a
human invention. It would also be ignorance, or
something worse, to say that the scientific princi
º by the aid of which man is enabled to calcu-
ate and foreknow when an eclipse will take place,
are a human invention. Man cannot invent any
thing that is eternal and immutable ; and the sci
entific 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.
38 A GE OF ERASON, [PART 1
'The scientific principles that man employs to
obtain the fore-knowledge of an eclipse, or of any
thing else, relating to the motion of the heavenly
bodies, are contained chiefly in that part of scierce
which is called Trigonometry, or the properties of
a triangle, which when applied to the study of the
heavenly bodies, is called Astronomy; when ap-
plied to direct the course of a ship on the ocean,
it is called Navigation; when applied to the con-
struction of figures drawn by rule and compass it
is called Geometry; when applied to the const, uc-
tion 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-survey-
ing. In fine, it is the soul of science; it is an eter-
nal truth ; it contains the mathematical demonstration
of which man speaks, and the extent of its uses is
unknown.
It may be said, that man can make or draw a
triangle, and, therefore, a triangle is a human in-
vention.
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 princi-
ple that would otherwise be imperceptible. The
triangle does not make the principle, any more
than a candle taken into a room that was dark,
tnakes the chairs and tables that before were invisi-
ble. All the properties of the triangle exist inde
pendently 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 pro-
perties 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;
PART I.] A GE OF REASON, 39
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 instru-
ment 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 other-
wise. That which, in all such cases, man calls the
tffect, 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 2
From whence, I ask, could he gain that knowledge,
but from the study of the true theology P
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 sci-
ence applied practically. The man who propor-
tions the several parts of a mill, uses the same
scientific principles, as if he had the power of con-
structing a universe; but as he cannot give to mat-
ter that invisible agency, by which all the compo-
nent 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 visi-
bly 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
*.
40 A GE OF REASON. LPART 1.
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 cord of the arc,
which the end of the lever describes in the air, are
the three sides of a triangle. The other arm of
the lever describes also a triangle; and the corres-
ponding 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 mag-
nitudes together, and produce a mill. Still the case
comes back to the same point, which is, that he did
not make the principle that gives the wheels those
powers. That principle is as unalterable as in the
former cases, or rather it is the same principle
under a different appearance to the eye.
The power that two wheels, of different magni-
tudes, have upon each other, is in the same propor-
tion as if the semi-diameter of the two wheels
were joined together and made in that kind of
lever I have described, suspended at the part where
the semi-diameters join; for the two wheels, sci-
entifically 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 al
our knowledge of science is derived, and it is from
that knowledge that all the arts have originated.
The Almighty lecturer, by displaying the princi-
ples of science in the structure of the universe, has
invired man to study and to imitation. It is as if
PART I.] AGE OF RR ASON, 41
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 visi-
ble, 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 some-
thing, that his eye is endowed with the power of
beholding, to an incomprehensible distance, an im-
mensity of worlds revolving in the ocean of space?
Or of what use is it that this immensity of worlds
is visible to man P 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 im-
mense 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 say-
ing, that nothing was made in vain; for in vain
would be this power of vision if it taught man
nothing.
As the Christian system of faith has made a
revolution in theology, so also has it made a revo-
lution in the state of learning. That which is now
called learning was not learning originally. Learn-
ing 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
InanneR.
The Greeks were a learned people, but learning
42 A.G.E D F REASON, [PART 1.
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 sci-
ence and philosophy teach, that learning consists.
Almost all the scientific learning that now exists,
came to us from the Greeks, or the people who
spoke the Greek language. It, therefore, became
necessary for the people of other nations, who
spoke a different language, that some among them
should learn the Greek language, in order that the
learning the Greeks had, might be made known in
those nations, by translating the Greek books of
science and philosophy into the mother tongue of
each nation.
The study therefore of the Greek language (and
in the same manner for the Latin) was no other
than the drudgery business of a linguist; and the
language thus obtained, was no other than the
means, as it were the tools, employed to obtain the
learning the Greeks had. It made no part of the
learning itself; and was so distinct from it, as to
make it exceedingly probable that the persons who
had studied Greek sufficiently to translate those
works, such, for instance, as Euclid's Elements,
did not understand any of the learning the works
contained.
As there is now nothing new to be learned from
the dead languages, all the useful books being
already translated, the languages are become use-
less, and the time expended in teaching and learn-
ing them is wasted. So far as the study of lan-
PART 1.] AGE OF REASON. 43
guages may contribute to the progress and commu-
nication 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 lan-
guages 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
ploughman did, or a Grecian milkmaid ; and the
game for the Latin, compared with a ploughman or
milkmaid of the Romans. It would, therefore, be
advantageous to the state of learning to abolish the
study of the dead languages, and to make learning
consist, as it originally did, in scientific knowledge.
The apology that is sometimes made for con-
tinuing to teach the dead languages is, that they
are taught at a time, when a child is not capable
of exerting any other mental faculty than that of
memory; but that is altogether erroneous. The
human mind has a natural disposition to scientific
knowledge, and to the things connected with it.
The first and favorite amusement of a child, even
before it begins to play, is that of imitating the
works of man. It builds houses with cards or
sticks; it navigates the little ocean of a bowl of
water with a paper boat, or dams the stream of a
gutter, and contrives something which it calls a
mill; and it interests itself in the fate of its works
with a care that resembles affection. It afterwards
goes to school, where its genius is killed by the
barren study of a dead language, and the philoso-
pher is lost in the linguist.
44 A GE OF REASON. | PART 1.
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 pro-
duced, 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 a matter of distinct con-
sideration, 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 him-
self 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 cer-
tain that what is called the Christian system of
faith, including in it the whimsical account of the
creation—the strange story of Eve—the snake and
the apple—the ambiguous idea of a man-god—the
corporeal idea of the death of a god—the mytholo-
gical idea of a family of gods, and the Christian
system of arithmetic, that three are one, and one is
three, are all irreconcileable, not only to the diving
gift of reason, that God hath given to man, but to
the knowledge that man gains of the power and
wisdom of God, by the aid of the sciences, and by
studying the structure of the universe that God has
made.
The setters-up, therefore, and the advocates of
the Christian system of faith, could not but foresee
that the continually progressive knowledge that
man would gain, by the aid of science, of the
wer and wisdom of God, manifested in the
structure of the universe, and in all the works of
Creation, would militate against, and call into ques.
PART I.] AGE OF REASON. 45
tion, the truth of their system of faith; and, there-
fore, 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 lan-
guages.
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 ob-
serve the motions and appearance of the heavenly
bodies, afforded additional means for ascertaining
the true structure of the universe. Instead of
being esteemed for those discoveries, he was sen-
tenced to renounce them, or the opinions resulting
from them, as a damnable heresy. And prior to
that time Vigilius was condemned to be burned for
asserting the antipodes, or in other words, that the
earth was a globe, and habitable in every part
where there was land; yet the truth of this is now
$oo well known even to be told.
If the belief of errors not morally bad did no
mischief, it would make no part of the moral duty
of man to oppose and remove them. There was
no moral ill in believing the earth was flat like a
trencher, any more than that 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 cre-
ation that is not true, and to unite itself there with
in a manner almost inseparable therefrom, the case
assumes an entirely different ground. It is the
that errors, not morally bad, become fraught with
46 A GE OF REASON, [PART 1,
the same mischiefs as if they were. It is then that
the truth, though otherwise indifferent itself, be-
comes an essential, by becoming the criterion, that
either confirms by corresponding evidence, or de-
nies 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 evi-
dence that the structure of the heavens, or any
other part of creation affords, with respect to sys-
tems of religion. But this, the supporters or parti-
zans of the Christian system, as if dreading the
result, incessantly opposed, not only rejected the
sciences, but persecuted the professors. Had New-
ton 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.
Latter 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 Christ-
ian 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 sys-
tem of theism.*
* It is impossible for us now to know at what time the
heathen mythology began; but it is certain, from the in-
ternal evidence that it carries, that it did not begin in the
name state or condition in which it ended. All the gods
of that mythology, except Saturn, were of modern in-
vention. The supposed reign of Saturn was prior to that
which is called the heathen mythology, and was so far a
PART 1.] A GE OF REASON. 47
It is owing to this long interregnum of science,
and to no other cause, that we have now to look
through a vast chasm of many hundred years to
the respectable characters we call the ancients.
Had the progression of knowledge gone on propor-
tionably 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 back ground 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
species of theism, that it admitted the belief of only one
God. Saturn is supposed to have abdicated the govern-
ment in favor of his three sons and one daughter, Jupiter,
Pluto, Neptune, and Juno; after this, thousands of other
gods and demi-gods were imaginarily created, and the
calendar of gods increased as fast as the calendar of saints
and the calendars of courts have increased since.
All the corruptions that have taken place, in theology
and in religion, have been produced by admitting of what
man calls revealed religion. The Mythologists pretended
to more revealed religion than the Christians do. They
had their oracles and their priests, who were supposed to
receive and deliver the word of God verbally, on almost
all occasions.
Since then all corruptions drawn from Molock to mod-
ern 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 revela-
tion than that which is manifested in the book of creation,
and to contemplate the creation as the only true and real
work of God that ever did, or ever will exist; and tha
every thing else, called the word of God, is fable and in-
position
48 AGE OF REASON, LPABT i.
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 uni-
verse 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 multi-
plicity of National Popes grew out of the downfall
of the Pope of Christendom.
Having thus shown from the internal evidence
of things, the cause that produced a change in the
state of learning, and the motive for substituting
the study of the dead languages in the place of the
sciences, I proceed, in addition to the several ob-
servations already made in the former part of this
work, to compare or rather to confront the evi-
dence that the structure of the universe affords,
with the Christian system of religion; but as I can-
not 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 de-
ee 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 Uf the
subject, giving to the whole, by way of preface, a
short introduction.
My father being of the Quaker profession, it was
PART I.] AGE OF REASON. 49
my good fortune to have an exceeding 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 lan-
guage is taught. But this did notyrevent me from
being acquainted with the subjects oºl) 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 encour-
aged, as leading too much into the field of imagi-
nation. 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 is called politics.
It presented to my mind no other idea than is con-
tained in the word Jockeyship. When, therefore,
I turned my thoughts towards matters of govern-
ment, I had to form a system for myself, that ac-
corded 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 gov-
ernment of England, and declare themselves inde-
pendent, they would not only involve themselves
in a multiplicity of new difficulties, but shut out
the prospect that was then offering itself to man-
kind through their means. It was from these mo-
*The same school, Thetford in Norfolk, that the pre-
sent Counsellor Mingay went to, and under the same
master.
50 A GE OF REASON iPART m
tives 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 kuown in the
world as an author, on any subject whatever, had
it not been in the affairs of America. I wrote
“Common Seº’ he latter end of the year 1775,
and publists -: the first of January, 1776. Inde-
pendence was declared the fourth of July, follow-
II] g.
ºny person, who has made observations on the
state and progress of the human mind, by observ-
ing his own, cannot but have observed that there
are two distinct classes of what are called
Thoughts; those that we produce in ourselves
by reflection and the act of thinking, and those
that bolt into the mind of their own accord, I
have always made it a rule to treat those voluntary
visitors with civility, taking care to examine, as
well as I was able, if they were worth entertaining;
and it is from them I have acquired almost all the
knowledge that I have. As to the learning that
any person gains from school education, it serves
only, like a small capital, to put him in 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 dis-
tinct 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 eithel
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
PART I.] A GE OF REASON. 5)
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 per-
fectly recollect the spot) I revolted at the recollec-
tion of what I had heard, and thought to myself
that it was making God Almighty agt like a pas-
sionate man that killed his son, wº 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 aſ:
action, and also too almighty to be under any me-
cessity of doing it. I believe in the same manner
at this moment; and I moreover believe, that any
system of religion, that has any thing in it that
shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true sys-
term.
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 pro-

52 A GE OF REASON, LPART *.
fession of Deism." The true Deist has but one
Deity; and his religion consists in contemplating
the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity
in his works, and in endeavoring to imitate him
in every thing moral, scientifical, and mechani-
cal.
The religion that approaches the nearest of all
others to truá Deism in the moral and benign part
thereof, is that professed by the Quakers; but they
have contracted themselves too much, by leaving
the works of God out of their system. Though I
reverence their philanthropy, I cannot help smiling
at the conceit, that if the taste of a Quaker could
have been consulted at the creation, what a silent
and drab-colored creation it would have been .
Not a flower would have blossomed its gayeties.
nor a bird been permitted to sing.
Quitting these reflections, I proceed to other
matters. After I had made myself master of the
use of the globes, and of the orrery,” and con-
ceived an idea of the infinity of space, and the
eternal divisibility of matter, and obtained, at least,
a general knowledge of what is called natural phi-
losophy, I began to compare, or, as I have before
said, to confront the eternal evidence those things
afford with the Christian system of faith.
* As this book may fall into the hands of persons who
do not know what an orrery is, it is for their information
I add this note, as the name gives no idea of the uses of
the thing. The orrery has its name from the person who
invented it. It is a machinery of clock-work, represent-
ing the universe in miniature, and in which the revolution
of the earth round itself and round the sun, the revolu-
tion of the moon round the earth, the revolution of the
planets round the sun, their relative distances from tha
sun, as the centre of the whole system, their relative dis-
tances from each other, and their different magnitudes,
are represented as they really exist in what we call the
heavens
pART I.] .AGE OF REASON. 5:1
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
there with, 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 Christ-
ian system of faith, at once little and ridiculous, and
scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air. The
two beliefs cannot be held together in the same
mind; and he who thinks that he believes both, has
thought but little of either. -
Though the belief of a plurality of worlds was
familiar to the ancients, it 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 track of the ocean,
have sailed entirely round the world, as a man may
march in a circle, and come 1 ound 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 thousan -
and twenty English miles, reckoning sixty-nine
miles and a half to an equatorial degree, and ma
be sailed round in the space of about three
ears.”
A world of this extent may, at first thought, ap-
pear to us to be great; but if we compare it with
the immensity of space in which it is suspended,
like a bubble or balloon in the air, it is infinitely
less, in proportion, than the smallest grain of sand
* Allowing a ship to sail, on an average, three miles in
sn hour, she would sail entirely round the world in less
than one year, if she could sail in a direct circle; but she
is bbliged to follow the course of the ocean.
54 A GE OF REASON PART 1.]
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 cre-
ation 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 dimen-
Sions 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 re-
news itself, and asks, what is beyond that bound-
ary 2 and, in the same manner, what is beyond the
next boundary 2 and so on, till the fatigued imagi-
nation returns and says, there is no end. Certainly
then, the Creator was not pent for room, when he
made this world no larger than it is; and we have
to seek the reason in something else.
If we take a survey of our own world, or rather
of this, of which the Creator has given us the use,
as our portion in the immense system of Creation,
we find every part of it, the earth, the waters, and
the air that surrounds it, filled, and as it were,
crowded with life, down from the largest animals
that we know of, to the smallest insects the naked
eye can behold, and from thence to others still
smaller, and totally invisible without the assistance
of the microscope. Every tree, every plant, every
leaf, serves not only as a habitation, but as a world
to some numerous race, till animal existence be-
somes 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 unoccu-
pied, why is it to be supposed that the immensity
PART I.] A GE O F REASON. 55
of space is a naked void, lying in eternal waste 2
There is room for millions of worlds as large or
larger than ours, and each of them millions of
miles apart from each other.
IIaving now arrived at this point, if we carry
our ideas only one thought farther, we shall see,
perhaps, the true reason, at least a very good rea-
son, 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.
That part of the universe that is called the solar
system (meaning the system of worlds to which
our earth belongs, and of which Sol, or in English
language, the Sun, is the centre) consists, besides
the Sun, of six distinct orbs, or planets, or worlds,
besides the secondary 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 centre, round which those six
worlds or planets revolve at different distances
therefrom, and in circles concentrate to each other.
Each world keeps constantly in nearly the same
track round the Sun, and continues, at the same
tinue, turning round itself, in nearly an upright po-
sition, as a top turns round itself when it is spin-
ning 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 differ-
ent length of days and nights. If the earth turned
round itself in a position perpendicular to the plane
56 AGE OF REASON, [PART I
or level of the circle it moves in around the Sun,
as a top turns round when it stands erect on the
ground, the days aud nights would be always of
the same length, twelve hours lay and twelve
hours night, and the seasons would be uniformly
the same throughout the year.
Flvery 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 mil-
lions of miles nearer to our earth than any of the
stars are. The planet Venus is that which is called
the evening star, and sometimes the morning star,
as she happens to set after, or rise before the Sun,
which, in either case, is never more than three
hours.
The Sun, as before said, being the centre, the
planet, or world, nearest the Sun, is Mercury; his
distance from the Sun is thirty-four million miles,
and he moves round in a circle always at that dis-
tance from the Sun, as a top may be supposed to
spin round in the track in which a horse goes in a
mill. The second world is Venus, she is fifty-
seven million miles distant from the Sun, and con-
sequently moves round in a circle much greaten
than that of Mercury. The third world is that we
* Those who supposed that the Sun went round the
earth every twenty-four hours, made the same mistake in
idea that a cook would do in fact, that should make the
fire go round the meat, instead of the meat turning round
itself towards the fire.
pART I.] A GE OF REASON. 57
inhabit, and which is ninety-five 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 con-
sequently 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 Im-
mensity of space, that our solar system takes up
for the several worlds to perform their revolutions
in round the Sun, if of the extent in a straight line
of the whole diameter of the orbit or circle, in
which Saturn moves round the Sun, which being
double his distance from the Sun, is fifteen hundred
and twenty-six million piles; and its circular ex-
tent is nearly five thousand million; and its globi-
cal extent is almost three thousand five hundred
million times three thousand five hundred million
square miles.”
* If it should be asked, how can man know these
things 2 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
straight line between our earth and the Sun, and will ap-
pear 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 cf
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,
8
58 A GE OF REASON, [PART 1,
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, be-
cause they have no revolutionary motion, as the
six worlds or planets have that I have been describ-
ing. Those fixed stars continue always at the same
distance from each other, and always in the same
place, as the sun does in the centre of our system.
The probability, therefore, is, that each of those
fixed stars is also a sun, round which another sys-
tem of worlds or planets, though too remote for us
to discover, performs its revolutions, as our system
of worlds does round our central sun.
By this easy progression of ideas, the immensity
of space will appear to us to be filled with systems
of worlds; and that no part of space lies at waste,
any more than any part of the globe or earth and
water is left unoccupied.
Having thus endeavored to convey, in a familiar
and easy manner, some idea of the structure of the
universe, I return to explain what I before alluded
to, namely, the great benefits arising to man in con-
sequence 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 pre-
ference to that of creating one world only of a vast
eXtent.
It is an idea I have never lost sight of, that all
our knowledge of science is derived from the revo-
man could not be able to do these things if he did not un-
derstand the solar system, and the manner in which the
revolutions of the several planets or worlds are perform-
ed, the fact of calculating an eclipse, or a transit of Ve-
nus, 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 im.
mense distances.
PART 1.] AGE OF REASON. 58
lutions (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 sum.
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 idea and the
knowledge of science we now have ; and it is from
the sciences that all the mechanical arts that con-
tributes 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 devo-
tional gratitude of man, as well as his admira-
tioll.
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 me universal school of science presents itself
8} is
Neither does the knowledge stop here. The
system of worlds next to us exhibits, in its revolu-
tions, the same principles and school of science, to

60 A GE OF HEASON. iPART I.
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 be-
come enlarged in proportion as we contemplate the
extent and the structure of the universe. The
solitary idea of a solitary world, rolling or at rest in
the immense ocean of space, gives place to the
cheerful idea of a society of worlds, so happily
contrived as to administer, even by their motion,
instruction to man. We see our own earth filled
with abundance; but we forget to consider how
much of that abundance is owing to the scientific
knowledge the vast machinery of the universe has
unfolded.
But, in the midst of those reflections, what are
we to think of the Christian system of faith, that
forms itself upon the idea of only one world, and
that of no greater extent, as is before shown, than
twenty-five thousand miles? An extent which a
man, walking at the rate of three miles an hour,
for twelve hours in the day, could he keep on in a
circular direction, would walk entirely round in
less than two years. Alas! what is this to the
mighty ocean of space, and the almighty power of
the Creator!
From whence, then, could arise the solitary and
strange conceit, that the Almighty, who had mil-
lions of worlds equally dependent on his protec-
tion, 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 end-

PART I.] A GE, OF REASON, 61
less 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
afford to man, either directly contradicts it, or ren-
ders it absurd.
It is possible to believe, and I always feel plea-
sure in encouraging myself to believe it, that there
have been men in the world who persuade them-
selves that what is called a pious fraud, might, at
least under particular aircumstances, be productive
of some good. But the fraud being once establish-
ed, 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 it
with the morality preached by Jesus Christ, might
persuade themselves that it was better than the
heathen mythology that then prevailed. From the
first preachers the fraud went on to the second, and
to the third, till the idea of its being a pious fraud
became lost in the belief of its being true; and
that belief became again encouraged by the in-
terest of those who made a livelihood by preach-
ing it.
But though such a belief might, by such means,
be rendered almost general among the laity, it is
62 AGE, OF REASON. (PART I
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 sciences, 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 evi-
dence that the structure of the universe af.
forded.
Having thus shown the irreconcleable inconsist-
encies 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 prin-
cipal means that have been employed in all ages,
and, perhaps, in all countries, to impose upon man-
kind.
Those three means are Mystery, Miracle, and
Prophecy. The two first are incompatible with
true religion, and the third ought always to be sus-
pected.
With respect to mystery, every thing we behold
is, in one sense, a mystery to us. Our own exist:
ence 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 devel-
ope 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 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
pART I.] AGE OF REASON, 63
*
been let into the secret, and left to do it for our-
selves.
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 obscu-
rity. Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a
fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and
represents it in distortion. Truth never envelopes
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 con-
nection 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 prac-
tice 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 be-
nignly 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 happi-
ness 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 un-
encumbered 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 I'mysteries of a trade He learns the
64 AGE OF REASON. [PART 1.
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 in itself is without
mystery, has been corrupted into a fog of mys-
teries.
As mystery answered all general purposes, muracle
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, there-
fore, 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 de-
scription conveys the idea that is affixed to the word
miracle, it is necessary to carry the inquiry further
waRT I.] AGE OF REASON. 65
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 with-
in, 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 every thing in it that constitutes
the idea of a miracle, if it were not known that a
species of air can be generated several times lighter
than the common atmospheric air, and yet possess
elasticity enough to prevent the balloon, in which
that light air is enclosed, from being compressed
into as many times less bulk, by the common air
that surrounds it. In like manner, extracting
flames or sparks of fire from the human body, as
visible as from a steel struck with a flint, and
causing iron or steel to move without any visible
agent, would also give the idea of a miracle, if we
were not acquainted with electricity and magnet-
ism ; so also would many other experiments in
natural philosophy, to those who are not acquaint-
ed 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 ex inct.
Besides these, there are performances by sleight
of hand, and by persons acting in concert, that
have a miraculous appearance, which when known,
are thought nothing of. And, besides these, there
are mechanical and optical deceptions. There is
now an exhibition in Paris of ghosts or spectres,
which, though it is not imposed upon the specta-
tors as a fact, has an astonishing appearance. As

9
66 A UHE OF REASON, LPART 1.
therefore, we know not the extent to which either
nature or art can go, there is no criterion to deter-
mine 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 de-
ceiving, and things not real have a strong resem-
blance to things that are, nothing can be more in-
consistent 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 per-
son 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 in-
vented 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 preach-
ed. And, in the second place, it is degrading the
Almighty into the character of a show-man, play-
ing tricks to amuse and make the people stare and
wonder. It is also the most equivocal sort of evi-
dence 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 here-
m written; would any body believe me? certainly


pART 1.] A GE OF REASON. 67
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 falselıood, 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 na-
ture, that she must go out of that course to accom-
plish it, and we see an account given of such mira
cle 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 2 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 re-
porter 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 miracle, if Jonah had swal-
lowed 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 P
But supposing that Jonah had really swallowed
the whale, and gone with it in his belly to Ninevah,
and to convince the people that it was true, have
east 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 Ninevah, and cast him
mp in the same public manner, would they not have
68 At; E OF REASON. [PART 1
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 carry-
ing 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 king-
doms 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 mira-
cles, as is sometimes practised upon the connois-
seurs of Queen Anne's farthings, and collectors of
relics and antiquities; or to render the belief of
miracles ridiculous, by outdoing miracles, as Don
Quixote outdid chivalry; or to embarrass the be-
lief of miracles, by making it doubtful by what
power, whether of God or the Devil, anything
called a miracle was performed. It requires, how-
ever, 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 mo-
ment 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
PART 1.] AGE OF REASON. 69
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 mi-
racle.
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 suffi-
cient 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 inge-
nuity 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 Ninevah,
that God had repented himself and changed his
mind. What a fool do fabulous systems make of
man!
It has been shown, in a former part of this work,
that the original meaning of the words prophet and
prophesying has been changed, and that a prophet,
in the sense of the word as now used, is a creature
of modern invention; and it is owing to this change
in the meaning of the words, that the flights and
metaphors of the Jewish poets and phrases and
expressions now rendered obscure, by our not
being acquainted with the local circumstances to
which they applied at the time they were used
have been erected into prophecies, and made to
bend to explanations, at the will and whimsical con-
ceits of sectaries, expounders, and commentators.
Every thing unintelligible was prophetical, and
every thing insignificant was typical. A blunder
would have served as a prophecy; and a dish-clout
for a type.
If by a prophet we are to suppose a man to whom
70 A GE OF REASON. [PART 1,
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 comprehensions of those that heard
it, and so equivocal as to fit almost any circum-
stance that might happen afterwards. It is con-
ceiving very irreverently of the Almighty to sup-
pose he would deal in this jesting manner with
mankind; yet all the things called prophecies in
the book called the Bible, come under this de-
scription.
But it is with prophecy as it is with miracle; it
could not answer the purpose even if it were real.
Those to whom a prophecy should be told, could
not tell whether the man prophesied or lied, or
whether it had been revealed to him, or whether
he conceited it; and if the thing that he prophesied,
or intended to prophecy, 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 1 and Lo theres 1 have been spread
about the world, and religion been made into a
trade. The success of one imposter gave encour-
agement to another, and the quieting salvo of doing
some good by keeping up a pious fraud, protected
them from remorse.
Having now extended the subject to a greater
length than I first intended, I shall bring it
PART I.] AGE OF REASON. 71
to a close by abstracting a summary fom the
whole.
First—That the idea or belief of a word of God,
existing in print, or in writing, or in speech, is in-
consistent in itself for reasons already assigned
These reasons, among many others, are the want
of a universal language; the mutability of lan-
guage; the errors to which translations are sub-
ject; the possibility of totally suppressing such
B word; the probability of altering it, or of fabri-
cating the whole, and imposing it upon the world.
Secondly—That the Creation we behold is the
real and ever existing word of God, in which we
cannot be deceived. It proclaims his power, it de-
monstrates 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 good-
ness 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 per-
secution 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 arid
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 ex-
istence 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 disagree, are the redund-
ancies annexed to that belief; and, therefore, if
72 AGE OF REASON. PART I.
ever a 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. 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 THE SECOND.
* B. R. E. F. A C E .
W H A vić 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 lifa 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, de-
termined me to delay it no longer The just and humane
principles of the revolution, which philosophy had first
diffused, had been depºrted from. The idea, always'
dangerous to society as it is derogatory to the Almighty,
that priests could ſorgive sins, though it seemed to exist
no longer, had blunted the feelings of humanity, and
callously prepared men for the commi gion of all manner
of crimes. The intolerant spirit of church persecutions
had transferred itself into politics; the tribunal, styled
revolutionary, supplied the place of an inquisition; and
the guillotine and the stake outdid the fire end faggot of
the church. I saw many of my most intinºws friends
destroyed; others daily carried to prison; and I bad rea-
son 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 .4ge of Reason; I had, besides, reither Bible nor
76 PREFAO, E.
Testament to refer to, though I was writing against both,
nor could I procure any; notwithstanding which, I have
produced a work that no Bible believer, though writing at
his ease, and with a library of church books about him,
can refute. Towards the latter end of December of that
year, a motion was made and carried, to exclude foreign-
ers from the Convention. There were but two in it,
Anacharsis Cloots and myself; and I saw I was particu-
larly pointed at by Bourdon de l’Oise, in his speech on
that motion.
Conceiving, after this, that I had but a few days of
liberty, I sat down and brought the work to a close as
speedily as possible; and I had not finished it more than
six hours, in the state it has since appeared, before a
guard came there about three in the morning, with an
order signed by the two committees of public safety and
surety-general, for putting me under arrest as a foreigner,
and conveyed me to the prison of Luxembourg. I con-
trived, on my way there, to call on Joel Barlow, and
I put the manuscript of the work into his hands, as more
safe than in my possession in prison; and not knowing
what might be the fate in France, either of the writer or
the work, I addressed it to the protection of the citizens
of the United States. -
It is with justice that I say that the guard who exe-
cuted this order, and the interpreter of the Committee of
General Surety, who accompanied them to examine my
papers, treated me not only with civility but with respect
The keeper of the Luxembourg, Bennoit, a man of a
good heart, showed to me every friendship in his power,
ps did also all his family, while he continued in that
station. He was removed from it, put under arrest, and
PRE FA CE. 77
carried before the tribunal, upon a malignant accusation,
but acquitted.
After I had been in the Luxembourg about three weeks,
the Americans, then in Paris, went in a body to the Con-
vention, to reclaim me as their countryman and friend;
but were answered by the President, Vader, who was
also President of the Committee of Surety-General, and
had signed the order for my arrest, that I was born in
England. I heard no more after this, from any person
out of the walls of the prison, till the fall of Robespierre,
on the 9th of Thermidor—July 27, 1794.
About two months before this event, I was seized with
a fever, that in its progress had every symptom of be-
coming 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 Van-
huele, of Bruges, Charles Bastini, and Michael Robyns,
of Louvain. The unceasing and anxious attention of
these three friends to me, by night and by day, I remem
ber with gratitude, and mention with pleasure. It hap-
pened that a physician (Dr. Graham) and a surgeon (Mr.
Bond), part of the suite of General O’Hara, were then
in the Luxembourg. I ask not myself, whether it be con-
venient 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 Lux-
embourg, Dr. Markoski.
78 PR.EFACE.
I have some reason to believe, because I cannot dis.
cover any other cause, that this illness preserved me in
existence. Among the papers of Robespierre that were
examined and reported upon to the Convention, by a
Committee of Deputies, is a note in the hand-writing of
Robespierre, in the following words : —
• Demander que Thomas Paine soit decrete d’accusa-
tion, pour l’interet de l’Amerique autant que de la
France.”
To demand that a decree of accusation be passed
against Thomas Paine, for the interest of America,
as well as of France.
From what cause it was that the intention was not put
in execution, I know not, and cannot inform myself; and,
therefore, I ascribe it to impossibility, on account of that
illness.
The Convention, to repair as much as lay in their
power the injustice I had sustained, invited me publicly
and unanimously to return into the Convention, and
which I accepted, to show I could bear an injury without
permitting it to injure my principles, or my disposition.
It is not because right principles have been violated, that
they are to be abandoned.
I have seen, since I have been at liberty, several publi-
cations written, some in America, and some in England,
as answers to the former part of “The Age of Reason.”
[f 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
ine more service than they intend, and I can have no ob-
jection that they write on. They will find, however, by
YPHEFA CE. 79
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 acci-
dent.
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.
lf I have erred in any thing, in the former part of the
.#ge of Reason, it has been by speaking better of some
parts of those books than they have deserved.
I observe that all my opponents resort, more or less, to
what they call Scripture evidence and Bible authority, to
help them out. They are so little masters of the subject,
as to confound a dispute about authenticity with a dispute
about doctrines; I will, however, put them right, that if
they should be disposed to write any more, they may
know how to begin.
THOMAS PAINE.
October, 1795.
AGE OF REASON.
PART II.
IT has often been said, that any thing may be
proved from the Bible, but before any thing can be
admitted as proved by the Bible, the Bible itself
must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be not
true, or the truth of it be doubtful, it ceases to have
authority, and cannot be admitted as proof of any
tning.
It has been the practice of all Christian commen-
tators 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 supposed meaning of particu-
lar parts and passages therein; one has said and
insisted that such a passage meant such a thing;
another that it meant directly the contrary; and a
third, that it meant neither one nor the other, but
something different from both ; and this they call
understanding the Bible.
It has happened that all the answers which I
have seen to the former part of the Age of Reason
have been written by priests; and these pious men,
like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and
pretend to understand the Bible; each understands
82 AGE OF REASON, [PART II,
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 shock-
ing 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, &c., that they
(the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations
of people, who, as the history itself shows, had
given them no offence; that they put all those na-
tions 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; expres-
sions 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 inan commissioned these 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 any evi-
dence 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 resem-
blance of a fable. The origin of every nation is
buried in fabulous tradition, and that of the Jews
is as much to be suspected as any other. To
charge the commission of acts upon the Almighty,
PART II.] AGE OF REASON. 83
e
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 com.
mand 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 evi-
dence 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 establish-
ed 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
84 A GE OF REASON. [PART. In
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 cer-
tainty 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, &c., 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; sec-
ondly, upon the credit we give to their testimony
We may believe the first, that is, we may believe
the certainty of the authorship, and yet not the
testimony; in the same manner that we may be-
lieve 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
before Archimedes; he was of the city of Alexandria, in
t,
PART II.] AGE OF REASON. 85
Cicero, & c. 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 anony-
mous. Nobody believes the Trojan story, as re-
lated by Homer, to be true—for it is the poet only
that is admired; and the merit of the poet will
remain, though the story be fabulous. But if we
disbelieve the matters related by the Bible authors,
(Moses for instance) as we disbelieve the things
related by Homer, there remains nothing of Moses,
in our estimation, but an impostor. As to the
ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we
credit them as far as they relate things probable
and credible, and no further; for if we do, we
must believe the two miracles which Tacitus re-
lates 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 mira-
cle 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 mira-
cles are quite as well authenticated as the Bible
miracles, and yet we do not believe them ; conse-
quently the degree of evidence necessary to esta-
blish our belief of things naturally incredible,
whether in the Bible or elsewhere, is far greater
than that which obtains our belief to natural and
probable things; and, therefore, the advocates for
the Bible have no claim to our belief of the Bible,
because that we believe things stated in other
ancient writings; since we believe the things
stated in these writings no further than they are
probable and credible, or because they are self.
evident, like Euclid; or admire them because
they are elegant, like Homer; or approve them
because they are sedate, like Plato; or judicious
like Aristotle.
86 A GE OF R EASON, PART II.
Having premised these things, I proceed to ex-
amine the authenticity of the Bible, and I begin
with what are called the five books of Moses,
Gemesis, Exodus, Leviticus, .Numbers, and Dew-
teronomy. My intention is to show that those
books are spurious, and that Moses is not the
author of them; and still further, that they were
not written in the time of Moses, nor till several
hundred years 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, writ-
ten 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
proof to any of the ancient authors, whom the
advocates of the Bible call profane authors, they
would controvert that authority, as I controvert
theirs; I will, therefore, meet them on their own
ground, and oppose them with their own weapon,
the Bible.
In the first place, there is no affirmative evi-
dence that Moses is the author of those books;
and that he is the author, is altogether an un-
founded opinion, got abroad nobody knows how.
The style and manner in which those books are
written, give no room to believe, or even to sup-
pose, they were written by Moses; for it is alto-
gether the style and manner of another person
speaking of Moses. In Exodus, Leviticus, and
Numbers, (for every thing in Genesis is prior to
the time of Moses, and not the least allusion is
made to him therein) the whole, I say, of these
PART II A GE OF REASON. 87
books is in the third person; it is always, the
Lord sand unto JMoses, or Moses said winto 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 writ-
ing. 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, be-
cause 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 render-
ing Moses truly ridiculous and absurd ; for exam-
ple, Numbers, chapter xii. verse 3. “...Now the man
JMoses was very meek, above all the men which were
on the face of the edith.” If Moses said this of
himself, instead of being the meekest of men, he
was one of the most vain and arrogant of cox-
combs; 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 was without credit, because to
boast of meekness, is the reverse of meekness, and
is a lie whentiment,
In Deuteronomy, the style and manner of writ.
ing marks inore evidently than in the former books.
that Moses is not the writer. The manner here
used is dramatical; the writer opens the subject by
a short introductory discourse, and then introduces
Moses in the act of speaking, and when he has
made Moses finish his harangue, he (the writer)
resumes ilis own part, and speaks till lie brings
gº.
88 AGF: OF REASON, PART ||
Moses forward again, and at last closes the scene
with an account of the death, funeral, and charac-
ter of Moses.
This interchange of speakers occurs four times
in this book ; from the first verse of the first
chapter, to the end of the fifth verse, it is the writer
who speaks; he then introduces Moses as in the
act of making his harangue, and this continues to
the end of the 40th verse of the fourth chapter;
here the writer drops Moses, and speaks histori-
cally of what was done in consequence of what
Moses, when living, is supposed to have said, and
which the writer has drainatically rehearsed.
The writer opens the subject again in the first
verse of the fifth chapter, though it is only by say-
ing 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 be-
ginning 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 inim, 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, 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 110 years of age when he died; that his eye
was not dim, nor his natural force abated ; and he
PART II.] AGE OF REASON. 89
concludes by saying that there arose not a prophet
since in Israel like unto Moses, whom, says this
anonymous writer, the Lord knew face to face.
Having thus shown, as far as grammatical evi-
dence applies, that Moses was not the writer of
those books, I will, after making a few observations
on the inconsistencies of the writer of the book of
Deuteronomy, proceed to show, from the historical
and chronological evidence contained in those
books, that Moses was not, because he could not
be, the writer of them; and, consequently, that
there is no authority for believing that the in-
human and horrid butcheries of men, women,
and children, told in those books, were done, as
those books say they were, at the command of
God. It is a duty incumbent on every true
Deist, that he vindicate the moral justice of God
against the calumnies of the Bible.
The writer of the book of Deuteronomy, who-
ever he was, (for it is an anonymous work) is
obscure, and also in contradiction with himself,
in the account he has given of Moses.
After telling that Moses went to the top of Pisgah
(and it does not appear from any account that he
ever came down again) he tell 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 2 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
walley in the land of Moab 2 for as the writer lived

12
90 AGE OF REASON. {PART 1
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 him-
self, 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 dif-
ferent from the fourth commandment in the twen-
tieth chapter of Exodus. In that of Exodus, the
reason given for keeping the seventh day is, “be-
cause (says the commandment) God made the
heavens and the earth in six days, and rested
on the seventh;” but in that of Deuteronomy,
the reason given is, that it was the day on which
the children of Israel came out of Egypt, and,
therefore, says this commandment, the Lord thy
God commanded thee to keep the sabbath-day. This
makes no mention of the creation, nor that of the
coming out of Egypt. There are also many things
given as laws of Moses in this book, that are not to
be found in any of the other books; among which
is that inhuman and brutal law, chapter xxi. verses
18, 19, 20, 21, which authorizes parents, the father
and the mother, to bring their own children to have
them stoned to death, for what it is pleased to call
stubbornness. But priests have always been ſond
of preaching up Deuteronomy, for Deuteronomy
preaches up tythes; and it is from this book, chap-
PART II.j AGE. O. F. REASON. 9]
- o
ter xxv. verse 4, they have taken the phrase, and
applied it to tything, that thou shalt not muzzle the
or 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.
priests! priests ye are willing to be compared to
an ox, for the sake of tythes. Though it is impos-
sible for us to know identically who the writer of
Deuteronomy was, it is not difficult to discover him
professionally, that he was some Jewish priest who
lived, as I shall show in the course of this work, at
least three hundred and fifty years after the time of
Moses.
I cºme now to speak of the historical and chro-
nological 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 chro-
nologically, that Moses is not the author of the
books ascribed to him. It is, therefore, proper that
I inform the reader, (such a one at least as may not
have ar opportunity of knowing it,) that in the
larger Bibles, and also in some smaller ones, there
is a series of chronology printed in the margin of
every page, for the purpose of showing how long
the historical matters stated in each page happened,
or are supposed to have happened, before Christ,
and, consequently, the distance of time between
one historical circumstance and another.
I begin with the book of Genesis. In the 14th
chapter of Genesis, the writer gives an account of
Lot being taken prisoner in a battle between the
four kings against five, and carried off; and that
when the account of Lot being taken, came to
Abraham, he armed all his household, and marched
to rescue Lot from the captors; and that he pur-
sued them unto Dan, (verse 14.)
To show in what manner this expression of pur.

92 A 3.B. OF REASON. [PART II,
swing them unto Dan applies to the case in question
I will refer to two circumstances, the one in Amer-
ica, the other in France. The city now called
New York, in America, was originally New Ain-
sterdam; 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 lie
found, though without date, in which the .name
of New York should be mentioned, it would be
certain evidence that such 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 Dam, till
many years after the death of Moses; and, conse-
quently, 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 commenmoration
of Dan, who was the father of that tribe, and the
great grandson of Abraham.
To establish this in proof, it is necessary to refer
from Genesis to the 18th chapter of the book called
the book of Judges. It is there said (verse 27) that
they (the Danites) come unto Laish to a people that
were quiet and secure and they smote them with the
PART II.] A GE OF RF ASON, 93
edge of the sword (the Bible is filled with murder)
und burned the city with fire; and they built a city,
(verse 28) and dwelt therein, and they called the name
of the city Dan, after the name of Dam, their father,
howbeit the name of the city was Lansh 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
| 120 years before Christ, and that of Moses 1451
before Christ, and, therefore, according to the his-
torical arrangement, the place was not called Dan
till 331 years after the death of Moses.
There is a striking confusion between the histo-
rical and the chronological arrangement in the Book
of Judges. The five last chapters, as they stand in
the book, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, are put chronologically
before all the preceding chapters; they are made to
be 28 years before the 16th chapter, 266 before the
15th, 245 before the 13th, 195 before the 9th, 90 be-
fore the 4th, and 15 years before the 1st chapter
This shows the uncertain and fabulous state of the
the Bible. According to the chronological arrange-
ment, the taking of Laish, and giving it the name
of Dan, is made to be 20 years after the death of
Joshua, who was the successor of Moses; and hy
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 Mo-
ses from being the writer of Genesis, because, ac-
cording to either of the statements, no such place
as Dan existed in the time of Moses; and, there-
fore, the writer of Genesis must have been some
person who lived after the town of Laish had the
name of Dan; and who that person was, nobody
knows; and, consequently, the book of Genesis
is anonymous and without authority.
I proceed now to state another point of historical
and chronological evidence, and to show therefrom,

$94 AGE OF REASON. |PART II.
as in the preceding case, that Moses is not the author
of the book of Genesis.
In the 36th chapter of Genesis there is given a
genealogy of the sons and descendants of Esau, who
are called Edomites, and also a list, by name, of the
kings of Edom ; in enumerating of which, it is said,
verse 31, “..And these are the kings that reigned in
Edom, before there reigned any king over the children
of Israel.
Now, were any dateless writings to be found, in
which, speaking of any past events, the writer
should say, these things happened before there was
any Congress in America, or before there was any
Convention in France, it would be evidence that
such writing could not have been written before,
and could only be written after there was a Con-
gress 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; sec-
ondly, because the fact includes the date, and serves
to excite two ideas at once; and this manner of
speaking by circumstances implies as positively
that the fact alluded to is past, as if it was so
expressed. When a person, speaking upon any
matter, says, it was before I was married, or be-
fore my son was born, or before I went to America,
or before I went to France, it is absolutely under-
stood, 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 expres-
sion is found any where, it can only be under,
|
PART II.] AGE OF REASON, 95
stood 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, conse-
quently. 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 ex-
pression, 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 the 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 impos-
sible not to have seen the application of it. It
happens then that this is the case; the two books
of Chronicles which gave a history of all the kings
of Israel, are professedly, as well as in fact, written
after the Jewish monarchy began; and this verse
that I have quoted, and all the remaining verses of
the 36th chapter of Genesis, are, word for word, in
the first chapter of Chronicles, beginning at the
43d verse.
It was with consistency that the writer of the
Chronicles could say as he has said, 1st Chronicles,
chapter i. verse 43, These are the kings that reigned
in Edom, before there reigned any king over the child-
ren of Israel, because he was going to give, and had
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
tanguage, that this part of Genesis is taken from
Chronicles, and that Genesis is not so old as


95 e AGE OF REASON, PART IIs
Chronicles, and probably not so old as the book
of Homer, or as AEsop's Fables, admitting Homer
to have been, as the tables of Chronology state,
contemporary with David or Solomon, and AEsop
to have lived about the end of the Jewish mon-
archy.
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 ab-
surdities, 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 liv-
ing 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 unexam-
pled atrocities that are to be found in the history
of any nation, of which I will state only one in-
Stan Ce.
When the Jewish army returned from one of
their plundering and murdering excursions, the
account goes on as follows, Numbers, chapter xxxi.
verse 13.
“And Moses, and Eleazer 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 2 behold, these
caused the children of Israel, through the council
pART In J AGE OF REASON. 97
of Balaani, 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 des-
timed to violation, and herself in the hands of an
executioner; let any daughter put herself in the
situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to
the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what
will be their feelings? It is in vain that we attempt
to impose upon nature, for nature will have her
course, and the religion that tortures all her social
ties is a false religion.
After this detestable order, follows an account of
the plunder taken, and the manner of dividing it;
and here it is that the profaneness of priestly
hypocrisy increases the catalogue of crimes
Verse 37, “...dnd the Lord's tribute of the sheep
was six hundred and three score and fifteen ;
and the beeves was thirty and six thousand, of
which the Lord's tribute was three score and
twelve; and the asses were thirty thousand, of
which the Lord’s tribute was three score and
one; and the persons were thirty 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
13
95 A GE OF REASON. |PART II
chapter, that the number of women-children con-
signed 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, alºd that it is good; they per-
mit 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 2
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 in-
stances 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 mat-
ters it speaks of, or refers to as facts; for in the
case of pursuing them unto Dan, and of the kings
that reigned over the children of Israel, not even the
flimsy pretence of prophesy can be pleaded. The
expressions are in the preter tense, and it would be
downright idiotism to say that a man could pro-
phesy 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) chapter xvi. verse
34, “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 any thing
PART II.] A GE OF REASON. 99
more than a kind of fungus or small mushroom, or
other vegetable substance common to that part of
the country, makes nothing to my argument; all
that I mean to show is, that it is not Moses that
could write this account, because the account ex-
tends itself beyond the life and time of Moses.
Moses, according to the Bible, (but it is such a
book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing
which part to believe, or whether any) dies 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 unto the borders of the land of Canaan.
Joshua, chapter v. verse 12. “..And the manna
ceased on the morrow, after they had eaten of the
old corn of the land; neither had the children of
Israel manna any more, but they did eat of the
fruit of the land of Canaan that year.”
But a more remarkable instance than this occurs
in Deuteronomy; which, while it shows that Moses
could not be the writer of that book, shows also
the fabulous notions that prevailed at that time
about giants. In the third chapter of Deuterono-
my, among the conquests said to be made by Mo-
ses, is an account of the taking of Og, king of
Bashan, verse 11. “For only Og, king of Bashan,
remained of the race of giants; behold, his bed-
stead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath
of the children of Ammon 2 nine cubits was the
length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it,
after the cubit of a man.” A cubit is 1 foot
9 888-1000ths inches; the length, therefore, of
the bed was 16 feet 4 inches, and the breadth 7
100 AGE OF REASON, [PART II.
feet 4 inches; thus much for this giant's bed,
Now for the historical part, which though the
evidence is not so direct and positive, as in the
former cases, it is neyertheless 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 relic, and
says, is it not in Rabbath (or Rabbah) of the cliild-
ren of Ammon P 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 hun-
dred years after the death of Moses; for which, see
2 Samuel, chapter xii. verse 26. “And Joab (Da-
vid's general) fought against Rabbah of the children
of Ammon, and took the royal city.”
As I am not undertaking to point out all the con-
tradictions in time, place, and circumstance, that
abound in the books ascribed to Moses, and which
prove to a 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 show that
Joshua is not the author of that book, and that it is
anonymous and without authority. The evidence
I shall produce is contained in tho book itself; I
will not go out of the Bible for proof against the
Eupposed authenticity of the Bible. False testi-
mony is always good against itself.
Joshua, according to the first chapter of Joshua,
was the immediate successor of Moses; he was,
moreover, a military man, which Moses was not,
and he continued as chief of the people of Israel
PART II.] A GE OF REASON. 101
g
25 years; that is, from the time that Moses died,
which, according to the Bible chronology, was 1451
years before Christ, until 1426 years before Christ,
when, according to the same chronology, Joshua
died. If, therefore, we find in this book, said to
have been written by Joshua, reference to facts done
after the death of Joshua, it is evidence that Joshua
could not be the author; and, also, that the book
could not have been written till after the time of the
latest fact which it records. As to the character
of the book, it is horrid; it is a military history of
rapine and murder, as savage and brutal as those
recorded of his predecessor in villainy and hypoc-
risy, Moses; and the blasphemy consists, as in the
former books, in ascribing those deeds to the or-
ders of the Almighty.
In the first place, the book of Joshua, as is the
case in the preceding books, is written in the third
person; it is the historian of Joshua that speaks,
for it would have been absurd and vain-glorious
that Joshua should say of himself, as is said of him
in the last verse of the sixth chapter, that “his fame
was noised throughout all the country.” I now come
more immediately to the proof.
In the 24th chapter, verse 31, it is said, “that Is-
rael served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all
the days of the elders that overlived Joshua.” Now,
in the name of common sense, can it be Joshua that
relates what people had done after he was dead P
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 pas-
sage, the time that intervened between the death of
102 AGE OF REASON. [PART in
Joshua and the death of the elders, is excluded de-
scriptively and absolutely, and the evidence substan-
tiates 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 con-
tained between the death of Joshua and the death
of the elders. Such is the passage, chapter x. verse
14; where, after giving an account that the sun
stood still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the
valley of Ajalon, at the command of Joshua (a
tale only fit to amuse children) the passage says,
“And there was no day like that before it, nor
after it, that the Lord hearkened to the voice of a
man.”
This tale of the sun standing still upon Mount
Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, is
one of those fables that detects itself. Such a cir-
cumstance 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 any thing about it. But why must the
moon stand still P What occasion could there be
for moon-light in the day-time, and that too while
the sun shined P As a poetical figure, the whole is
well enough; it is akin to that in the song of Deh-
orah and Baruk, 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 going 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
PART II.] AGE OF REASON, 103
dark lanthorn, and taken them out to shine as be
might happen to want them.
e sublime and the ridiculous are often so
nearly related, that it is difficult to class them sepa-
rately. One step above the sublime makes the
ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes
the sublime again: the account, however, abstract-
ed from the poetical fancy, shows the ignorance of
Joshua, for he should have commanded the earth
to have stood still.
The time implied by the expression, after it, that
is, after that day, being put in comparison with all
the time that passed before it, must, in order to give
any expressive signification to the passage, mean a
great length of time: for example, it would have
been ridiculous to have said so the next day, or the
next week, or the next month, or the next year; to
give, therefore, meaning to the passage, compara-
tive with the wonder it relates, and the prior time
it alludes to, it must mean centuries of years; less,
however, than one wºuld be trifling, and less than
two would be barely admissible.
A distant, but general time, is also expressed in
the 8th chapter; where, after giving an account of
the taking of the city of Ai, it is said, verse 28th,
“And Joshua burned Ai, and made it an heap for
ever, a desolation unto this day;” and again, verse
29th, where, speaking of the king of Ai, whom
Joshua had hanged, and buried at the entering of
the gate, it is said, “And he raised thereon a great
heap of stones, which remaineth unto this day,”
that is, unto the day or time in which the writer of
the book of Joshua lived. And again, in the 10th
chapter, where, after speaking of the five kings
whom Joshua had hanged on five trees, and then
thrown in a cave, it is said, “And he laid great
stones on the cave's mouth, which remain unto
this very day.
In enumerating the several exploits of Joshua,
104 AGE OF REASON. PART II
and of the tribes, and of the places which they con-
quered or attempted, it is said, chapter xv. verse 63,
“As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
the children of Judah could not drive them out;
but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah
at Jerusalem unto this day.” The question upon
this passage is, at what time did the Jebusites and
the children of Judah dwell together at Jerusalem?
As this matter occurs again in the first chapter of
Judges, I shall reserve my observations till I com
to that part.
Having thus shown from the book of Joshua
itself, without any auxiliary evidence whatever
that Joshua is not the author of that book, and that
it is anonymous, and, consequently, without author-
ity, 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-
ter i. verse 1, .Now after the death of Moses, &c.
and this of Judges begins, Now after the death of
Joshua, &c. This, and the similarity of style be-
...tween the two books, indicate that they are the
work of the same author; but who he was, is alto-
gether 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 his
tory through a space of 306 years; that is, front the
death of Joshua. 1426 years before Christ, to the
death of Samson, 1120 years before Christ, and
only 25 years before Saul went to seek his father's
asses, and was made king. But there is good re-
PART II. I AGE OF REASON, 105
son to believe that it was not written till the time
of David at least, and that the book of Joshua was
not written before the same time.
In the first chapter of Judges, the writer, after
announcing the death of Joshua, proceeds to tell
what happened between the children of Judah and
the native inhabitants of the land of Canaan. In
this statement, the writer, having abruptly men-
tioned 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 quota-
tion I have just before made from the 15th chap-
ter of Joshua, verse 63, where it is said, that the
Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusa-
lem 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 per-
sons ever lived, is already so abundant, that I ca
afford to admit this passage with less weight than I
am entitled to draw from it. For the case is, that
so far as the Bible can be credited as a history, the
city of Jerusalem was not taken till the time of
David ; and, consequently, that the books of Joshua,
and of Judges, were not written till after the com-
mencement of the reign of David, which was 370
years after the death of Joshua.
The name of the city, that was afterwards called
Jerusalem, was originally Jebus or Jebusi, and was
the capital of the Jebusites. The account of Da-
vid's taking the city is given in 2 Samuel, chapter
v. verse 4, &c.; also in 1 Chronicles, chapter xiv.
verse 4, &c. There is no mention in any part of
the Bible that it was ever taken before, nor any ac,
14
I06 AGE OF REASON, UPART II.
count that favors such an opinion. It is not said,
either in Samuel or in Chronicles, that they utterly
destroyed men, women, and children; that they left
not a soul to breathe, as is said of their other con-
quests; 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 the 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 : pretty stuff, indeed, to be called the
word of God! It is, however, one of the best
books in the Bible, for it is free from murder and
rapine.
I come next to the two books of Samuel, and to
show that those books were not written by Samuel,
nor till a great length of time after the death of
Samuel; and that they are, like all the former
books, anonymous, and without authority.
To be convinced that these books have been writ-
ten much later than the time of Samuel, and, con-
sequently, not by him, it is only necessary to read
the account which the writer gives of Saul going
to seek his father's asses, and of his interview with
Samuel, of whom Saul went to inquire about those
lost asses, as foolish people now-a-days go to a con-
jurer to inquire after lost things.
The writer, in relating the 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
PART II.] AGE OF REASON. 107
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, chapter ix. is called the seer; and it
is by this term that Saul inquires after him, verse
11, “And as they (Saul and his servant) went up
the hill to the city, they found young maidens go-
ing 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 with-
out knowing him, and said unto him, verse 18,
“Tell me, I pray thee, where the seer's house
is ? and Samuel answered Saul and said, I am the
peer.”
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 ne-
cessary, in order to make the story understood, to
explain the terms in which these questions and an-
swers are spoken; and he does this in the 9th
verse, where he says, “before-time, in Israel, when
a man went to inquire 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
that book is without authenticity.
But if we go further into those books, the evi-
dence is still more positive that Samuel is not the
writer of them; for they relate things that did not
happen till several years after the death of Samuel.
Samuel died before Saul; for the 1st Samuel,
chapter xxviii. tells, that Saul and the witch of
Endor conjured Samuel up after he was dead;
yet the history of the matters contained in those
[08 AGE OF REAS UN, |PART II
books is extended through the remaining part of
Saul’s life, and to the latter end of the life of Da-
vid, who succeeded Saul. The account of the
death and burial of Samuel (a thing which he
could not write himself) is related in the 25th
chapter of the first book of Samuel; and the chro-
nology affixed to this chapter makes this to be 1060
years before Christ; yet the history of this first
book is brought down to 1056 years before Christ;
that is, to the death of Saul, which was not till
four years after the death of Samuel.
The second book of Samuel begins with an ac-
count 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 per-
sons are affixed, as being the author of those books,
and which the church, styling itself the Christian
church, have imposed upon the world as the writ-
ing of Moses, Joshua, and Samuel; and I have de-
tected 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 au-
thors are 2 What shadow of pretence have ye now
to produce, for continuing the blasphemous fraud?
PART II.] AGE OF REASON. 109
What have ye still to offer against the pure and
moral religion of Deism, in support of your system
of falsehood, idolatry, and pretended revelation ?
Had the cruel and murderous orders, with which
the Bible is filled, and the numberless torturing
executions of men, women, and children, in conse-
quence 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
honor of your Creator, that ye listen to the horrid
tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indif.
ference. 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
tranquilize the minds of millions; it will free them
from all those hard thoughts of the Almighty,
which priest-craft and the Bible has infused into
their minds, and which stood in everlasting oppo-
sition to all their ideas of his moral justice and be-
nevolence.
I come now to the two books of Kings, and the
two books of Chronicles. Those books are alto-
gether historical, and are chiefly confined to the
lives and actions of the Jewish kings, who, in gen-
eral, were a parcel of rascals; but these are mat-
ters with which we have no more concern, than we
have with the Roman emperors, or Homer's account
of the Trojan war. Besides which, as those works
are anonymous, and as we know nothing of the
writer, or of his character, it is impossible for us to
know what degree of credit to give to the matters
related therein. Like all other ancient histories,
they appear to be a jumble of fable and of fact,
and of probable and of improbable things; but
which, distance of time and place, and change of
110 A GE OF REASON. [PART II.
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 confu-
sion, 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 Chronolo-
gy, was 1015 years before Christ; and the second
book ends 588 years before Christ, being a little
after the reign of Zedekiah, whom Nebuchadnez-
zar, after taking Jerusalem, and conquering the
Jews, carried captive to Babylon. The two books
include a space of 427 years.
The two books of Chronicles are a history of the
same time, 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 gene-
alogy from Adam to Saul, which takes up the first
nine chapters) begins with the reign of David ; and
the last book ends, as in the last book of Kings,
soon after the reign of Zedekiah, about 588 years
before Christ. The two last verses of the last
chapter bring the history 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 styled kings of Ju-
dah, and of nineteen, who are styled kings of Is.
rael; 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.
Those two books are little more than a history
T A RT II. At; E OF REASON, | 1)
of assassinations, treachery, and wars. The cruel-
lies 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 the tenth chapter of
the second book of Kings, an account is given of
two baskets full of children’s heads, 70 in nutmber,
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 Manaham, one of the kings of Israel who had
murdered Shallum, who had reigned but one
month, it is said, 2 Rings, chapter xv. verse 16,
that Manaham smote the city of Tiphsah, because
they opened not the city to him, and all the women
that were therein that were with child they ripped
117).
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 wicked-
ness. 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 up.
| 12 AGE OF REASON. [PART II
on 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
basemess of their own characters; and which Christ-
ian 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 sev-
eral 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 his-
tory sometimes contradicts itself; for example, in
the second book of Kings, chapter i. verse 8, 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 chapter
viii. verse 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, be.
gan 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 begen to reign in the fifth year of Joram
of Judah.
Several of the most extraordinary matters related
in one history, as having happened during the reign
of such and such of their kings, are not to be found
in the other, in relating the reign of the same king:
for example, the two first rival kings, after the death
of Solomon, were Rehoboam and Jeroboam ; and’
in 1 Kings, chapters 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, chapter xiii. verse 2. “O
PART VI.j AGE OF REASON. 113
altar! altar! thus saith the Lord ; Behold, a child
shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by
name, and upon thee shall he offer the priests of
the high places, and burn incense upon thee, and
men's boaes shall be burnt upon thee.” Verse 3,
“And it came to pass, when king Jeroboam heard
the saying of the man of God, which had cried
against the altar in Bethel, that he put forth his
hand from the altar, saying, Lay hold on him; and
his hand which he put out against him dried up, so
that he could not pull it in again to him.”
One would think that such an extraordinary case
as this, (which is spoken of as a judgment) happen-
ing 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, been
recorded in both histories. But though men in
latter times have believed all that the prophets have
said unto them, it does not appear that these pro-
phets or historians believed each other; they knew
*ach other too well.
A long account also is given in Kings about Eli-
jah. It runs through several chapters. and con-
cludes with telling, 2 Kings, chapter ii. verse 11,
“And it came to pass, as they (Elijah and Elisha.
still went on, and talked, that behold, there appear-
*d a chariot of fire and horses of fire, and parted
them both asunder, and Elijah went up by a whirl.
wind into heaven.” Hum ; this the author of Chron-
icles, miraculous as the story is, makes no mention
of though he mentions Elijah by name; neitherſ
does he say any thing of the story related in the
second chapter of the same book of Kings, of a
parcel of children calling Elisha bald head, bald
head; and that this man of God, verse 24, turne
back, and looked upon them, and cursed them in the
name of the Lord; and there came forth two she
Lears out of the wood, and tare forty and two child-
ren of them.” He also passes over in silence the

T 14 AGE of REASON. LPART 11
story told, 2 Kings, chapter 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, (verse 21,) “touched
the bones of Elisha, and he (the dead man) revived,
and stood upon his feet.” The story does not tell
us whether they buried the man notwithstanding he
revived and stood upon his feet, or drew him up
again. Upon all these stories, the writer of Chroni-
cles is as silent as any writer of the present day,
who did not choose to be accused of lying, or at
least of romancing, would be about stories of the
same kind.
But, however these two historians may differ
from each other, with respect to the tales related by
either, they are silent alike with respect to those
men styled prophets, whose writings fill up the lat-
ter part of the Bible. Isaiah, who lived in the time
of Hezekiah, is mentioned in Kings, and again in
Chronicles, when these historians are speaking of
that reign; but, except in one or two instances at
most, and those very slightly, none of the rest are
so much as spoken of, or even their existence hint-
ed at; though, according to the Bible chronology,
they lived within the time those histories were writ-
ten ; 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
these histories should say any thing about them?
The history in the books of Kings and Chron-
icles is brought forward, as I have already said, to
the year 588 before Christ; it will, therefore, be
proper to examine, which of these prophets lived
before that period.
Here follows a table of all the prophets, with the
times in which they lived before Christ, accordin
to the Chronology, affixed to the first chapter º
PART II, AGE OF REASON, 115
each of the books of the prophets and, also of
the number of years they lived before the books of
Kings and Chronicles were written.
Table of the Prophets, with the time in which the
lived before Christ, and also before the books of
Kings and Chronicles were written.
Years Years before
Wames. before| Kings and Obsen vations
Christ| Chronicles.
Isaiah - . . 760 172 mentioned.
Jeremiah . . . . . 629 41 see the note.*
Ezekiel - - - 595 7 not mentioned
Daniel . . . . . 607 19 not mentioned
Hosea . . . . 785 97 not mentioned.
Joel . . . . . 800 212 not mentioned.
Amos . . . . 789 199 not mentioned.
Obadiah . . . . 789 199 not mentioned.
Jonah 862 274 see the note.t
Micah . . . . 750 162 not mentioned
Nahum . . . . 713 125 not mentioned.
Habakkuk . . . . 620 38 not mentioned.
Zephaniah . . . 630 42 not mentioned.
}* , ) after the º
Zachariah ear 588
Malachi \ W*
This table is either not very honorable for the
Bible historians, or not very honorable for the Bi-
ble prophets; and I leave to priests and commen-
tators, who are very learned in little things, to set-
tle the point of etiquette between the two; and to
assign a reason why the authors of Kings antſ
Chronicles have treated those prophets, whom in
*Mentioned only in the last chapter of Chronicles.
f In 2 Kings, chapter xiv. verse 25, the name of Jonan
is mentioned on account of the restoration of a tract cf
land by Jeroboam; but nothing further is said of him, not
is any allusion made to the book of Jonah, nor to his ex-
pedition to Ninevah, nor to his encounter with the whale
R6 AGE OF REASON |PART 11.
the former part of the Age of Reason, I have con.
sidered as poets, with as much degrading silence as
any historian of the present day would treat Peter
Pindar.
I have one 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 the 36th chapter, verse
31, which evidently refers to a time, after that kings
began to reign over the children of Israel; and 1
'have shown that as this verse is verbatim the same
as in Chronicles, chapter i. verse 43, where it stands
consistently with the order of history, which in
Genesis it does not, that the verse in Genesis, and
a great part of the 36th chapter, have been taken
from Chronicles; and that the book of Genesis,
though it is placed first in the Bible, and ascribed
to Moses, has been manufactured by some unknown
person, after the book of Chronicles was written,
which was not until at least eight hundred and sixty
years after the time of Moses.
The evidence I proceed by to substantiate this is
regular, and has in it but two stages First, as I
have already stated, that the passage in Genesis re-
fers itself for time to Chronicles; secondly, that the
book of Chronicles, to which this passage refers
itself, was not begun to be written until at least eight
hundred and sixty years after the time of Moses.
To prove this, we have only to look into the thir-
teenth verse of the third chapter of the first book
of Chronicles, where the writer, in giving the ge-
nealogy of the descendants of David, mentions
Zedekiah ; and it was in the time of Zedekiah, that
Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, 588 years
before Christ, and, consequently, more than 860
years aſter Moses. Those who have superstitiously
boasted of the antiquity of the Bible, and particu-
larly of the books ascribed to Moses, have done it
PART II.] AGE OF REASON. 117
without examination, and without any authority
than that of one credulous man telling it to an-
other; 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
tending to inspire immoral and mischievous no-
tions of honor; and with respect to AEsop, though
the moral is in general just, the fable is often cruel;
and the the cruelty of the fable does more injury to
the heart, especially in a child, than the moral does
good to the judgment.
Having now dismissed Kings and Chronicles, I
come to the next in course, the book of Ezra.
As one proof, among others, I shall produce, to
show the disorder in which this pretended word of
God, the Bible, has been put together, and the un
certainty of who the authors were, we have only to
look at the three first verses in Ezra, and the two
last in Chronicles; for by what kind of cutting and
shuffling has it been that the three first verses in
Ezra should be the two last verses in Chronicles,
or that the two last verses in Chronicles should be
the three first in Ezra P. Either the authors did not
know their own works, or the compilers did not
know the authors.
Two last verses of Three first verses of
Chronicles. Ezra.
Verse 22. Now in the | Verse 1. Now in the first
first year of Cyrus, king of |year of Cyrus, king of Per-
Persit, that the word of the sia, that the word of the
Lord, spoken by the mouth Lord, by the mouth of Jer-
of Jeremiah, might be ac-|emiah, might be fulfilled, the
complished, the Lord stirred Lord stirred up the spirit of
up the spirit of Cyrus, king |Cyrus, king of Persia, that
of Persia, that he made a |he made a proclamation
| 18
[PART II
AGE OF REASON.
proclamation throughout all
his kingdom, and put it also
in writing, saying,
23. Thus saith Cyrus,
king of Persia, all the king-
doms of the earth hath the
Lord God of heaven given
me; and he hath charged me
to build him an house in Je-
rusalem, which is in Judah.
Who is there among you of
all his people 2 the Lord his
God be with him, and let
throughout all his kingdom,
and put it also into 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. 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 Jerusa
lem.
The last verse in Chronicles is broken abruptly,
and ends in the middle of a 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.*
* I observed, as I passed along, several broken and
senseless passages in the Bible, without thinking them of
consequence enough to be introduced in the body of the
work; such as that, I Samuel, chapter xiii. verse 1, where
it is said, “Saul reigned one year; and when he had reign-
ed 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
year; and it is, besides, mere absurdity to say he reigned
one year, when the very next phrase says he had reigned
Papt il. AGE OF REASON. 119
The only thing that has any appearance of cer-
two; or if he had reigned two, it was impossible not to
have reigned one.
Another instance occurs in Joshua, chapter v. where the
writer tells us a story of an angel (for such the table of
contents at the head of the chapter calls him,) appearing
unto Joshua; and the story ends abruptly, and without
any conclusion. The story is as follows:–Verse 13,
“And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that
he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold there stood a
man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand;
and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou
for us, or for our adversaries 2 ” Verse 14, “And he
said, Nay; but as the captain of the hosts of the Lord am
I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth,
and did worship, and said unto him, What saith my Lord
unto his servant?” Verse 15, “And the captain of the
Lord’s host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy
foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And
Joshua did so.” And what then 2 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 humorist, in ridicule of
Joshua’s pretended mission from God; and the compilers
of the Bible, not perceiving the design of the story, have
told it as a serious matter. As a story of humor and
ridicule, it has a great deal of point; for it pompously in-
troduces 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.” Exodus, chapter
xxxii. verse 1
120 A GE OF REASON, [PART II
tainty, in the book of Ezra, is the time in which it
was written, which was immediately after the re.
turn of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity,
about 536 years before Christ. Ezra (who, accord-
ing to the Jewish commentators, is the same person
as is called Esdras in the Apocrypha) was one of
the persons who returned, and who, it is probable,
wrote the account of that affair. Nehemiah, whose
book follows next to Ezra, was another of the re-
turned 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 persons, unless it be to the
Jews, as a part of the history of their nation; and
there is just as much of the word of God in those
books as there is in any of the histories of France,
or Rapin's History of England, or the history of
any other country.
But even in matters of historical record, neither
of those writers are to be depended upon. In the
second chapter of Ezra, the writer gives a list of
the tribes and families, and of the precise number
of souls of each that returned from Babylon to Je-
rusalem; and this enrolment of the persons so re-
turned, 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 under-
taking.
The writer begins his enrolment in the following
manner:—chapter ii. verse 3, “The children of
Parosh, two thousand one hundred seventy and
four.” Verse 4, “The children of Shephatiah,
three hundred seventy and two.” And in this
amanner 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 three score.
But whoever will take the trouble of casting up
the several particulars. will find that the total is but
PART II.] AGE OF REASON, 12)
29,818; so that the error is 12,542.* What cer-
tainty, then, can there be in the Bible for any
thing?
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, chapter
vii. verse 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 the 66th verse,
Nehemiah makes a total, and says, as Ezra had
said, “The whole congregation together was forty
and two thousand three hundred and three score.”
* Particulars of the Families from the second chap-
ter of Ezra.
Chapter II. Brought forward 15,911
Verse 3 - - - 2172 Verse 24 - - - 42
4 - - - 372 25 - - - 743
5 - - - 775 26 - - - 621
6 - - - 281.2 ° 27 - - - 122
7 - - - 1254 28 - - - 223
8 - - - 945 29 - - - 52
9 - - - 760 30 - - - 156
10 - - 642 31 - - - 1254
11 - - - 623 32 - - - 320
12 - - - 1222 33 - - - 725
13 - - - 666 34 - - - 345
14 - - - 2056 35 - - - 3630
15 - - - 454 36 - - - 973
16 - - - 98 37 - - - 1052
17 - - - 323 38 - - - 1247
18 - - - 112 39 - - - 1017
19 - - - 223 40 - - - 74
20 - - - 95 41 - - - 128
21 - - - 123 42 - - - 139
22 - - - 56 58 - - - 392
23 - - - 128 60 - - - 652
Carried forward 15,911 | Total, 29,818
16
[22 A GE OF REASON, [PART 11,
But the particulars of this list makes 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 ne-
cessary. The next book in course is the book of
Esther. If Madam Esther thought it any honor to
offer herself as a kept mistress to Ahasuerus, or as
a rival to Queen Vashty, who had refused to come
to a drunken king, in the midst of a drunken com-
pany to be made a show of, (for the account says,
'hey 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 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 sub-
mission and involuntary discontent; and shows
man, as he sometimes is, more disposed to be
resigned than he is capable of being. Patience
has but a small share in the character of the
person of whom the book treats; on the contrary,
his grief is often impetuous; but he still endeavors
to keep a guard upon it, and seems determined, in
the midst of accumulating ills, to impose upon him-
self 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 com.
PART II.] AGE OF RIEASON. 123
mentators, Abenezra and Spinosa, upon this sub-
ject; they both say that the book of Job carries no
internal evidence of being a Hebrew book; that
the genius of the composition, and 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 charac-
ter represented under the name of Satan (which is
the first and only time this name is mentioned in
the Bible) does not correspond to any Hebrew idea;
and that the two convocations which the Deity is
supposed to have made of those, whom the poem
calls sons of God, and the familiarity which this
supposed Satan is stated to have with the Deity, are
in the same case.
It may also be observed, that the book shows
itself to be the production of a mind cultivated in
science, which the Jews, so far from being famous
for, were very ignorant of. The allusions to objects
of natural philosophy are frequent and strong, and
are of a different cast to any thing in the books
known to be Hebrew. The astronomical names,
Pleiades, Orion, and Arcturus, are Greek, and not
Hebrew names; and as 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.
That the Jews did translate the literary produc-
tions of the Gentile nations into the Hebrew lan-
guage, and mix them with their own, is not a mat-
ter of doubt; the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs
is an evidence of this; it is there said, verse 1, 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 prov-
erbs of Solomon, but of Lemuel ; and this Lemuel
was not one of the kings of Israel, nor of Judah,
124 AGE OF REASON. [PART II
but of some other tourntry, 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 un-
connected with every other book and chapter in the
Bible before it, and after it, it has all the circum-
stantial evidence of being originally a book of the
Gentiles.*
The Bible-makers, and those regulators of time,
the Chronologists, appear to have been at a loss
where to place, and how to dispose of the book of
Job; for it contains no one historical circumstance,
nor allusion to any, that might serve to determine
its place in the Bible. But it would not have an-
*The prayer known by the name of Jigur’s Prayer, in
the 30th chapter of Proverbs, immediately preceding the
proverbs of Lemuel, and which is the only sensible, well.
conceived, and well-expressed prayer in the Bible, has
much the appearance of being a prayer taken from the
Gentiles. The name of Agur occurs on no other occasion
than this; and he is introduced, together with the prayer
ascribed to him, in the same manner, and nearly in the
same words, that Lemuel and his proverbs are introduced
in the chapter that follows. The first verse of the 30th
chapter says, “The words of Agur, the son of Iakeh,
even the prophecy; ” here the word prophecy is used
with the same application it has in the following chapter
of Lemuel, unconnected with any thing of prediction
The prayer of Agur is in the 8th and 9th verses, “ Re-
move 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 any thing but
victory, vengeance, and riches.
ſ?ART II, A GE OF REASON, I'85
swered the purpose of these men to have inſormed
the world of their ignorance; and, therefore, they
have affixed it to the aera of 1520 years before
Christ, which is during the time the Israelites were
in Egypt, and for which they have just as much
authority and no more than I should have for say.
ing 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 re-
venge, but of whose profession of faith we are un
acquainted. It appears tº have been their custom
to personify both virtue and vice by statutes and
images, as is done now-a-days both by statuary and
by painting; but it does not follow from this, that
they worshiped them any more than we do. I pass
on to the Book of
Psalms, of which it is not necessary to make
much observation. Some of them are moral, and
others are very revengeful; and the greater part
relates to certain local circumstances of the Jewish
nation at the time they were written, with which
we have nothing to do. It is, however, an error or
an imposition to call them the Psalms of David :
they are a collection, as song books are now-a-days,
from different song writers, who lived at different
times. The 137th Psalm could not have been writ-
ten till more than 400 years after the time of Da-
vid, 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
126 A GE OF REASON, [PART II,
rivers of Babylon we sat down ; yea, we wept when
we remembered Zion. He hanged our harps upon
the willows, in the midst thereof; for there they that
carried us away captive, required of us a song, say-
wng, 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 inentioned) the general imposition
the world has been under, with respect to the au-
thors of the Bible. No regard has been paid to
time, place, and circumstance; and the names of
persons have been affixed to the several books,
which it was as impossible they should write, as
that a man should walk in procession at his own
funeral.
The Book of Proverbs. These, like the Psalms,
are a collection, and that from authors belonging to
other nations than those of the Jewish nation, as I
have shown in the observations upon the book of
Job; besides which, some of the proverbs ascribed
to Solomon, did not appear till two hundred and
fifty years after the death of Solomon ; for it is said
in the 1st verse of the 25th chapter, “These are also
proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king
of Judah, copied out.” It was two hundred and fifty
years from the time of Solomon to the time of
Hezekiah. When a man is famous, and his name
is abroad, he is made the putative father of things
he never said or did; and this, most probably, has
been the case with Solomon. It appears to have
been the fashion of that day to make proverbs, as
it is now to make jest-books, and father them upon
those who never saw them.
The Book of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, is also
ascribed to Solomon, and that with much reason,
if not with truth. It is written as the solitary re.
PART 11. AGE OF REASON, 127
flections of a worn-out debauchee, such as Solo-
mon 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 sentinent is obscure,
most probably by translation; but enough is left to
show they were strongly pointed in the original.”
From what is transmitted to us of the character of
Solomon, he was witty, ostentatious, dissolute, and
at last melancholy. He lived fast, and died, tired
of the world, at the age of fifty-eight years.
Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concu-
bines, are worse than none; and however it may
carry with it the appearance of heightened enjoy-
ment, it defeats all the felicity of affection, by leav-
ing 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 issunnecessary, 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

* Those that look out of the window shall be darkened
is en obscure figure in translation for loss of sight.
128 A GE OF REASON. ! PART II,
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 sci-
ence are in the creation, and are unchangeable, and
of divine origin.
Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will re-
collect 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 a hospital waiting for
death.
Solomon's Songs are amorous and foolish enough,
but which wrinkled fanaticism has called divine.
The compilers of the Bible have placed these songs
after the book of Ecclesiastes; and the chronolo-
gists have affixed to them the aera of 1014 years
before Christ, at which time Solomon, according to
the same chronology, was nineteen years of age,
and was then forming his seraglio of wives and
concubines. The Bible-makers and the chronolo-
gists should have managed this mutter 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 Soloinon
was then in the honey-moon of one thousand de-
baucheries.
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 solmebody
for him, Ecclesiastes, chapter ii. verse 8, “I got me
men singers, and women singers, (most probably to
sing those songs) and musical instruments of all
sorts; and behold (verse 11,) all was vanity and
vexation of spirit.” The compilers, however, nave
done their work but by halves; for as they have
PART II.] AGE OF REASON. 129
given is 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 end-
ing with Malachi; of which I have given you a
list, in the observations upon Chronicles. Of these
sixteen prophets, all of whom, except the three
last, lived within the time the books of Kings and
Chronicles were written; two only, Isaiah and Jer-
emiah, 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, ex-
cept a short historical part and a few sketches of
history in two or three of the first chapters, is one
continued incoherent, bombastical rant, full of ex-
travagant metaphor, without application, and desti-
tute of meaning; a school-boy would scarcely have
been excusable for writing such stuff; it is (at least
in the translation) that kind of composition and
false taste, that is properly called prose run mad.
The historical part begins at the 36th chapter,
and is continued to the end of the 39th chapter. It
relates to some matters that are said to have passed
during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah, at
which time Isaiah lived. This fragment of history
begins and ends abruptly; it has not the least con-
nection with the chapter that precedes it, nor with
that which follows it, nor with any cther in the
book. It is probable that Isaiah wrote this frag-
ment himself, because he was an actor in the cir-
cumstances 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
17
139 A GE OF REASON. [PART II.
of the first verse, the burden of Babylon; another,
the burden of Moab; another, the burden of Da-
mascus; another, the burden of Egypt; another,
the burden of the Desart of the Sea; another, the
burden of the Valley of Vision; as you would say,
the story of the knight of the burning mountain,
the story of Cinderella, or the children in the
wood, &c. &c.
I have already shown, in the instance of the two
last verses of Chronicles, and the three first in Ezra,
that the compilers of the Bible mixed and confound-
ed the writings of different authors with each other,
which alone, were there no other cause, is sufficient
to destroy the authenticity of any compilation, be-
cause 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 chap-
ter, and the beginning of the 45th, so far from hav-
ing been written by Isaiah, could only have been
written by some person who lived, at least, a hun-
dred and fifty years after Isaiah was dead.
These chapters are a compliment to Cyrus, who
permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem from the
Babylonian captivity, to rebuild Jerusalem and the
temple, as is stated in Ezra. The last verse of the
44th chapter, and the beginning of the 45th, are in
the following words:–“That saith of Cyrus, he is
my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure; even
saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt he built; and to the
temple, thy foundations shall be laid; thus saith the
Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand 1
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 shull not be shut: I will go
before thee,’ &c.
What audacity of church and priestly ignorance
it is to impose this book upon the world as the
wiiting of Isaiah, when Isaiah, according to their
PA RT II, A GE OF REASON. 13]
own chro ology, died soon after the death of Heze-
kiah, which was 698 years before Christ, and the
decree of Cyrus, in favor of the Jews returning to
Jerusalem, was, according to the same chronology,
536 years before Christ; which was a distance of
time between the two of 162 years. I do not sup-
pose 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 blaz- :
oned with the names of Christ and the church, that
the unwary reader might suck in the error before
he began to read.
Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,
Isaiah, chapter vii. verse 14, has been interpreted
to mean the person called Jesus Christ, and his
mother Mary, and has been echoed through christ-
endom 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 mark-
ed 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,
f
132 A GE OF HEASON, [PART 11,
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 mis-
application 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 capitol
of which was Jerusalem, and the other Israel) made
war jointly against Ahaz, king of Judah, and march-
ed their armies towards Jerusalem. Ahaz and his
people became alarmed, and the account says, verse
2, “Their hearts were moved as the trees of the wood
are moved with the wind.”
In this situation of things, Isaiah addresses him-
self 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 de-
clined doing; giving as a reason, that he would not
tempt the Lord; upon which Isaiah, who is the
speaker, says, verse 14, “Therefore the Lord him-
self shall give you a sign; behold a virgin shall con-
ceive, 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 should know to refuse the evil, and
choose the good.
Isaiah having committed himself thus far, it be-
came necessary to him, in order to avoid the impu.
tation of being a fºlse prophet, and the consequenc3
PART II.] AGE OF REASON. 133 -
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 before-
hand; for I do not suppose that the prophets of that
Jay were any more to be trusted than the priests of
this: be that however as it may, he says in the next
chapter, verse 2, “And I took unto me faithful wit-
messes to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah
the son of Jeberechiah, and I went unto the pro-
phetess, and she conceived and bare a son.”
Here, then, is the whole story, foolish as it is, of
“his child and this virgin ; and it is upon the bare-
faced perversion of this story, that the book of
Matthew, and the impudence and sordid interests
of priests in latter 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, eugaged in marriage, and
afterwards married, whom they call a virgin, 700
years after this foolish story was told; a theory
which, speaking for myself, I hesitate not to be-
lieve, and to say, is as fabulous and as false as God
is true.*
But to show the imposition and falsehood of
Isaiah, we have only to attend to the sequel of this
story; which, though it is passed over in silence in
the book of Isaiah, is related in the 28th chapter
of the second Chronicles; and which is, that in-
stead of these two kings failing in their attempt
against Ahaz, king of Judah, as Isaiah had pre-

* In the 14th verse of the vii. chapter, it is said, that
the child should be called Immanuel; but this name was
not given to either of the children, otherwise than as a
character, which the word signifies. That of the pro-
phetess was called Maher-shalal-hash-baz, and that of
Atary was called Jesus.
134 A.G. E. O'F' RE, ASON, LPART in
tended to foretel in the name of the Lord, they suc.
cceded; Ahaz was defeated and destroyed; a hun-
dred 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 false-
hoods 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 Jerusalein.
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, chapter xviii.
he guards his prognostications in such a crafty man-
ner, as always to leave himself a door to escape by,
in case the event should be contrary to what he had
predicted.
In the 7th and 8th verses of that chapter, he
unakes 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 de-
stroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pro-
nounced, 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
ood where with I said I would benefit them.”
i. is a proviso against the other side; and, ac-
cording to this plan of prophesying, a prophet could
never be wrong, however mistaken the Almighty
might be. This sort of absurd subterfuge, and this
PART II. Aſ a F O F R. EASON 135
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 me
cessary 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 call-
ed 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 contradic-
tion 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 ap-
pearance of being a medley of unconnected anec-
dotes, 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 per-
sons and things of the present day, were put to-
gether without date, order, or explanation. I will
give two or three examples of this kind.
It appears, from the account of the 37th chapter,
that the army of Nebuchadnezzar, which is called
the army of the Chaldeans, had besieged Jerusalem
some time; and on their hearing that the army of
Pharaoh, of Egypt, was marching against them,
they raised the siege, and retreated for a time. It
may here be proper to mention, in order to under-
stand this confused history, that Nebuchadnezzar
had besieged and taken Jerusalem, during the reign
of Jehoiakim, the predecessor of Zedekiah ; and
that it was Nebuchadnezzar who had made Zede-
kiah king, or rather vice-roy; 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 Jere.
136 AGE OF RE, AS ON. [PART iſ
miah, of being a traitor, and in the interest of Nebu.
chadnezzar; whom Jeremiah calls, in the 43d chap-
ter, verse 10, the servant of God.
The 11th verse of this chapter (the 37th,) says,
“And it came to pass, that, when the army of the
Chaldeans was broken up from Jerusalem, for fear
of Pharoah's army, that Jeremiah went forth out of
Jerusalem, to go (as this account states,) into the
land of Benjamin, to separate himself thence in the
midst of the people; and when he was in the gate
of Benjamin, a captain of the ward was there,
whose name was Irijah ; and he took Jeremiah the
prophet, saying, Thou fallest away to the Chal
deans; then Jeremiah said, It is false, I fall not
away to the Chaldeans. Jeremiah being thus stop-
ped and accused, was, after being examined, com-
mitted 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 im-
prisonment of Jeremiah, which has no connection
with this account, but ascribes his imprisonment to
another circumstance, and for which we must go
back to the 21st chapter. It is there stated, verse
1, that Zedekiah sent Pashur, the son of Malchiah,
and Zephaniah, the son of Maaseiah the priest, to
Jeremiah, to inquire of him concerning Nebuchad-
nezzar, whose army was then before Jerusalem;
and Jeremiah said to them, verse 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 inter-
view and conference breaks off abruptly at the end
of the 10th verse of the 21st chapter; and such is
the disorder of this book, that we have to pass over
sixteen chapters, upon various subjects, in order to
PART II.] A GE OF REA S () N. 137
come at the continuation and event of this confer-
ence; and this brings us to the first verse of the
38th chapter, as I have just mentioned.
The 38th chapter opens with saying, “Then
Shephatiah, the son of Mattan; Gedaliah, the son
of Pashur; and Juhal, the son of Shelemiah; and
Pashur, the son of Malchiah; (here are more per-
sons mentioned than in the 21st chapter) heard the
words that Jeremiah spoke unto the people, saying,
Thus saith the Lord, He that remaineth in this city,
shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pes-
tilence; 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) there-
fore, (say they to Zedekiah,) we beseech thee, let
us put this man to death, for thus he weakeneth the
hands of the men of war that remain in this city, and
the hands of all the people in speaking such words
unto them; for this man seeketh not the welfare of the
people, but the hurt:” and at the 6th verse it is said,
“Then they took Jeremiah, and put him into a
dungeon of Malchiah.”
These two accounts are different and contradict-
ory. 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 con-
ferees.*

* I observed two chapters, 16th and 17th, in the first
book of Samuel, that contradict each other with respect to
David, and the manner he became acquainted with Saul;
as the 37th and 38th chapters of the book of Jeremiah
contradict each other with respect to the cause of Jere.
miah's imprisonment.
In the 16th chapter of Samuel, it is said that an evil
spirit of God troubled Saul, and that his servants advised
him (as a remedy) “to seek out a man who was a cun
18
138 AGE OF REASON. [PART II.
In the next chapter (the 39th) we have another
instance of the disordered state of this book: for
notwithstanding the siege of the city, by Nebuchad-
nezzar, has been the subject of several of the pre-
ceeding chapters, particularly the 37th and 38th ;
the 39th chapter begins as if not a word had been
said upon the subject; and as if the reader was to
be informed of every particular respecting it; for it
ning player upon the harp.” And Saul said, verse 17,
“Provide now a man that can play well, and bring him
unto 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 armor-bearer;
and when the evil Spirit of 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 (17) gives an account, all different
to this, of the manner that Saul and David became ac-
quainted. Here it is ascribed to David’s encounter with
Goliah, when David was sent by his father to carry pro-
vision 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, O king, I cannot tell.
And the king said, Inquire thon whose son the stripling is.
And as David returned from the slaughter of the Philis-
tine, 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 2 And David
answered, “I am the son of thy servant Jesse, the Beth-
lehemite.” 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
bven for criticism.
PART II.] A GE OF REASON 139
begins with saying, verse 1, “In the nunth year of
Zedekiah, king of Judah, wr, the tenth month, came
Webuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and all his army,
against Jerusalem, and besieged it,” &c. &c.
But the instance in the last chapter (the 52d) is
still more glaring; for though the story has been
told over and over again, this chapter still supposes
the reader not to know any thing of it, for it begins
by saying, verse 1, “Zedekiah was one and twenty
years old when he began to reign, and he reigned
eleven years in Jerusalem, and his mother's name was
Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah, (verse
4,) and it came to pass, in the ninth year of his reign,
in the tenth month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Bab-
!ylon, came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem,
and pitched against it, and built forts against
it,” &c. &c.
It is not possible that any one man, and more
particularly Jeremiah, could have been the writer
of this book. The errors are such as could not
have been committed by any person sitting down
to compose a work. Were I, or any other man, to
write in such a disordered manner, nobody would
read what was written; and every body would sup-
pose that the writer was in a state of insanity. The
only way, therefore, to account for this disorder, is,
that the book is a medley of detached unauthenti-
cated 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 the 38th chapter, that when Jere-
miah 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, (verse 17,) thou will assuredly

[40 A GE OF REASON, [PART II.
go forth unto the king of Babylon's princes, then thy
soul shall live,” &c. Zedekiah was apprehensive
that what passed at this conſerence should be
known ; and he said to Jeremiah, (verse 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 wo
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 Jer-
emiah, and asked him, and he told them according to
all the words the king had commanded.” Thus, the
man of God, as he is called, could tell a lie, or very
strongly prevaricate, when he supposed it would
answer his purpose; for certainly he did not go to
Zedekiah to make his supplication, neither did he
make it; he went because he was sent for, and he
employed that opportunity to advise Zedekiah to
surrender himself to Nebuchadnezzar.
In the 34th chapter is a prophecy of Jeremiah to
Zedekiah, in these words, (verse 2) “Thus saith the
Lord, Behold I will give this city into the hands of
the king of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire;
and thou shalt not escape out of his hand, but that
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, kwng of
Judah, thus saith the Lord, Thou shalt not die by the
sword, but thou shalt die in peace; and with the burn-
ings of thy fathers, the fºrmer kings that were before
thee, so shall they burn odors for thee, and they will
lament thee, saying, Ah, Lord; for I have pronounced
the word, saith the Lord.”
Now, instead of Zedekiah beholding the eyes of
PART II.] A GE OF RIE A SON U4:1
the king of Babylon, and speaking with him mouth
to mouth, and dying in peace, and with the burn.
ing of odors, as at the funeral of his fathers (as
Jeremiah had declared the Lord himself had pro-
nounced) the reverse, according to the 52d chapter,
was the case; it is there said, (verse 10) “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 Baby-
lon, and put him in prison till the day of his death.”
What, then, can we say of these prophets, but that
they are imposters and liars P -
As for Jeremiah, he experienced none of those
evils. He was taken into favor by Nebuchadnez-
zar, who gave him in charge to the captain of the
guard, (chapter xxxix. verse 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.” Jere-
miah joined himself afterwards to Nebuchadnez-
zar, 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
of Chronicles, which the others are not. The re-
mainder 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 pro-
phets.
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 the Jew-
ish poets have been foolishly erected into what are
now called prophecies. I am sufficiently justified
in this opinion, not only because the books called
142 A GE OF F.Y. A SON. [PART II.
the profmecies are written in poetical language, but
because there is no word in the Bible, except it be
the word prophet, that describes what we mean by
a poet. I have also said that the word signifies a
performer upon musical instruments, of which I
have given some instances; such as that of a com-
pany of prophets prophesying with psalteries, with
tabrets, with pipes, with harps, &c., and that Saul
prophesied with them, 1 Samuel, chapter x. verse
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 in-
sight into concealed things, was not a prophet but
a seer,” (1 Samuel, chapter ix. verse 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 mean-
ing 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
*I know not what is the Hebrew word that corresponds
to the word ser in English; but I observe it is translated
into French by La Voyant, from the verb voir to see; and
which means the person who sees, or the seer,
PART II.] AGE OF REASON, 143
they were going to undertake, or of ally circum-
stance then pending, or of any difficulty they were
then in ; al. 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 for-
tune-telling; such as casting nativities, predicting
riches, fortunate or unfortunate marriages, conjur-
ing for lost goods, &c.; 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—mu-
sical–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, impos-
ters, &c.
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 curs-
ed, 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, hy a prophet of the party of
Israel, who said unto him, (1 Kings, chap. xiii.)
144 AGE OF REASON. [PART II
“...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.” This event, however, according to the story,
is, that the prophet of Judah rever got back to Ju-
dah, for he was found dead on the road, by the con-
trivance of the prophet of Israel, who, no doubt,
was called a true prophet by his own party, and the
prophet of Judah a lying prophet.
In the third chapter of the second of Kings, a
story is related of prophesying or conjuring, that
shows, in several particulars, the character of a
prophet. Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, and 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 Jelloshaphat
said, “Is there not here a prophet of the Lord, that we
may inquire of the Lord by him 2 and one of the ser-
vants of the king of Israel said, here is Elisha.
(Elisha was of the party of Judah.) .ſind Jehosha-
hat, 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. Way but, said the king
of Israel, the Lord hath called these three kings to-
gether, to deliver them into the hand 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,
PART II.] A GE OF REASON, 145
were it not that I regard 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 have now to see the performance, or manner
of prophesying. &
erse 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 conjuror. 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 thern, 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 de-
voured. We are to suppose that those children
were of the party of Israel; but as those who will
curse will lie, there is just as much credit to be
given to this story of Elisha's two she-bears as
there is to that of the Dragon of Wantley, of whom
it is said:—
Poor children three devoured he,
That could not with him grapple;
And at one sup he 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
ſ46 AGE OF REASON, LPART Ik
Ezekiel and Daniel; and the first question upon
those books, as upon all the others, is, are they gen.
uine? that is, were they written by Ezekiel and
Daniel P -
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 follow: 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, &c. &c., prove
they were not written by Moses, Joshua, Sarm-
uel, &c.
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 commence-
ment of the Jewish monarchy.
Thirdly, Because the manner in which the books
ascribed to Ezekiel and Daniel are written, agrees
with the condition these men were in at the time of
writing them.
Had the numerous commentators and priests,
who have foolishly employed or wasted their time
in pretending to expound and unriddle those books,
been carried in captivity, as Ezekiel and Daniel
were, it would have greatly improved their intel.
lects, 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 them-
selves 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 drea'ms
FA6 r II.]. A GE OF REASON 147
and visions; and this difference arose from the situ.
ation 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 in-
formation to each other, and all their political pro-
jects 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 any body 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 Jeru-
salem; and as it is natural to suppose that men, in
the situation of Ezekiel and Daniel, would be med-
itating the recovery of their country, and their own
deliverance, it is reasonable to suppose, that the ac-
counts 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 non-
sense; or at least, a fanciful way of wearing off the
wearisomeness of captivity; but the presumption is,
they were the former.
Ezekiel begins his books by speaking of a vision
of cherubims, and of a wheel within a wheel, which
he says he saw by the river Chebar, in the land of
his captivity. Is it not reasonable to suppose, that
by the cherubims he meant the temple at Jerusa-
lem, where they had figures of cherubims? and by
| 48 A GE OF REASON, [PART In
a wheel within a wheel, (which, as a figure, has
always been understood to signify political contri-
wance) the project or means of recovering Jerusa-
lem P In the latter part of this book, he supposes
himself transported to Jerusalem, and irto the ten-
ple: and he refers back to the vision on the river
Chebar, and says, (chapter xliii. verse 3) that this
last vision was like the vision on the river Chebar,
which indicates, that those pretended dreams and
visions had for their object the recovery of Jerusa-
lem, and nothing further.
As to the romantic interpretations and applica-
tions, 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 any thing can be more alsurd, than to
suppose that men situated as Ezekiel and Daniel
were, whose country was over-run, and in the pos-
session of the enemy, all their friends and relations
in captivity abroad, or in slavery at honie, or mas-
sacred, 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 is more natural, than that they should
meditate the recovery of Jerusalem, and their own
deliverance; and that this was the sole object of all
i he obscure and apparently frantic writings contain-
ed in those books.
In this sense, the mode of writing used in those
two books being forced by necessity, and not adopt-
ed by choice, is not irrational ; but if we are to use
PA at 11.] AGE OF REASON. 140
the books as prophecies, they are false. In the
29th chapter of Ezekiel, speaking of Egypt, it is
said, (verse 11,) No foot of man should pass through
it, no foot of beast should 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 any
thing.
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 origi-
nally Hebrew, or only translations from the books
of the Gentiles into Hebrew ; and as the book of
Jonah, so far from treating of the affairs of the
Jews, says nothing upon that subject, but treats
altogether of the Gentiles, it is more probable that
it is a book of the Gentiles than of the Jews; and
that it has been written as a fable to expose the
nonsense and satirise the vicious and malignant
character of a Bible prophet, or a predicting priest.
Jonah is represented, first, as a disobedient pro-
phet, 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 him-
self where God could not find him. The vessel is
overtaken by a storin at sea; and the mariners, ałł
of whom are Gentiles, believing it to be a judg-
ment, 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 mer

150 AGE OF REASON [PART II
chandise overboard, to lighten the vessel, while
Jonah, like a stupid fellow, was fast asleep in the
hold.
After the lot had designated Jonah to be the oſ-
fender, they questioned him to know who and what
he was ; and he told them he was a Hebrew ; and
the story implies, that he confessed himself to be
guilty But these Gentiles, instead of sacrificing
him at once, without pity or mercy, as a company
of Bible prophets or priests would have done by a
Gentile in the same case, and as it is related Sam-
uel had done by Agag, and Moses by the women
and children ; they endeavored to save him, though
at the risk of their own lives; for the account says,
“...Nevertheless, (that is, though Jonah was a Jew,
and a foreigner, and the cause of all their misfor-
tune, 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
wpon us innocent blood; for thou, O Lord, has 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 Beung,
and that they were not idolators, as the Jews repre-
sented them to be. But the storm still continuing,
and the danger increasing, they put the fate of the
lot into execution, and cast Jonah into the sea;
where, according to the story, a great fish swallow-
ed 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-un
PART II.] A GE OF REAS I, IV. 15A
prayer, taken from various parts of the Psalms,
without any connection or consistency, and adapted
to the distress, but not at all to the condition, that
Jonah was in. It is such a prayer as a Gentile,
who might know something of the Psalms, could
copy out for him. This circumstance alone, were
there no other, is sufficient to indicate that the
whole is a made-up story. The prayer, however,
is supposed to have answered the purpose, and the
story goes on (taking up at the same time the cant
language of a Bible prophet,) saying, “The Lord
spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon
dry land.”
Jonah then received a second mission to Nine-
vah, 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 execu-
tion of his mission; but, instead of this, he enters
the city with denunciation and malediction, in his
mouth, crying, “Yet forty days, and Ninevah shall
be overthrown.”
We have now to consider this supposed mission-
ary 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 the 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 Nine-
vah. . It came to pass, however, as the story relates,
that the Ninevites reformed, and that God, accord-
ing to the Bible phrase, repented him of the evil he
152 AGE OF RFA SQN. | PART In
had said he would do unto them, and did it not.
This, saith the first verse of the last chapter, dis.
pleased Jonah ecceedingly, and he was very airgry
flis obdurate heart would rather that all Ninevah
Rhould 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 pro-
pinct St.l! more, a gourd is made to grow up in the
night, that promiseth him an agreeable shelter from
the heat of the sun, in the place to which he is re
tired; and the next morning it dies.
IIere 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 2 Jind Jonah
said, I do well to be angry even unto death: Then
said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for
which thou hast not labored, neither madest it to grow,
which came up in a night, and perished in a night;
and should not I spare Ninevah, that great city, in
which are more than three-score thousand persons,
that cannot discern between their right hand and their
left 2 33
Here is both the winding up of the satire, and the
moral of the fable. As a satire, it strikes against
the character of all the Bible-prophets, and against
all the indiscriminate judgments upon men, women,
and children, with which this lying book, the Bible,
is crowded; such as Noah's flood, the destruction
of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the extirpa-
tion of the Canaanites, even to sucking infants, and
women with child, because the same reflection, that
there are more than three-score 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 Cra-
ator for one nation more than for another.
pART II.] A GE U F REASON. W53
As a moral, it preaches against the malevolent
spirit of prediction; for as certainly as a man pre-
dicts ill, he becomes inclined to wish it. The pride
of having his judgment right, hardens his heart
till at last he beholds with satisfactioni, or sees with
disappointment, the accomplishment or failure of
his predictions. This book ends with the same
kind of strong and well-directed point against pro-
phets, prophecies, and indiscriminate judgments, as
the chapter that Benjamin Franklin made for the
Bible, about Abraham and the stranger ends against
the intolerant spirit of religious persecution. Thus
much for the book of Jonah.
Of the poetical parts of the Bible that are called
prophecies, I have spoken in the former part of the
•Age of Reason, and already in this: where I have
said that the word prophet is the Bible word for
poet; and that the flights and metaphors of those
poets, many of which have become obscure by the
lapse of time and the change of circumstances,
have been ridiculously erected into things called
prophecies, and applied to purposes the v ſers
never thought of. When a priest quotes any of
those passages, he unriddles it agreeaby to his own
views, and imposes that explanation upon his con-
gregation 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 expla-
nations.
There now remains only a few books, which they
call the books of the lesser prophets; and as I have
Already shown that the greater are imposters, 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 to-
gether.
I have now gone through the Bible, as a man
would go through a wood with an axe on his

20
154 A GE OF REASON. [PART 11
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.
THE NEW TESTAMENT.
The New Testament, they tell us, is founded up
on 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 exe-
cuted, even unjustly ; I see no reason for not be-
lieving 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
cómes under the common head of. It may be so
and what then 2 The probability, however, is, that
there were such persons, or at least such as resem-
bled 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 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, chapter i. verse 35,) that
KT II.] A GE OF REASON. 155

‘the Holy Ghost shall come wpon thee; and the power
of the Highest shall overshadow thee.” Notwith-
statiding which, Joseph afterwards marries her, co-
habits 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.”
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 Ju-
piter and Leda, or Jupiter and Europa, or any of
the amorous adventures of Jupiter; and shows, as
is already stated in the former part of the Age of
Reason, that the Christian faith is built upon the
heathen mythology.
As the historical parts of the New Testament, SO
far as concerns Jesus Christ, are confined to a very
short space of time, less than two years, and all
within the same country, and nearly to the same
spot, the discordance of time, place, and circum-
stance, which detects the fallacy of the books of
the Old Testament, and proves them to be impo-
sitions, 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 con-
troverted, first, that the agreement of all the parts of
* Mary, the supposed virgin mother of Jesus had severa.
other children, sons and daughters. See Matthew, chapte
xiii. verses 55, 56 -
156 AGE OF REASON, [PART II.
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 agree-
ment 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 geneal-
ogy 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 contra-
dict each other in every particular, it proves false-
hood absolutely. If Matthew speaks truth, Luke
speaks falsehood; and if Luke speaks truth, Mat-
thew 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 be-
lieved in any thing they say afterwards. Truth is
a uniform thing; and as to inspiration and revela-
tion, were we to admit it, it is impossible to sup-
pose 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 Test-
ament.
The book of Matthew gives, chapter i. verse 6, a
genealogy by name from David, up through Joseph,
the husband of Mary, to Christ; and makes there
to be twenty-eight generations. The book of Luke
gives also a genealogy by name from Christ, through
Joseph, the husband of Mary, down to David, and
makes there to be forty-three grnerations; besides
which, there are only the two names of David and
Joseph that are alike in the two lists. I here insert
PART II.] AGE OF REASU N. 157
both genealogical lists, and for the sake of perspi-
cuity and comparison, have placed them both in the
same direction, that is, from Joseph down to David.
Genealogy, according to Genealogy, according to
.Matth Luk
£10. ºf{8,
Christ Christ
2 Joseph 2 Joseph
3 Jacob 3 Heli
4 Matthan 4 Matthat
5 Fleazer 5 Levi
6 Eliud 6 Melchi
7 Achim 7 Janna
8 Sadoc 8 Joseph
9 Azor 9 Mattathias
10 Eliakim 10 Amos
I 1 Abiud 11 Naum
12 Zorobabel 12 Esli
13 Salathiel 13 Nagge
14 Jechonias 14 Maath
15 Josias 15 Mattathias
16 Amon 16 Semei
17 Manasses 17 Joseph
18 Ezekias 18 Juda
19 Achaz 19 Joanna
20 Joatham 20 Rhesa
21 Ozias 21 Zorobabel
22 Joram 22 Salathiel
23 Josaphat 23 Neri
24 Asa 24 Melchi
25 Abia 25 Addi
26 Roboam 26 Cosam
27 Solomon 27 Elmodam
28 Davidº 28 Er
* From the birth of David to the birth of Christ is up.
wards 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 neceseary
to divide I S0 by 27, which gives 40 years for each per
158 AGE OF REASON, [PART II
Genealogy, according to Genealogy, according to
Matthew, Ivke.
29 Jose
30 Eliezer
31 Jorim
32 Matthat
33 Levi
34 Simeon
35 Juda
36 Joseph
37 Jonan
38 Elakim
39 Melea
40 Menan
41 Mattatha
42 Nathan
43 David
Now, if these men, Matthew and Luke, set out
with a falsehood between them, (as these two ac-
counts show they do) in the very commencement
of their history of Jesus Christ, and of whom, and
of what he was, what authority (as I have before
asked) is there left for believing the strange things
they tell us afterwards? If they cannot be be-
lieved 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 be-
son. As the life-time of man was then but of the same
extent it is now, it is an absurdity to suppose that 27 fol-
lowing 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 21 years of age. So far from
this genealogy being a solemn truth, it is not even a rea-
sonable lie. The list of Luke gives about 26 years for
the average age, and this is too much.
PART II.] AGE OF REASON 159
iieve them in the other? If his natural be manu-
fastured, which it certainly is, why are not we 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 P 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 contradict-
ory tales?
The first question, however, upon the books of
the New Testament, as upon those of the Old, is,
are they genuine 2 Were they written by the per
sons to whom they are ascribed 2 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 his-
tory in these four books, the silence of one book
upon matters related in the other, and the disagree-
ment that is to be found among them, implies that
they are the production of some unconnected indi-
viduals, 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,
S
|60 AGE OF REASON. [PART II.
by other persons than those whose names they
ear.
The story of the angel announcing, what the
church calls, the ummaculate 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 2 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 incon-
Sistent 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 impos-
sibility 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 any thing
about it. Had such a circumstance been true, the
universality of it must have made it known to all
the writers; and the thing would have been too
striking to have been omitted by any. This writer
tells us, that Jesus escaped this slaughter, because
Joseph and Mary were warned by an angel to flee
with him into Egypt; but he forgot to make any
provision for John, 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
€ractly in the same words, the written inscription,
PART II.] AGE OF REASON, 161
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.”)
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 king of the Jews.
We may infer from these circumstances, trivial
as they are, that those writers, whoever they were,
and in whatever time they lived, were not present
at the scene. The only one of the men, called
apostles, who appears to have been near the spot,
was Peter; and when he was accused of being one
of Jesus's followers, it is said, (Matthew, chapter
xxvi. verse 74.) “Then Peter began to curse and to
8wear, saying, I know not the man : ” yet we are now
called upon to believe the same Peter, convicted, by
their own account, of perjury. For what reason, or
on what authority shall we do this?
The accounts that are given of the circumstances,
that they tell us attended the crucifixion, are differ-
ently 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 open-
ed, that the bodies of many of the saints that slept
arose and came out of their graves after the resurrec-
* According to John, the sentence was not passed till
about the sixth hour, (noon), and, consequently, the exe-
cution could not be till the afternoon; but Mark says ex-
pressly, that he was crucified at the third hour, (nine in
the morning), chapter xv. verse 25; John, chapter xix
werse 14.
2]
16.2 A GE OF REASON. [PART II.
tion, 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 de-
tailing the circumstances of the crucifixion, makes
no mention of any earthquake, nor of the rocks
rending, nor of the graves opening, nor of the dead
men walking out. The writer of the book of Luke
is silent also upon the same points. And as to the
writer of the book of John, though he details all
the circumstances of the crucifixion down to the
burial of Christ, he says nothing about either the
darkness—the veil of the temple—the earthquake—
the rocks—the graves—nor the dead men.
Now if it had been true, that those things had
happened; and if the writers of 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 histori-
ans, even without the aid of inspiration, not to have
recorded them. The things, supposing them to
have been facts, were of too much notoriety not to
have been known, and of too much importance not
to have been told. All these supposed apostles
must have been witnesses of the earthquake, if
there had been any; for it was not possible for
them to have been absent from it; the opening of
the graves and the resurrection of the dead men,
and their walking about the city, is of greater im-
portance 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 tre, it would have
filled up whole chapters of those books, and been
the chosen theme and general chorus of all the
FART II.] AGE OF RIEASON. 163
writers; but instead of this, little and trivial things,
and mere prattling conversations 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 become of them afterwards, and who it
was that saw them; for he is not hardy enough to
say he saw them himself; whether they came out
naked, and all in natural buff, he-saints and she-
saints; or whether they came full dressed, and
where they got their dresses; whether they went
to their former habitations, and reclaimed their
wives, their husbands, and their property, and how
they were received; whether they entered eject-
ments for the recovery of their possessions, or
brought actions of crim. com. against their rival in-
terlopers; whether they remained on earth, and
followed their former occupation of preaching or
working; or whether they died again, or went back
to their graves alive, and buried themselves.
Strange, indeed, that an army of saints should
return to life, and nobody know who they were, nor
who it was that saw them, and that not a word more
should be said upon the subject, nor these saints have
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 every thing, 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
164 AGE OF REASON, | ART 11.
all Jerusalem. Had it been John the Baptist, and
the saints of the time then present, every body
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 writ-
ers, 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 Pi-
late for a watch or a guard to be placed over the
sepulchre, to prevent the body being stolen by the
disciples; and that in consequence of this request,
the sepulchre was made sure, sealing the stone that
covered the mouth, and setting a watch. But the
other books say nothing about this application, nor
about the sealing, nor the guard, nor the watch;
and according to their accounts, there were none.
Matthew, however, follows up this part of the story
of the guard or the watch with a second part, that
I shall notice in the conclusion, as it serves to de-
tect the fallacy of those books.
The book of Matthew continues its account, and
says, (chapter xxviii. verse 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 te
the sepulchre; and John states, that Mary Magda.
lene 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
PART II.] AGE OF REASON, 165
an ill conjecture that she might be upon the
stroll.
The book of Matthew goes on to say, (verse 2.)
“And behold there was a great earthquake, for the
angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and
came and rolled back the stone from the door, and
sat upon it.” But the other books say nothing
about any earthquake, nor about the angel rolling
back the stone, and sitting upon it; and according
to their account, there was no angel sitting there.
Mark says the angel was within the sepulchre, sit-
ting 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 wo-
men went away quickly. Mark says, that the wo-
men, upon seeing the stone rolled away, and won-
dering 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 an-
gels that were standing up; and John says, it was
Jesus Christ himself that told it to Mary Magda-
lene; 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 evi-
dence in the same contradictory mammer as it is
here given, they would have been in danger of hav-
ing their ears cropped for perjury, and would have
justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and
these are the books, that have been imposed upon
the world, as being given by divine inspiration
and as the unchangeable word of God.
I66 AGE OF REASON, [PART II
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
woman 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 showed unto the
chief priests all the things that were done; and
when they were assembled with the elders and had
taken counsel, they gave large money unto the sol-
diers, 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 exceedingly 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
*ART II.] AGE OF REASUR. 167
and by whom it was done; and yet they are made
to say, that it was the disciples who did it. Were a
mau 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 evi-
dence 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, chapter
xxviii. verse 7, “Behold Christ is gone before you
into Galilee, there ye shall see him; lo, I have tola
ou.” And the same writer, at the two next verses
8, 9,) makes Christ himself to speak to the same
purpose to these women, immediately after the an-
gel had told it to them, and that they ran quickly to
tell it to the disciples; and at the 16th verse it is
said, “Then the eleven disciples went away into Gali-
lee, 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, chapter xx. verse
19, “Then the same day at evenung, 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,
fame 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 hut in secret, for far of
the Jews.

168 A GE OF REASON, LPART II
The writer of the book of Luke contradicts that
of Matthew more pointedly than John does; for he
says expressly, that the meeting was in Jerusalem
the evening of the same day that he (Christ) rose,
and that the eleven were there. See Luke, chapter
xxiv. verses 13, 33.
Now, it is not possible, unless we admit these
supposed disciples the right of wilful lying, that the
writer of these books could be any of the eleven
persons called disciples; for if, according to Mat-
thew, the eleven went into Galilee to meet Jesus in
a mountain by his own appointment, on the same
day that he is said to have risen, Luke and John
must have been two of that eleven ; yet the writer
of Luke says expressly, and John implies as much,
that the meeting was, that same day, in a house in
Jerusalem; and, on the other hand, if, according to
Luke and John, the eleven were assembled in a
house in Jerusalem, Matthew must have been one
of that eleven ; yet Matthew says, the meeting was
in a mountain in Galilee, and, consequently, the
evidence given in those books destroys each
other.
The writer of the book of Mark says nothing
about any meeting in Galilee; but he says, chapter
xvi. verse 12, that Christ, after his resurrection, ap-
peared in another form to two of them, as they
walked into the country, and that these two told it
to the residue, who would not believe them. Luke
also tells a story, in which he keeps Christ employ-
ed the whole of the day of this pretended resurrec-
tion, 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 Em-
maus, threescore furlongs (seven miles and a half
from Jerusalem, and that Christ, in disguise, went
with them, and staid with them unto the evening
and supped with them, and then vanished out of
PART II.] A C#E OF REAS ÜN 169
their sight, and re-appeared that same evening, at
the meeting of the eleven in Jerusalem.
This is the contradictory manner in which the
evidence of this pretended re-appearance of Christ
is stated; the only point in which the writers agree,
is the skulking privacy of that re-appearance; for
whether it was in the recess of a mountain in Gali-
lee, 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 re-
pugnant 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 them-
selves. It is, therefore, the testimony of but one
man, and that too of a man, who did not, according
to the same account, believe a word of the matter
himself, at the time it is said to have happened.
His evidence, supposing him to have been the
writer of the 15th chapter of Corinthians, where
this account is given, is like that of a man, who
comes into a court of justice to swear, that what he
had sworn before is false. A man may often see
reason, and he has too always the right of changing
his opinion; but this liberty does not extend to mat-
ters of fact.
I now come to the last scene, that of the ascen-
sion 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 pass-
ed in private, either in the recess of a mountain in
22
I70 * AGE OF REASON. [PART 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 de-
nial 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 nocn day: at
least it ought to have been as public as the cruci-
fixion is reported to have been. But to come to
the point.
In the first place the writer of the book of Mat-
thew 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 appa-
rent agreement, as to the place where this final
parting is said to have been.
The book of Mark says, that Christ appeared to
the eleven as they sat at meat; alluding to the
meeting of the eleven at Jerusalem; he then states
the conversation that he says passed at that meet-
Ing; and immediately after says (as a school-boy
would finish a dull story) “So them, 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, verse 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.
eART 11.] AGE OF REASON, 171
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 circum-
stances are reported to have happened nearly about
the same spot, Jerusalem; it is, I believe, impossi-
ble to find, in any story upon record, so many and
such glaring absurdities, contradictions, and false-
hoods, as are in those books. They are more nu-
merous 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 or Testament to refer to, nor could I
procure any. My own situation, even as to exist-
ence, 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 opin-
ions 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 salva-
tion by that strange means, are all fabulous inven-
tions, dishonorahle 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—
Bnd that it was upon this only (so far as religion is
concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness
hereafter. So say I now—and so help me God.
But to return to the subject. Though it is im-
possible, at this distance of time, to ascertair, as a
172 AGE OF REASON. [PART II,
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-wit-
nesses and ear-witnesses of the matters they relate,
or they would have related them without these con-
tradictions; 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 the
apostles, and, also, that they are not a concerted im-
position. As to inspiration, it is altogether out of
the question; we may as well attempt to unite
truth and falsehood, as inspiration and contradic-
tion.
If four men are eye-witnesses and car-witnesses
to a scene, they will, without any concert between
them, agree as to the time and place, when and
where that scene happened. Their individual
knowledge of the thing, each one knowing it for
himself, renders conceit totally unnecessary; the
one will not say it was in a mountain in the coun-
try, and the other at a house in town; the one wil.
not say it was at sun-rise, and the other that it was
dark. For in whatever place it was, at whatever
time it was, they know it equally alike.
And, on the other hand, if four men concert a
story they will make their separate relations of that
PART II.] AGE OF RF. A $0 N, 173
story agree, and corroborate with each other to sup-
port the whole. That concert supplies the want
of fact in the one case, as the knowledge of the fact
supercedes, 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 de-
tect 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 set-
ting 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 pro-
gress, 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 whénever 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 cre-
dulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told
of the assassination of Julius Caesar, not many
years before, and they generally have their origin
in violent deaths, or in the execution of innocent
persons. In cases of this kind, compassion lends
its aid, and benevolence stretches the story. It
it goes on a little and a little farther, till it becomes
a most certain truth. Once start a ghost, and cre-
dulity fills up the history of its life, and assigns the
cause of its appearancel one tells it one way, an-
other 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.
174 A GE {y F REASON, , PART II,
The story of the appearance of Jesus Christ is
told with that strange mixture of the natural aud
impossible, that distinguishes legendary tale from
fact. He is represented as suddenly coming in and
going out when the doors are shut, and of vanish-
ing 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 graves 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 ascend-
ed; 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 man-
tle; how it happened not to be burnt in the chariot
of fire, they also have not told us. But as imagi-
nation supplies all deficiencies of this kind, we may
suppose, if we please, that it was made of salaman
der’s wool.
Those who are not nuch acquainted with eccle-
siastical 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 as-
cribed 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 alto-
gether 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 writ-
ten; 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
PART II. A GE {} F fº EASO N. I'V5
are not in the possession of any Christian Church
existing, any more than the two tables of stone writ-
ten on, they pretend, by the finger of God, upon
Mount Sinai, and given to Moses, are in the pos-
session of the Jews. And even if they were, there
is no possibility of proving the hand-writing in
either-case. At the time those books were written
there was no printing, and, consequently, there
could be no publication, otherwise than by written
copies, which any man might make or alter at plea-
sure, 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.*
About three hundred and fifty years after the
time that Christ is said to have lived, several writ-
ings of the kind I am speaking of, were scattered in
the hands of divers individuals; and as the church
* 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 per-
son, who might know of the circumstance, has added it in
a note at the bottom of the page in 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 individu-
ally; what may not have happened in 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.
176 A GE OF REASON. [PART in
had begun to form itself into a hierarchy, or church
government, with temporal powers, it set itself
about collecting them into a code, as we now see
them, called The New Testament. They decided
by vote, as I have before said in the former part of
the Age of Reason, which of those writings, out of
the collection they had made, should be the word
of God, and which should not. The Rabbins of
the Jews had decided, by vote, upon the books of
the Bible before.
As the object of the church, as is the case in all
national establishments of churches, was power
and revenue, and terror the means it used ; it is
consistent to suppose, that the most miraculous and
wonderful of the writings they had collected stood
the best chance of being voted. And as to the au-
thenticity of the books, the vote stands in the place
of it; for it can be traced no higher.
Disputes, however, ran high among the people
then calling themselves Christians; not only as to
points of doctrine, but as to the authenticity of the
books. In the contest between the persons called
St. Augustine and Fauste, about the year 400, the
latter says, “The books called the Evangelists have
been composed long after the times of the apostles,
by some obscure men, who, fearing that the world
would not give credit to their relation of matters of
which they could not be informed, have published
them under the names of the apostles; and which
are so full of sottishness and discordant relations,
that there is neither agreement nor connection be-
tween 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 doctrines. This is not surprising
since that we have often proved that these things
pART II.] A.G.E OF REASON. 177
º,
have not been written by himself, nor by his apos.
tles, but that for the greater part they are founded
upon tales, upon vague reports, and put together by
I know not what, half Jews, with but little agree-
inent between them and which they have never-
theless published under the names of the apostles
of our Lord, and have thus attributed to them their
own errors and their lies.”
The reader will sce by these extracts, that the
authenticity of the books of the New Testament
was denied, and the books treated as tales, forger-
ies, 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 opposi-
tion, and at last suppressed all Investigation. Mira-
cles followed upon miracles, if we will believe
them, and men were taught to say...they believed
whether they believed or not. But (by way of
throwing in a thought) the French Revolution has
excommunicated the church from the power of
working miracles: she has not been able, with the
assistance of all her saints, to work one miracle
since the revolution began; and as she never stood
in greater need than now, we may, without the aid
of divination, conclude, that all her former miracles
were tricks and lies.f
* 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.
f 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 Gad. The following extracts are from the
second chapter of that work.
“The Marcionists, (a Christian sect), assured that the
23
I78 A GE OF REASON. 1 PART is.
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 listorical evidence,
the exceeding uncertainty there is of its authen-
ticity. The authenticity of the book of Homer, so
far as regards the authorship, is much better esta-
blished 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
evangelists were filled with falsities. The Manicheans,
who formed a very numerous sect at the commencement
of Christianity, rejected as false, all the JWew Testament;
and showed other writings quite different that they gave
for authentic. The Corinthians, like the Marcionists, ad-
mitted not the Acts of the Apostles. The Encraites, and
the Sevenians, adopted neither the Acts nor the Epistles
of Paul. Chrysostome, 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, re-
ports that the Valentinians, like several other sects of the
Christians, accused the Scriptures of being filled with im-
perfections, errors, and contradictions. The Ebionites or
Nazarenes, who were the first Christians, rejected all the
Epistles of Paul, and regarded him as an imposter. They
report, among other things, that he was originally a Pa-
gan, that he came to Jerusalem, where he lived some time;
and that having a mind to marry the daughter of the high
priest, he caused himself to be circumcised; but that not be-
ing 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 ''
rahT 11.] AGE OF REASON. 179
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 Testa-
ment, particularly such parts as tell us of the resur-
rection 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 nu-
merous priests or parsons of the present day, bish-
ops 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 2 The surn total of
a parson’s learning, with very few exceptions, is a
b ab, and hic, hapc, hoc ; and their knowledge of sci-
ence is three times one is three ; and this is more
than sufficient to have enabled the hi, 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 in-
ferior, he could not succeed. Pride would prevent
the former, and impossibility the latter. But with
respect to such books as compose the New Testa-
ment, all the inducements were on the side of for-
gery. The best imagined history that could have
been made, at the distance of two or three hun-
dred 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.
180 A GE OF REASON, PA R.T II,
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 be-
lieving such things, and of the appearance of an-
gels, 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 Mat-
thew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each writer told
the tale as he heard it, or thereabouts, and gave to
his book the name of the saint or the apostle whom
tradition had given as the eye-witness. It is only
upon this ground that the contradictions in those
books can be accounted for; and if this be not the
case, they are downright impositions, lies, and for-
geries, without even the apology of credulity.
That they have been written by a sort of half
Jews, as the foregoing quotations mention, is dis-
cernable enough. The frequent references made
to that chief assassin and imposter 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 Testa-
ment to reply to each other. Between the Christ-
ian Jew and the Christian Gentile, the thing called
a prophecy, and the thing prophesied; the type,
and the thing typified; the sign and the thing sig-
nified, 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 be-
tween men and serpents, (for the serpent always
PART 11.] AGE OF REASON 181
bites about the heel, because it cannot reach higher
and the man always knocks the serpent about the
head, as the most effectual way to prevent its
biting;”) this foolish story, I say, has been made
into a prophecy, a type, and a promise to begin
with ; and the lying imposition of Isaiah to Ahaz,
That a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, as a sign
that Ahaz should conquer, when the event was that
he was defeated (as already noticed in the observa-
tions 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 on
a type. Jonah is Jesus Christ, and the whale is the
grave: for it is said, (and they have made Clirist to
say it of himself) Matthew, chapter xvii. verse 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 at e day and two
nights in the grave; about 36 hours, instead of 72;
that is, the Friday night, the Saturday, and the Sat-
urday night; for they say he was up on the Sunday
morning by sun-rise, 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 orthodor things. Thus much for the his-
torical part of the Testament and its evidences.
Epistles of Paul. The epistles ascribed to Paul,
being fourteen in number, almost fill up the remain-
ing part of the Testament. Whether those epistles
were written by the person to whom they are
ascribed, is a matter of no great importance, since
the writer, whoever he was, attempts to prove his
doctrine by argument. He does not pretend to
have been witness to any of the scenes told of the
* “It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his
heel ” Genesis, chapter iii. verse 15.
182 A GE OF RIEASON | PART in
resultection 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 his
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 compan-
ions that were with him appear not to have sufferee
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, accord-
ing 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 doc-
trine 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 ad-
vances this as an evidence of immortality. But so
much will men differ in their manner of thinking,
and in the conclusions they draw from the same
premises, that this doctrine of the resurrection of
the same body, so far from being an evidence of
immortality, appears to me to furnish an evidence
against it; for if I had already died in this body,
and am raised again in the same body in which I
have died, it is presumptive evidence that I shali
die again. That resurrection no more secures me
against the repetition of dying, than an ague fit,
when past, secures ºne against another To believe.
therefore, in immortality I mu t have a more ele-
PART II A GE OF REASON. 183
wated idea than is contained in the gloomy doctrine
Df the resurrection.
Besides, as a matter of choice, as well as of hope
I had rather have a better body and a more conve-
nient form than the present. Every animal in the
creation excels us in something. The winged in-
sects, without mentioning doves or eagles, can pass
over more space and with greater ease, in a few
minutes, than man can in an hour. The glide of
the smallest fish, in proportion to its bulk, exceeds
us in motion, almost beyond comparison, and with-
out weariness. Even the sluggish snail can ascend
from the bottom of a dungeon, where a man, by
the want of that ability, would perish; and a spider
can launch itself from the top, as a playful amuse-
ment. The personal powers of man are so limit-
ed, and his heavy frame so little constructed to ex-
tensive 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 scenſe—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 con-
scious 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 con-
sciousness of existence remain ; and were their
place supplied by wings or other appendages, we
cannot conceive that it could alter our conscious-
ness of existence. In short, we know not how
.84 A GE OF REASON. | PART II.
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 be-
yond that is like the pulp of a peach, distinct
and separate from the vegetative speck in the ker-
nel.
Who can say by what exceeding fine action of
fine matter it is that a thought is produced in what
we call the mind P and yet that thought, when pro-
duced, as I now produce the thought I am writing,
is capable of becoming immortal, and is the only
production of man that has that capacity.
Statues of brass or marble will perish; and
statues made in imitation of them are not the
same statues, nor the same workmanship, any
more than the copy of a picture is the same pic-
ture. 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 unimpared exist-
ence, unaffected by change of matter, and is essen-
tially distinct, and of a nature different from every
thing else that we know or can conceive. If, then,
the thing produced has in itself a capacity of being
immortal, it is more than a token that the power
that produced it, which is the self-same thing as
consciousness of existence, can be immortal also ;
and that as independently of the matter it was first
tonnected with, as the thought is of the printing or
writing it at 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 de-
pendent on the same form or the same matter, is
demonstrated to our senses in the works of the cro-
ation, 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,
PART II.] A GE OF REAS(i) N. 185
the belief of a life hereafter. Their little life re-
sembles an earth and a heaven—a present and a
future state; and comprises, if it may be so ex-
pressed, immortality in miniature.
The most beautiful parts of the creation, to our
eye, are the winged insects, and they are not so ori-
ginally. They acquire that form and that inimita-
ble 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 but-
terfly. No resemblance of the former creature re-
mains; 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 con-
sciousness of existence hereafter 2
In the former part of the Age of Reason I have
called the creation the only true and real word of
God; and this instance, of this text, in the book of
creation, not only shows to us that this thing may
be so; but that it is so; and that the belief of a
future state is a rational belief, founded upon facts
visible in the creation: for it is not more difficult to
believe that we shall exist hereafter in a better state
and form than at present, than that a worm should
become a butterfly, and quit the dunghill. for the
atmosphere, if we did not know it as a fact.
As to the doubtful jargon ascribed to Paul in the
15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, which makes part
of the burial service of some Christian sectaries, it
is as destitute of meaning as the tolling of the bell
at the funeral; it explains nothing to the under-
standing—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
24
[86 A GTE OF REA S (3 N. LPART in
one flesh of men; another of beasts; another of
fishes; and another of birds.” And what then 2–
nothing. A cook could have said as much.-
“There are also (says he) bodies celestial and
bodies terrestrial; the glory of the celestial is one,
and the glory of the terrestrial is another.” And
what then? nothing. And what is the difference?
nothing that he has told. “There is (says he) one
glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon,
and another glory of the stars.” And what then P
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 fortunes
told. Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.
Sometimes Paul affects to be a naturalist, and to
prove his system of resurrection from the princi-
ples 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 be-
ing to another, as from a worm to a butterfly, ap-
plies to the case; but this of a grain does not, and
shows Paul to have been what he says of others, a
00l.
Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul
were written by him or not, is a matter of indiffer-
ence; they are either argumentative or dogmatical
and as the argument is defective, and the dogmati.
cal part is merely presuruptive, it signifies not who
PART 11.] A GE OF REASON, 187
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, con-
tained in the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John, and upon the pretended prophe-
cies, that the theory of the Church, calling itself
the Christian church, is founded. The epistles are
dependent upon those, and must follow their fate;
for if the story of Jesus Christ be fabulous, all rea-
soning founded upon it as a supposed truth, must
fall with it.
We know from history, that one of the principal
leaders of this church, Athanasius, lived at the time
the New Testament was formed;” and we know,
a'so, 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. [t 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 au-
thority, put man in the place of God, and have no
-foundation for future happiness; credulity, how-
ever, 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 our-
selves 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 edged sword, either
way. If the evidence be denied, the authenticity
* Athanasius died, according to the church chronology,
un the year 371.
188 AGE OF REASON, | PART 11
of the scriptures is denied with it; for it is serip.
ture evidence: and if the evidence be admitted, the
authenticity of the books is disproved. The con-
tradictory impossibilities contained in the Old Test-
ament and the New, put them in the case of a man
who swears for and against. Either evidence con-
victs him of perjury, and equally destroys reputa-
tion.
Should the Bible and Testament hereafter fall, it
is not I that have been the occasion. I have done
no more than extracted the evidence from the con-
fused mass of matter with which it is mixed, and
arranged that evidence in a point of light to be
clearly seen and easily comprehended; and having
done this, I leave the reader to judge for himself,
as I have judged for myself.
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 encu.mber this Second Part with additions that
are not necessary.
I have spoken also in the same work upon what
is called revelation, and have shown the absurd mis-
application 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
a 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
PART II.] A GE OF REASON. 189
revelation in such cases; yet the Bible and Testa-
ment 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 he applied to some-
thing 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 imposter, and may lie. There is no possible cri-
terion whereby to judge of the truth of what he
tells; for even the morality of it would be no proof
of revelation. In all such cases, the proper answer
would be, “When it is revealed to me, I will believe it
to be a revelation; but it is not, and cannot be incum-
bent upon me to believe it to be revelation before ;
neither is it proper that I should take the word of a
man as the word of God, and put man in the place
of God.” This is the manner in which I have
spoken of revelation in the former part of the Age
of Reason; and which, while it reverentially ad-
mits revelation as a possible thing, because, as be-
fore said, to the Almighty all things are possible,
it prevents the imposition of one man upon an-
other, and precludes the wicked use of pretended
- tevelation.
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
uneans which our senses are capable of receiving
190 A GE OF REASON, LPART II.
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.
The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid
uruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflict-
ed the human race, have had their origin in this
thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has
been the most dishonorable belief against the char-
acter of the Divinity, the most destructive to moral-
ity, 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 possi-
ble, 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 imposter
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 persecu-
tions, 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 2 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 the fag-
got 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
PART II.] AGE OF REASON. 191
have cut off his head, and the head of his master,
had he been able. Besides this, Christianity grounds
itself originally upon the Bible, and the Bible was
established altogether by the sword, and that in the
worst use of it; not to terrify, but to extirpate. The
Jews made no converts; they butchered all. The
Bible is the sire of the Testament, and both are
called the word of God. The Christians read both
books; the ministers preach from both books; and
this thing called Christianity is made up of both.
It is then false to say that Christianity was not esta-
blished by the sword.
The only sect that has not persecuted are the
Quakers; and the only reason that can be given
for it is, that they are rather Deists than Christians.
They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and
they call the Scriptures a dead letter. Had they
called them by a worse name, they had been nearer
the truth.
It is incumbent on every marf 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 armong man-
kind, to expel all ideas of 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 dishonorable to his
Maker. What is it the Bible teaches us?—rapine,
cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament
teaches us?—to believe that the Almighty commit-
ted debauchery with a woman, engaged to be mar-
ried! and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
As to the fragments of morality that are irregu-
larly 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
bounds by which society is held together, and with-
out which it cannot exist; and are nearly the game
192 AGE OF REASON. LPART is
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 ridicu-
lous. The doctrine of not retaliating injuries, is
much better expressed in Proverbs, which is a col-
lection as well from the Gentiles as the Jews, than
it is in the Testament. It is there said, Proverbs
xxv. verse 21, “If thine enemy be hungry, give him
bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to
drink:” but when it is said, as in the Testament,
“If a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him
the other also ;” it is assassinating the dignity of for-
bearance, and sinking man into a spaniel.
Loving enemies, is another dogma of feigned mo-
rality, and has besides no meaning. It is incum-
bent 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 retali-
ates on the other, and calls it justice; but to love
in proportion to the injury, if it could be done,
* According to what is called Christ’s sermon on the
Mount, in the book of Matthew, where, among some other
good things, a great deal of this feigned morality is intro-
duced, it is there expressly said, that the doctrine of for-
bearance, or of not retaliating injuries, was not any part
of the doctrine of the Jews; but as this doctrine is found-
ed 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 idol-
ators have abusively called heathens, had much better and
clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be found
in the Old Testament, so far as it is Jewish ; cr in the
New. The answer of Solon on the question, “Which is
the most perfect popular government,” has never been ex-
ceeded 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
tnsult on the whole constitution.” Solon lived about 500
years before Christ.
PART II.] . AGE OF REASON. 193
would be to offer a premium for crime. Be-
sides, 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 preju-
dice, as in the case of religious opinions, and some-
times in politics, that man is different to an enemy
at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incum-
bent upon us, ared it contributes also to our tran-
quility, that we put the best construction upon a
thing that it will bear. But even this erroneous mo-
tive in him, makes no motive for love on the other
part; and to say that we can love voluntarily, and with-
out a motive, is morally and physically impossible.
Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties,
that, in the first place, are impossible to be perform-
ed; 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 doctrix e 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 doc-
trine 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 feigned or a 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 doc-
trine can make any part of a revealed religion. We
imitate the moral character of the Creator by for.
25
194 A.G.E OF REASON, upART 11
bearing 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 2 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 know-
ledge 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 before-hand that he can. The probability,
or even possibility of the thing is all that we ought
to know; for if we know 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 im-
mutability of his power, and all other Bibles and
Testaments are to him forgeries. The probability
that we may be called to account hereafter, will, to
a reflecting mind, have the influence of belief; for

PART 11.] A GE OF REASON, 195
it is not our belief or disbelief that can make or
unmake the fact. As this is the state we are in,
and which it is proper we should be in, as free
agents, it is the fool only, and not the philosopher,
or even the prudent man, that would live as if there
wº-le lio God.
But the belief of a God is so weakened by being
mixed with the strange fable of the Christian creed,
and with the wild adventures related in the Bible,
and of the obscurity and obscene nonsense of the
Testament, that the mind of man is bewildered as
in a fog. Viewing all these things in a confused
mass, he confounds fact with fable; and as he can-
not 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 enfee-
bled the belief of one God. A multiplication of
beliefs acts as a division of belief; and in propor-
tion as any thing is divided it is weakened.
Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of
form, instead of fact; of notion instead of princi-
ples; morality is banished to make room for an im-
aginary thing, called faith, and this faith has its ori-
gin in a supposed debauchery; a man is preached
instead of God; and execution is an object for
gratitude; the preachers daub themselves with the
blood, like a troop of assassins, and pretend to ad-
mire 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 lunuped and
preached together, confounds the God of creation
with the imagined God of Christians, and lives as
if there were none.
Of all the systems of religion that ever were in-
vented, there is none more derogatory to the Al-
mighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnani
196 AGE ſº F REASON. IPART II.
to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than
this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for be-
lief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsist-
ent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or pro-
duces only atheists and fanatics. As an eligiue 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 au-
thority a part; neither does it answer the avarice
of priests, but by incorporating themselves and
their functions with it, and becoming, like the gov-
ernment, a party in the system. It is this that
forms the otherwise mysterious connection of
church and state; the church humane, and the
state tyrannic.
ere man impressed as fully and as strongly, as
he ought to be, with the helief of a God, his moral
life would be regulated by the force of that belief;
he would stand in awe of God, and of himself, and
would not do the thing that could not be concealed
from either. To give this belief the full opportu-
nity 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, c aptor
PART II.] AGE OF REASON. 197
It has been the scheme of the Christian church.
and of all the other invented systems of religion,
to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of
government to hold man in ignorance of his rights.
The systems of the one are as false as those of the
other, and ale calculated for mutual support. The
study of theology, as it stands in Christian church-
es, is the study of nothing; it is founded on no-
thing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no au-
thorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate no-
thing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not any
thing can be studied as a science, without our being
in possession of the principles upon which it is
founded; and as this is not the case with Christ-
ian theology, it is, therefore, the study of no-
thing.
Instead, then, of studying theology, as is now
done, out of the Bible and Testament, the mean
ings 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 the-
ology.
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

iii. verse 16, that the Holy Ghost descended in the shape
of a dove. It might as well have said a godse; the crea-
tures are equally harmless, and the one is as much a non-
sensical lie as the other. The second of Acts, verses 2,
3, says, that it descended in a mighty rushing wind, in
the shape of cloven tongues: perhaps it was cloven feet
Such absurd stuff is only fit for tales of witches and
wizards.
198 A GE OF REASON, [PART 11
not the means of comprehending something of its
immensity. We can have lio idea of his wis-
dom, 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 me-
dium that man can see God, as it were, face to
face.
Could a man be placed in a situation, and en-
dowed with the power of vision, to behold at one
view, and to contemplate deliberately, the structure
of the universe; to mark the movements of the
several planets, the cause of their varying appear
ances, the unerring order in which they revolve,
even to the remotest comet; their connections and
dependence on each other, and to know the sys-
tem 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 mu-
nificence 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 situa-
tion 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
oecome united with his improvement as a man; any
employment he followed, that had connection with
the principles of the creation, as every thing 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 in-
spire great thoughts; great munificence excites great
gratitude; but the grovelling tales and doctrines of
the Bible and the Testament are fit only to excite
contempts
Th Yugh man cannot arrive, at least in this life, at
PART ſy.: A GE OF REASON, 199
the actual scene I have described, he can demon-
strate it. necause he has a knowledge of the prin-
ciples 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 these bodies are millions of
miles distant from us. This knowledge is of di-
vine origin; and it is from the Bible of the crea-
tion that man has learned it, and not from the stu-
pid Bible of the church, that teaches man no-
thing. *
*The Bible-makers have undertaken to give us, in the
first chapter of Genesis, an accourt of the creation; and
in doing this, they have demonstrated nothing but their
ignorance. They make there to have been three days and
three lights, evenings and mornings, before there was a
sun; when it is the presence or absence of the sun that is
the cause of day and night; and what is called his rising
and setting, that of morning and evening. Besides, it is a
puerile and pitiful idea, to suppose the Almighty to say,
“Let there be light.” It is the imperative manner ºf
speaking that a conjuror uses, when he says to his cups
and balls, Presto, be gone; and most probably has been
taken from it, as Moses and his rod are a conjuror a d his
wand. Longinus calls this expression the sublime: and by
the same rule the conjuror is sublime too; for the manne,
of speaking is expressly 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
200 A GE OF REASON, [PART in
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 ap
pearance and condition from a common animal.
comes from the great machine and structure of the
universe. The constant and unwearied observa-
tions of our ancestors upon the movements and
revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in what are sup-
posed 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 let us forget
the labors of our ancestors.
Had we at this day no knowledge of machinery
and were it possible that man could have a view
as I have before described, of the structure and
machinery of the universe, he would soon conceive
the idea of constructing some at least of the me-
chanical works we now have ; and the idea so con-
ceived 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 mo-
tion, his mind would arrive at the same idea. Such
an object and such a subject would, whilst it im-
proved hint in knowledge useful to himself as a
man and a member of society, as well as entertain-
ing, 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
and beautiful, is like a wind-mill Just visible in a fog,
which imagination might distort into a flying mountain, r
an archangel, or a flock of w.ld geese.
pART II.] AGE OF REASON, 201
they may, only stupid sermons can be preached.
lf man must preach, let him preach something that
is edifying, and from texts that are known to be
£rue.
The Bible of the creation is inexhaustible in
texts. Every part of science, whether connected
with the geometry of the universe, with the sys-
tems of animal and vegetable life, or with the pro-
perties of inanimate matter, is a text as well for de-
votion as for philosophy—for gratitude as for hu-
man improvement. It will, perhaps, be said, that
if such a revolution in the system of rétigion takes
place, every preacher ought to be a philosopher.
Most certainly; and every house of devotion a
school of science.
It has been by wandering from the immutable
laws of science, and the right use of reason, and
setting up an invented thing called revealed reli-
gion, that so many wild and blasphemous conceits
have been formed of the Alhighty. 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 him-
self, and the founder of a new religion, to super-
sede 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 judgment. The
philosopher knows that the laws of the Creator
have never changed with respect either to the prin-
ciples of science, or the properties of matter. Why
then, is it to be supposed they have changed with
respect to man 2
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
leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it
to be refuted, if any one can do it; and I leave
25
202 A.G.E OF REASON, [PART II,
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 mat
ters of government or religion, truth will finally
and powerfully prevail.
A
LETTER:
BEING
AN ANSWER TO A FRIEND,
ON THE PUBLICATION OF
"THE A GE OF R. E A SO N.
Paris, May 12, 1797.
IN your letter of the 20th of March, you give
me several quotations from the Bible, which you
call the word of God, to show me that my opinions
on religion are wrong; and I could give you as
many, from the same book, to show that yours are
not right; consequently, then, the Bible decides
nothing, because it decides any way, and every
way, one chooses to make it.
But by what authority do you call the Bible the
word of God? for this is the first point to be settled.
It is not your calling it so that makes it so, any
more than the Mahometans calling the Koran the
word of God makes the Koran to be so. The
Popish Councils of Nice and Laodicea, about 350
years after the time that the person called Jesus
Christ is said to have lived, voted the books, that
now compose what is called the New Testament, to
204 • LETTER TO A FRIEND.
be the word of God. This was done by yeas and
inays, as we now vote a law. The Pharisees of the
second Temple, after the Jews returned from cap-
tivity in Babylon, did the same by the books that
now compose the Old Testament, and this is all the
authority there is, which to me is no authority at
all. I am as capable of judging for myself as they
were, and I think more so, because, as they made a
living by their religion, they had a self-interest in
the vote they gave.
You may have an opinion that a man is inspired.
but you cannot prove it, nor can you have any
proof of it yourself, because you cannot see intº
his mind in order to know how he comes by his
thoughts, and the same is the case with the word
revelation. There can be no evidence of such a
thing, for you can no more prove revelation, than
you can prove what another man dreams of, neither
can he prove it himself.
It is often said in the Bible that God spake unto
Moses; but how do you know that God spake unto
Moses? Because, you will say, the Bible says so.
The Koran says, that God spake unto Mahomet;
do you believe that too? No. Why not? Be-
cause, you will say, you do not believe it; and so,
because you do, and because you don't, is all the
reason you can give for believing or disbelieving,
except that you will say that Mahomet was an im-
poster. And how do you know that Moses was
not an imposter? For my own part, I believe that
all are imposters who pretend to hold verbai com-
munication with the Deity. It is the way by which
the world has been imposed upon; but if you think
otherwise you have the same right to your opinion
that I have to mine, and must answer for it in the
same manner. But all this does not settle the point,
whether the Bible be the word of God, or not. It is,
therefore, necessary to go a step further. The case
then is: —
LETTER TO A FRIEND. 205
You form your opinion of God from the account
given of him in the Bible; and I form my opinion
of the Bible from the wisdom and goodness of
God, manifested in the structure of the universe,
and in all the works of the Creation. The result
in these two cases will be, that you, by taking the
Bible for your standard, will have a bad opinion of
God; and I, by taking God for my standard, shall
have a had opinion of the Bible.
The Bible represents God to be a changeable,
passionate, vindictive being: making a world, and
then drowning it, afterwards repenting of what he
had done, and promising not to do so again. Set-
ting one nation to cut the throats of another, and
stopping the course of the sun till the butchery
should be done. But the works of God in the cre-
ation preach to us another doctrine. In that vast
volume we see nothing to give us the idea of a
changeable, passionate, vindictive God; every thing
we there behold impresses us With a contrary idea,
that of unchangeableness and of eternal order, har.
mony, and goodness. The sun and the seasons re-
turn at their appointed time, and every thing in the
Creation proclaims that God is unchangeable.
Now which am I to believe, a book that any im-
poster may make and call the word of God, or the
Creation itself, which none but an Almighty Power
could make, for the Bible says one thing, and the
Creation says the contrary. The Bible represents
God with all the passions of a mortal, and the
Creation proclaims him with all the attributes of a
od.
It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty,
rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God
makes a cruel man. That blood-thirsty man, called
the prophet Samuel, makes God to say, (1 Samuel,
chapter xv. verse 3,) “Now go and smite Amalek,
and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare
206 I,ETTEYA TO A FRIENLye
them not but slay both man and woman, wryant and
suckling, or and sheep, camel and ass.”
That Samuel, or some other imposter, might say
this, is what, at this distance of time, can neither
be proved nor disproved; but, in my opinion, it is
blasphemy to say, or to believe, that God said it.
All our ideas of the justice and goodness of God
revolt at the impious cruelty of the Bible. It is not
a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name
of God, that the Bible describes.
What makes this pretended order to destroy the
Amalekites appear the worse, is the reason given
for it. The Amalekites, four hundred years before,
according to the account in Exodus, chapter 17,
(but which has the appearance of fable from the
magical account it gives of Moses holding up his
hands) had opposed the Israelites coming into their
country; and this the Amalekites had a right to do,
because the Israelites were the invaders, as the
Spaniards were the invaders of Mexico: and this
opposition by the Amalekites, at that tºe, is given
as a reason, that the men and women, infants and
sucklings, sheep and oxen, camels and assés, that
were born four hundred years afterwards, should
be put to death; and to complete the horror, Sam-
uel hewed Agag, the chief of the Amalekites in
pieces, as you would hew a stick of wood. I will
bostow a few observations on this case.
In the first place, nobody knows who the author
or writer of the book of Santuel was, and, there-
fore, the fact itself has no other proof than anony-
mous or hearsay evidence, which is no evidence at
all. In the second place, this anonymous book
says, that this slaughter, was done by the express
command of God; but all our ideas of the justice
and goodness of God give the lie to the book, and 1
never will believe any book that ascribes cruelty
and injustice to God. I therefore reject the Bible
as unworthy of credit
LETTER TO A FRIEND. 20)
As I have now given you my reasons for believ-
ing that the Bible is not the word of God, and that
it is a falsehood, I have a right to ask you your
reasons for believing the contrary: but I know you
can give me none, except that you were educated to
believe the Bible; and as the Turks give the same
reasons for believing the Koran, it is evident that
education makes all the difference, and that reason
and truth have nothing to do in the case. You be-
lieve in the Bible from the accident of birth, and
the Turks believe in the Koran from the same ac-
cident, and each calls the other infidel. But leav-
ing the prejudice of education out of the case, the
unprejudiced truth is, that all are infidels who be-
lieve falsely of God, whether they draw their creed
from the Bible, or from the Koran, from the Old
Testament or from the New.
When you have examined the Bible with the at-
tion that I have done, (for I do not think you know
much about it) and permit yearself to have just
ideas of God, you will most probably believe as I
do. But I wish you to know that this answer to
your letter is not written for the purpose of chang-
ing your opinion. It is written to satisfy you, and
some other friends whom I esteem, that my disbe-
lief of the Bible is founded on a pure and religious
belief in God; for, in my opinion, the Bible is a
gross libel against the justice and goodness of God,
In almost every part of it.
THOMAS PAINE.