Special to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise
Collected And Edited By Moncure Daniel Conway
THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE
VOLUME IV.
(1796)
CONTENTS
THE AGE OF REASON
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I - THE AUTHOR'S PROFESSION OF FAITH.
CHAPTER II - OF MISSIONS AND REVELATIONS.
CHAPTER III - CONCERNING THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST, AND HIS HISTORY.
CHAPTER IV - OF THE BASES OF CHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTER V - EXAMINATION IN DETAIL OF THE PRECEDING BASES.
CHAPTER VI - OF THE TRUE THEOLOGY.
CHAPTER VII - EXAMINATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
CHAPTER VIII - OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
CHAPTER IX - IN WHAT THE TRUE REVELATION CONSISTS.
CHAPTER X - CONCERNING GOD, AND THE LIGHTS CAST ON HIS EXISTENCE
CHAPTER XI - OF THE THEOLOGY OF THE CHRISTIANS; AND THE TRUE THEOLOGY.
CHAPTER XII - THE EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANISM ON EDUCATION; PROPOSED
CHAPTER XIII - COMPARISON OF CHRISTIANISM WITH THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS
CHAPTER XIV - SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE.
CHAPTER XV - ADVANTAGES OF THE EXISTENCE OF MANY WORLDS IN EACH SOLAR
CHAPTER XVI - APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING TO THE SYSTEM OF THE
CHAPTER XVII - OF THE MEANS EMPLOYED IN ALL TIME, AND ALMOST
THE AGE OF REASON - PART II
PREFACE
CHAPTER I - THE OLD TESTAMENT
CHAPTER II - THE NEW TESTAMENT
CHAPTER III - CONCLUSION
THE AGE OF REASON
(1796)
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
WITH SOME RESULTS OF RECENT RESEARCHES.
IN the opening year, 1793, when revolutionary France had beheaded its
king, the wrath turned next upon the King of kings, by whose grace every
tyrant claimed to reign. But eventualities had brought among them a
great English and American heart—Thomas Paine. He had pleaded for Louis
Caper—"Kill the king but spare the man." Now he pleaded,—"Disbelieve
in the King of kings, but do not confuse with that idol the Father of
Mankind!"
In Paine's Preface to the Second Part of "The Age of Reason" he
describes himself as writing the First Part near the close of the year
1793. "I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has
since appeared, before a guard came about three in the morning, with an
order signed by the two Committees of Public Safety and Surety General,
for putting me in arrestation." This was on the morning of December 28.
But it is necessary to weigh the words just quoted—"in the state it has
since appeared." For on August 5, 1794, Francois Lanthenas, in an
appeal for Paine's liberation, wrote as follows: "I deliver to Merlin
de Thionville a copy of the last work of T. Payne [The Age of Reason],
formerly our colleague, and in custody since the decree excluding
foreigners from the national representation. This book was written by
the author in the beginning of the year '93 (old style). I undertook its
translation before the revolution against priests, and it was published
in French about the same time. Couthon, to whom I sent it, seemed
offended with me for having translated this work."
Under the frown of Couthon, one of the most atrocious colleagues of
Robespierre, this early publication seems to have been so effectually
suppressed that no copy bearing that date, 1793, can be found in France
or elsewhere. In Paine's letter to Samuel Adams, printed in the present
volume, he says that he had it translated into French, to stay the
progress of atheism, and that he endangered his life "by opposing
atheism." The time indicated by Lanthenas as that in which he submitted
the work to Couthon would appear to be the latter part of March, 1793,
the fury against the priesthood having reached its climax in the decrees
against them of March 19 and 26. If the moral deformity of Couthon, even
greater than that of his body, be remembered, and the readiness with
which death was inflicted for the most theoretical opinion not approved
by the "Mountain," it will appear probable that the offence given
Couthon by Paine's book involved danger to him and his translator.
On May 31, when the Girondins were accused, the name of Lanthenas was
included, and he barely escaped; and on the same day Danton persuaded
Paine not to appear in the Convention, as his life might be in danger.
Whether this was because of the "Age of Reason," with its fling at the
"Goddess Nature" or not, the statements of author and translator
are harmonized by the fact that Paine prepared the manuscript, with
considerable additions and changes, for publication in English, as he
has stated in the Preface to Part II.
A comparison of the French and English versions, sentence by sentence,
proved to me that the translation sent by Lanthenas to Merlin de
Thionville in 1794 is the same as that he sent to Couthon in 1793. This
discovery was the means of recovering several interesting sentences
of the original work. I have given as footnotes translations of such
clauses and phrases of the French work as appeared to be important.
Those familiar with the translations of Lanthenas need not be reminded
that he was too much of a literalist to depart from the manuscript
before him, and indeed he did not even venture to alter it in an
instance (presently considered) where it was obviously needed. Nor would
Lanthenas have omitted any of the paragraphs lacking in his translation.
This original work was divided into seventeen chapters, and these I have
restored, translating their headings into English. The "Age of Reason"
is thus for the first time given to the world with nearly its original
completeness.
It should be remembered that Paine could not have read the proof of his
"Age of Reason" (Part I.) which went through the press while he was in
prison. To this must be ascribed the permanence of some sentences as
abbreviated in the haste he has described. A notable instance is the
dropping out of his estimate of Jesus the words rendered by Lanthenas
"trop peu imite, trop oublie, trop meconnu." The addition of these
words to Paine's tribute makes it the more notable that almost the only
recognition of the human character and life of Jesus by any theological
writer of that generation came from one long branded as an infidel.
To the inability of the prisoner to give his work any revision must be
attributed the preservation in it of the singular error already alluded
to, as one that Lanthenas, but for his extreme fidelity, would have
corrected. This is Paine's repeated mention of six planets, and
enumeration of them, twelve years after the discovery of Uranus. Paine
was a devoted student of astronomy, and it cannot for a moment be
supposed that he had not participated in the universal welcome of
Herschel's discovery. The omission of any allusion to it convinces me
that the astronomical episode was printed from a manuscript written
before 1781, when Uranus was discovered. Unfamiliar with French in 1793,
Paine might not have discovered the erratum in Lanthenas' translation,
and, having no time for copying, he would naturally use as much as
possible of the same manuscript in preparing his work for English
readers. But he had no opportunity of revision, and there remains an
erratum which, if my conjecture be correct, casts a significant light
on the paragraphs in which he alludes to the preparation of the work. He
states that soon after his publication of "Common Sense" (1776), he "saw
the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government
would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion," and that
"man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of
one God and no more." He tells Samuel Adams that it had long been his
intention to publish his thoughts upon religion, and he had made a
similar remark to John Adams in 1776. Like the Quakers among whom he
was reared Paine could then readily use the phrase "word of God" for
anything in the Bible which approved itself to his "inner light," and
as he had drawn from the first Book of Samuel a divine condemnation
of monarchy, John Adams, a Unitarian, asked him if he believed in the
inspiration of the Old Testament. Paine replied that he did not, and
at a later period meant to publish his views on the subject. There is
little doubt that he wrote from time to time on religious points, during
the American war, without publishing his thoughts, just as he worked on
the problem of steam navigation, in which he had invented a practicable
method (ten years before John Fitch made his discovery) without
publishing it. At any rate it appears to me certain that the part of
"The Age of Reason" connected with Paine's favorite science, astronomy,
was written before 1781, when Uranus was discovered.
Paine's theism, however invested with biblical and Christian
phraseology, was a birthright. It appears clear from several allusions
in "The Age of Reason" to the Quakers that in his early life, or
before the middle of the eighteenth century, the people so called were
substantially Deists. An interesting confirmation of Paine's statements
concerning them appears as I write in an account sent by Count Leo
Tolstoi to the London 'Times' of the Russian sect called Dukhobortsy
(The Times, October 23, 1895). This sect sprang up in the last century,
and the narrative says:
"The first seeds of the teaching called afterwards 'Dukhoborcheskaya'
were sown by a foreigner, a Quaker, who came to Russia. The fundamental
idea of his Quaker teaching was that in the soul of man dwells God
himself, and that He himself guides man by His inner word. God lives
in nature physically and in man's soul spiritually. To Christ, as to an
historical personage, the Dukhobortsy do not ascribe great importance...
Christ was God's son, but only in the sense in which we call, ourselves
'sons of God.' The purpose of Christ's sufferings was no other than to
show us an example of suffering for truth. The Quakers who, in 1818,
visited the Dukhobortsy, could not agree with them upon these religious
subjects; and when they heard from them their opinion about Jesus
Christ (that he was a man), exclaimed 'Darkness!' From the Old and New
Testaments,' they say, 'we take only what is useful,' mostly the moral
teaching.... The moral ideas of the Dukhobortsy are the following:—All
men are, by nature, equal; external distinctions, whatsoever they may
be, are worth nothing. This idea of men's equality the Dukhoborts have
directed further, against the State authority.... Amongst themselves
they hold subordination, and much more, a monarchical Government, to be
contrary to their ideas."
Here is an early Hicksite Quakerism carried to Russia long before the
birth of Elias Hicks, who recovered it from Paine, to whom the American
Quakers refused burial among them. Although Paine arraigned the union
of Church and State, his ideal Republic was religious; it was based on
a conception of equality based on the divine son-ship of every man. This
faith underlay equally his burden against claims to divine partiality by
a "Chosen People," a Priesthood, a Monarch "by the grace of God," or
an Aristocracy. Paine's "Reason" is only an expansion of the Quaker's
"inner light"; and the greater impression, as compared with previous
republican and deistic writings made by his "Rights of Man" and "Age
of Reason" (really volumes of one work), is partly explained by the
apostolic fervor which made him a spiritual, successor of George Fox.
Paine's mind was by no means skeptical, it was eminently instructive.
That he should have waited until his fifty-seventh year before
publishing his religious convictions was due to a desire to work out
some positive and practicable system to take the place of that which he
believed was crumbling. The English engineer Hall, who assisted Paine in
making the model of his iron bridge, wrote to his friends in England,
in 1786: "My employer has Common Sense enough to disbelieve most of the
common systematic theories of Divinity, but does not seem to establish
any for himself." But five years later Paine was able to lay the
corner-stone of his temple: "With respect to religion itself, without
regard to names, and as directing itself from the universal family of
mankind to the 'Divine object of all adoration, it is man bringing to
his Maker the fruits of his heart; and though those fruits may differ
from each other like the fruits of the earth, the grateful tribute of
every one, is accepted." ("Rights of Man." See my edition of Paine's
Writings, ii., p. 326.) Here we have a reappearance of George Fox
confuting the doctor in America who "denied the light and Spirit of
God to be in every one; and affirmed that it was not in the Indians.
Whereupon I called an Indian to us, and asked him 'whether or not, when
he lied, or did wrong to anyone, there was not something in him that
reproved him for it?' He said, 'There was such a thing in him that did
so reprove him; and he was ashamed when he had done wrong, or spoken
wrong.' So we shamed the doctor before the governor and the people."
(Journal of George Fox, September 1672.)
Paine, who coined the phrase "Religion of Humanity" (The Crisis, vii.,
1778), did but logically defend it in "The Age of Reason," by denying a
special revelation to any particular tribe, or divine authority in
any particular creed of church; and the centenary of this much-abused
publication has been celebrated by a great conservative champion of
Church and State, Mr. Balfour, who, in his "Foundations of Belief,"
affirms that "inspiration" cannot be denied to the great Oriental
teachers, unless grapes may be gathered from thorns.
The centenary of the complete publication of "The Age of Reason,"
(October 25, 1795), was also celebrated at the Church Congress, Norwich,
on October 10, 1895, when Professor Bonney, F.R.S., Canon of Manchester,
read a paper in which he said: "I cannot deny that the increase of
scientific knowledge has deprived parts of the earlier books of the
Bible of the historical value which was generally attributed to them by
our forefathers. The story of Creation in the Book of Genesis, unless we
play fast and loose either with words or with science, cannot be brought
into harmony with what we have learnt from geology. Its ethnological
statements are imperfect, if not sometimes inaccurate. The stories of
the Fall, of the Flood, and of the Tower of Babel, are incredible in
their present form. Some historical element may underlie many of the
traditions in the first eleven chapters in that book, but this we cannot
hope to recover." Canon Bonney proceeded to say of the New Testament
also, that "the Gospels are not so far as we know, strictly
contemporaneous records, so we must admit the possibility of variations
and even inaccuracies in details being introduced by oral tradition."
The Canon thinks the interval too short for these importations to be
serious, but that any question of this kind is left open proves the Age
of Reason fully upon us. Reason alone can determine how many texts are
as spurious as the three heavenly witnesses (i John v. 7), and like
it "serious" enough to have cost good men their lives, and persecutors
their charities. When men interpolate, it is because they believe their
interpolation seriously needed. It will be seen by a note in Part II. of
the work, that Paine calls attention to an interpolation introduced into
the first American edition without indication of its being an editorial
footnote. This footnote was: "The book of Luke was carried by a majority
of one only. Vide Moshelm's Ecc. History." Dr. Priestley, then in
America, answered Paine's work, and in quoting less than a page from the
"Age of Reason" he made three alterations,—one of which changed "church
mythologists" into "Christian mythologists,"—and also raised the
editorial footnote into the text, omitting the reference to Mosheim.
Having done this, Priestley writes: "As to the gospel of Luke being
carried by a majority of one only, it is a legend, if not of Mr. Paine's
own invention, of no better authority whatever." And so on with further
castigation of the author for what he never wrote, and which he himself
(Priestley) was the unconscious means of introducing into the text
within the year of Paine's publication.
If this could be done, unintentionally by a conscientious and exact man,
and one not unfriendly to Paine, if such a writer as Priestley could
make four mistakes in citing half a page, it will appear not very
wonderful when I state that in a modern popular edition of "The Age
of Reason," including both parts, I have noted about five hundred
deviations from the original. These were mainly the accumulated efforts
of friendly editors to improve Paine's grammar or spelling; some were
misprints, or developed out of such; and some resulted from the sale
in London of a copy of Part Second surreptitiously made from the
manuscript. These facts add significance to Paine's footnote (itself
altered in some editions!), in which he says: "If this has happened
within such a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of printing,
which prevents the alteration of copies individually; what may not have
happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no printing,
and when any man who could write, could make a written copy, and call it
an original, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John."
Nothing appears to me more striking, as an illustration of the
far-reaching effects of traditional prejudice, than the errors into
which some of our ablest contemporary scholars have fallen by reason of
their not having studied Paine. Professor Huxley, for instance, speaking
of the freethinkers of the eighteenth century, admires the acuteness,
common sense, wit, and the broad humanity of the best of them, but says
"there is rarely much to be said for their work as an example of the
adequate treatment of a grave and difficult investigation," and that
they shared with their adversaries "to the full the fatal weakness of
a priori philosophizing." [NOTE: Science and Christian Tradition, p.
18 (Lon. ed., 1894).] Professor Huxley does not name Paine, evidently
because he knows nothing about him. Yet Paine represents the
turning-point of the historical freethinking movement; he renounced the
'a priori' method, refused to pronounce anything impossible outside
pure mathematics, rested everything on evidence, and really founded the
Huxleyan school. He plagiarized by anticipation many things from the
rationalistic leaders of our time, from Strauss and Baur (being the
first to expatiate on "Christian Mythology"), from Renan (being the
first to attempt recovery of the human Jesus), and notably from Huxley,
who has repeated Paine's arguments on the untrustworthiness of the
biblical manuscripts and canon, on the inconsistencies of the narratives
of Christ's resurrection, and various other points. None can be more
loyal to the memory of Huxley than the present writer, and it is even
because of my sense of his grand leadership that he is here mentioned as
a typical instance of the extent to which the very elect of free-thought
may be unconsciously victimized by the phantasm with which they are
contending. He says that Butler overthrew freethinkers of the eighteenth
century type, but Paine was of the nineteenth century type; and it was
precisely because of his critical method that he excited more animosity
than his deistical predecessors. He compelled the apologists to defend
the biblical narratives in detail, and thus implicitly acknowledge
the tribunal of reason and knowledge to which they were summoned. The
ultimate answer by police was a confession of judgment. A hundred years
ago England was suppressing Paine's works, and many an honest Englishman
has gone to prison for printing and circulating his "Age of Reason."
The same views are now freely expressed; they are heard in the seats of
learning, and even in the Church Congress; but the suppression of Paine,
begun by bigotry and ignorance, is continued in the long indifference of
the representatives of our Age of Reason to their pioneer and founder.
It is a grievous loss to them and to their cause. It is impossible to
understand the religious history of England, and of America, without
studying the phases of their evolution represented in the writings
of Thomas Paine, in the controversies that grew out of them with such
practical accompaniments as the foundation of the Theophilanthropist
Church in Paris and New York, and of the great rationalist wing of
Quakerism in America.
Whatever may be the case with scholars in our time, those of Paine's
time took the "Age of Reason" very seriously indeed. Beginning with
the learned Dr. Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, a large number of
learned men replied to Paine's work, and it became a signal for the
commencement of those concessions, on the part of theology, which have
continued to our time; and indeed the so-called "Broad Church" is to
some extent an outcome of "The Age of Reason." It would too much enlarge
this Introduction to cite here the replies made to Paine (thirty-six are
catalogued in the British Museum), but it may be remarked that they
were notably free, as a rule, from the personalities that raged in
the pulpits. I must venture to quote one passage from his very learned
antagonist, the Rev. Gilbert Wakefield, B.A., "late Fellow of Jesus
College, Cambridge." Wakefield, who had resided in London during all the
Paine panic, and was well acquainted with the slanders uttered against
the author of "Rights of Man," indirectly brands them in answering
Paine's argument that the original and traditional unbelief of the Jews,
among whom the alleged miracles were wrought, is an important evidence
against them. The learned divine writes:
"But the subject before us admits of further illustration from the
example of Mr. Paine himself. In this country, where his opposition to
the corruptions of government has raised him so many adversaries,
and such a swarm of unprincipled hirelings have exerted themselves in
blackening his character and in misrepresenting all the transactions
and incidents of his life, will it not be a most difficult, nay an
impossible task, for posterity, after a lapse of 1700 years, if such a
wreck of modern literature as that of the ancient, should intervene, to
identify the real circumstances, moral and civil, of the man? And will
a true historian, such as the Evangelists, be credited at that future
period against such a predominant incredulity, without large and
mighty accessions of collateral attestation? And how transcendently
extraordinary, I had almost said miraculous, will it be estimated
by candid and reasonable minds, that a writer whose object was a
melioration of condition to the common people, and their deliverance
from oppression, poverty, wretchedness, to the numberless blessings of
upright and equal government, should be reviled, persecuted, and burned
in effigy, with every circumstance of insult and execration, by these
very objects of his benevolent intentions, in every corner of the
kingdom?" After the execution of Louis XVI., for whose life Paine
pleaded so earnestly,—while in England he was denounced as an
accomplice in the deed,—he devoted himself to the preparation of a
Constitution, and also to gathering up his religious compositions and
adding to them. This manuscript I suppose to have been prepared in what
was variously known as White's Hotel or Philadelphia House, in Paris,
No. 7 Passage des Petits Peres. This compilation of early and fresh
manuscripts (if my theory be correct) was labelled, "The Age of Reason,"
and given for translation to Francois Lanthenas in March 1793. It is
entered, in Qudrard (La France Literaire) under the year 1793, but with
the title "L'Age de la Raison" instead of that which it bore in
1794, "Le Siecle de la Raison." The latter, printed "Au Burcau de
l'imprimerie, rue du Theatre-Francais, No. 4," is said to be by "Thomas
Paine, Citoyen et cultivateur de l'Amerique septentrionale, secretaire
du Congres du departement des affaires etrangeres pendant la guerre
d'Amerique, et auteur des ouvrages intitules: LA SENS COMMUN et LES
DROITS DE L'HOMME."
When the Revolution was advancing to increasing terrors, Paine,
unwilling to participate in the decrees of a Convention whose sole legal
function was to frame a Constitution, retired to an old mansion
and garden in the Faubourg St. Denis, No. 63. Mr. J.G. Alger, whose
researches in personal details connected with the Revolution are
original and useful, recently showed me in the National Archives
at Paris, some papers connected with the trial of Georgeit, Paine's
landlord, by which it appears that the present No. 63 is not, as I had
supposed, the house in which Paine resided. Mr. Alger accompanied me to
the neighborhood, but we were not able to identify the house. The
arrest of Georgeit is mentioned by Paine in his essay on "Forgetfulness"
(Writings, iii., 319). When his trial came on one of the charges was
that he had kept in his house "Paine and other Englishmen,"—Paine
being then in prison,—but he (Georgeit) was acquitted of the paltry
accusations brought against him by his Section, the "Faubourg du Nord."
This Section took in the whole east side of the Faubourg St. Denis,
whereas the present No. 63 is on the west side. After Georgeit (or
Georger) had been arrested, Paine was left alone in the large mansion
(said by Rickman to have been once the hotel of Madame de Pompadour),
and it would appear, by his account, that it was after the execution
(October 31, 1793) Of his friends the Girondins, and political comrades,
that he felt his end at hand, and set about his last literary bequest
to the world,—"The Age of Reason,"—in the state in which it has since
appeared, as he is careful to say. There was every probability, during
the months in which he wrote (November and December 1793) that he would
be executed. His religious testament was prepared with the blade of
the guillotine suspended over him,—a fact which did not deter pious
mythologists from portraying his death-bed remorse for having written
the book.
In editing Part I. of "The Age of Reason," I follow closely the first
edition, which was printed by Barrois in Paris from the manuscript, no
doubt under the superintendence of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine, on
his way to the Luxembourg, had confided it. Barlow was an American
ex-clergyman, a speculator on whose career French archives cast an
unfavorable light, and one cannot be certain that no liberties were
taken with Paine's proofs.
I may repeat here what I have stated in the outset of my editorial work
on Paine that my rule is to correct obvious misprints, and also any
punctuation which seems to render the sense less clear. And to that I
will now add that in following Paine's quotations from the Bible I have
adopted the Plan now generally used in place of his occasionally too
extended writing out of book, chapter, and verse.
Paine was imprisoned in the Luxembourg on December 28, 1793, and
released on November 4, 1794. His liberation was secured by his old
friend, James Monroe (afterwards President), who had succeeded his
(Paine's) relentless enemy, Gouverneur Morris, as American Minister in
Paris. He was found by Monroe more dead than alive from semi-starvation,
cold, and an abscess contracted in prison, and taken to the Minister's
own residence. It was not supposed that he could survive, and he owed
his life to the tender care of Mr. and Mrs. Monroe. It was while thus
a prisoner in his room, with death still hovering over him, that Paine
wrote Part Second of "The Age of Reason."
The work was published in London by H.D. Symonds on October 25, 1795,
and claimed to be "from the Author's manuscript." It is marked as
"Entered at Stationers Hall," and prefaced by an apologetic note of
"The Bookseller to the Public," whose commonplaces about avoiding both
prejudice and partiality, and considering "both sides," need not be
quoted. While his volume was going through the press in Paris, Paine
heard of the publication in London, which drew from him the following
hurried note to a London publisher, no doubt Daniel Isaacs Eaton:
"SIR,—I have seen advertised in the London papers the second Edition
[part] of the Age of Reason, printed, the advertisement says, from the
Author's Manuscript, and entered at Stationers Hall. I have never sent
any manuscript to any person. It is therefore a forgery to say it is
printed from the author's manuscript; and I suppose is done to give the
Publisher a pretence of Copy Right, which he has no title to.
"I send you a printed copy, which is the only one I have sent to London.
I wish you to make a cheap edition of it. I know not by what means any
copy has got over to London. If any person has made a manuscript copy
I have no doubt but it is full of errors. I wish you would talk to Mr.
——- upon this subject as I wish to know by what means this trick has
been played, and from whom the publisher has got possession of any copy.
"T. PAINE.
"PARIS, December 4, 1795"
Eaton's cheap edition appeared January 1, 1796, with the above letter on
the reverse of the title. The blank in the note was probably "Symonds"
in the original, and possibly that publisher was imposed upon. Eaton,
already in trouble for printing one of Paine's political pamphlets, fled
to America, and an edition of the "Age of Reason" was issued under a new
title; no publisher appears; it is said to be "printed for, and sold by
all the Booksellers in Great Britain and Ireland." It is also said to
be "By Thomas Paine, author of several remarkable performances." I have
never found any copy of this anonymous edition except the one in my
possession. It is evidently the edition which was suppressed by the
prosecution of Williams for selling a copy of it.
A comparison with Paine's revised edition reveals a good many clerical
and verbal errors in Symonds, though few that affect the sense. The
worst are in the preface, where, instead of "1793," the misleading
date "1790" is given as the year at whose close Paine completed Part
First,—an error that spread far and wide and was fastened on by his
calumnious American "biographer," Cheetham, to prove his inconsistency.
The editors have been fairly demoralized by, and have altered in
different ways, the following sentence of the preface in Symonds: "The
intolerant spirit of religious persecution had transferred itself into
politics; the tribunals, styled Revolutionary, supplied the place of the
Inquisition; and the Guillotine of the State outdid the Fire and Faggot
of the Church." The rogue who copied this little knew the care with
which Paine weighed words, and that he would never call persecution
"religious," nor connect the guillotine with the "State," nor concede
that with all its horrors it had outdone the history of fire and faggot.
What Paine wrote was: "The intolerant spirit of church persecution had
transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, styled Revolutionary,
supplied the place of an Inquisition and the Guillotine, of the Stake."
An original letter of Paine, in the possession of Joseph Cowen, ex-M.P.,
which that gentleman permits me to bring to light, besides being one
of general interest makes clear the circumstances of the original
publication. Although the name of the correspondent does not appear on
the letter, it was certainly written to Col. John Fellows of New
York, who copyrighted Part I. of the "Age of Reason." He published the
pamphlets of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine confided his manuscript on his
way to prison. Fellows was afterwards Paine's intimate friend in New
York, and it was chiefly due to him that some portions of the author's
writings, left in manuscript to Madame Bonneville while she was a
freethinker were rescued from her devout destructiveness after her
return to Catholicism. The letter which Mr. Cowen sends me, is dated at
Paris, January 20, 1797.
"SIR,—Your friend Mr. Caritat being on the point of his departure for
America, I make it the opportunity of writing to you. I received two
letters from you with some pamphlets a considerable time past, in which
you inform me of your entering a copyright of the first part of the Age
of Reason: when I return to America we will settle for that matter.
"As Doctor Franklin has been my intimate friend for thirty years past
you will naturally see the reason of my continuing the connection with
his grandson. I printed here (Paris) about fifteen thousand of the
second part of the Age of Reason, which I sent to Mr. F[ranklin] Bache.
I gave him notice of it in September 1795 and the copy-right by my
own direction was entered by him. The books did not arrive till April
following, but he had advertised it long before.
"I sent to him in August last a manuscript letter of about 70 pages,
from me to Mr. Washington to be printed in a pamphlet. Mr. Barnes of
Philadelphia carried the letter from me over to London to be forwarded
to America. It went by the ship Hope, Cap: Harley, who since his return
from America told me that he put it into the post office at New York for
Bache. I have yet no certain account of its publication. I mention this
that the letter may be enquired after, in case it has not been published
or has not arrived to Mr. Bache. Barnes wrote to me, from London 29
August informing me that he was offered three hundred pounds sterling
for the manuscript. The offer was refused because it was my intention it
should not appear till it appeared in America, as that, and not England
was the place for its operation.
"You ask me by your letter to Mr. Caritat for a list of my several
works, in order to publish a collection of them. This is an undertaking
I have always reserved for myself. It not only belongs to me of right,
but nobody but myself can do it; and as every author is accountable (at
least in reputation) for his works, he only is the person to do it. If
he neglects it in his life-time the case is altered. It is my intention
to return to America in the course of the present year. I shall then
[do] it by subscription, with historical notes. As this work will employ
many persons in different parts of the Union, I will confer with you
upon the subject, and such part of it as will suit you to
undertake, will be at your choice. I have sustained so much loss, by
disinterestedness and inattention to money matters, and by accidents,
that I am obliged to look closer to my affairs than I have done. The
printer (an Englishman) whom I employed here to print the second part
of 'the Age of Reason' made a manuscript copy of the work while he was
printing it, which he sent to London and sold. It was by this means that
an edition of it came out in London.
"We are waiting here for news from America of the state of the federal
elections. You will have heard long before this reaches you that the
French government has refused to receive Mr. Pinckney as minister. While
Mr. Monroe was minister he had the opportunity of softening matters with
this government, for he was in good credit with them tho' they were in
high indignation at the infidelity of the Washington Administration.
It is time that Mr. Washington retire, for he has played off so much
prudent hypocrisy between France and England that neither government
believes anything he says.
"Your friend, etc.,
"THOMAS PAINE."
It would appear that Symonds' stolen edition must have got ahead of that
sent by Paine to Franklin Bache, for some of its errors continue in
all modern American editions to the present day, as well as in those of
England. For in England it was only the shilling edition—that
revised by Paine—which was suppressed. Symonds, who ministered to the
half-crown folk, and who was also publisher of replies to Paine, was
left undisturbed about his pirated edition, and the new Society for the
suppression of Vice and Immorality fastened on one Thomas Williams, who
sold pious tracts but was also convicted (June 24, 1797) of having sold
one copy of the "Age of Reason." Erskine, who had defended Paine at his
trial for the "Rights of Man," conducted the prosecution of Williams.
He gained the victory from a packed jury, but was not much elated by
it, especially after a certain adventure on his way to Lincoln's Inn. He
felt his coat clutched and beheld at his feet a woman bathed in tears.
She led him into the small book-shop of Thomas Williams, not yet called
up for judgment, and there he beheld his victim stitching tracts in a
wretched little room, where there were three children, two suffering
with Smallpox. He saw that it would be ruin and even a sort of murder to
take away to prison the husband, who was not a freethinker, and lamented
his publication of the book, and a meeting of the Society which had
retained him was summoned. There was a full meeting, the Bishop of
London (Porteus) in the chair. Erskine reminded them that Williams was
yet to be brought up for sentence, described the scene he had witnessed,
and Williams' penitence, and, as the book was now suppressed, asked
permission to move for a nominal sentence. Mercy, he urged, was a part
of the Christianity they were defending. Not one of the Society took his
side,—not even "philanthropic" Wilberforce—and Erskine threw up his
brief. This action of Erskine led the Judge to give Williams only a year
in prison instead of the three he said had been intended.
While Williams was in prison the orthodox colporteurs were circulating
Erskine's speech on Christianity, but also an anonymous sermon "On the
Existence and Attributes of the Deity," all of which was from Paine's
"Age of Reason," except a brief "Address to the Deity" appended.
This picturesque anomaly was repeated in the circulation of Paine's
"Discourse to the Theophilanthropists" (their and the author's names
removed) under the title of "Atheism Refuted." Both of these pamphlets
are now before me, and beside them a London tract of one page just sent
for my spiritual benefit. This is headed "A Word of Caution." It begins
by mentioning the "pernicious doctrines of Paine," the first being "that
there is No GOD" (sic,) then proceeds to adduce evidences of divine
existence taken from Paine's works. It should be added that this one
dingy page is the only "survival" of the ancient Paine effigy in the
tract form which I have been able to find in recent years, and to this
no Society or Publisher's name is attached.
The imprisonment of Williams was the beginning of a thirty years' war
for religious liberty in England, in the course of which occurred many
notable events, such as Eaton receiving homage in his pillory at Choring
Cross, and the whole Carlile family imprisoned,—its head imprisoned
more than nine years for publishing the "Age of Reason." This last
victory of persecution was suicidal. Gentlemen of wealth, not adherents
of Paine, helped in setting Carlile up in business in Fleet Street,
where free-thinking publications have since been sold without
interruption. But though Liberty triumphed in one sense, the "Age of
Reason." remained to some extent suppressed among those whose attention
it especially merited. Its original prosecution by a Society for the
Suppression of Vice (a device to, relieve the Crown) amounted to a libel
upon a morally clean book, restricting its perusal in families; and the
fact that the shilling book sold by and among humble people was alone
prosecuted, diffused among the educated an equally false notion that the
"Age of Reason" was vulgar and illiterate. The theologians, as we
have seen, estimated more justly the ability of their antagonist,
the collaborator of Franklin, Rittenhouse, and Clymer, on whom the
University of Pennsylvania had conferred the degree of Master of
Arts,—but the gentry confused Paine with the class described by Burke
as "the swinish multitude." Skepticism, or its free utterance, was
temporarily driven out of polite circles by its complication with the
out-lawed vindicator of the "Rights of Man." But that long combat has
now passed away. Time has reduced the "Age of Reason" from a flag of
popular radicalism to a comparatively conservative treatise, so far as
its negations are concerned. An old friend tells me that in his youth
he heard a sermon in which the preacher declared that "Tom Paine was
so wicked that he could not be buried; his bones were thrown into a box
which was bandied about the world till it came to a button-manufacturer;
and now Paine is travelling round the world in the form of buttons!"
This variant of the Wandering Jew myth may now be regarded as
unconscious homage to the author whose metaphorical bones may be
recognized in buttons now fashionable, and some even found useful in
holding clerical vestments together.
But the careful reader will find in Paine's "Age of Reason" something
beyond negations, and in conclusion I will especially call attention to
the new departure in Theism indicated in a passage corresponding to a
famous aphorism of Kant, indicated by a note in Part II. The discovery
already mentioned, that Part I. was written at least fourteen years
before Part II., led me to compare the two; and it is plain that while
the earlier work is an amplification of Newtonian Deism, based on the
phenomena of planetary motion, the work of 1795 bases belief in God on
"the universal display of himself in the works of the creation and by
that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition
to do good ones." This exaltation of the moral nature of man to be the
foundation of theistic religion, though now familiar, was a hundred
years ago a new affirmation; it has led on a conception of deity
subversive of last-century deism, it has steadily humanized religion,
and its ultimate philosophical and ethical results have not yet been
reached.
CHAPTER I - THE AUTHOR'S PROFESSION OF FAITH.
IT has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my thoughts
upon religion; I am well aware of the difficulties that attend the
subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to a more advanced
period of life. I intended it to be the last offering I should make to
my fellow-citizens of all nations, and that at a time when the purity of
the motive that induced me to it could not admit of a question, even by
those who might disapprove the work.
The circumstance that has now taken place in France, of the total
abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of everything
appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles
of faith, has not only precipitated my intention, but rendered a work
of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest, in the general wreck of
superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology, we
lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true.
As several of my colleagues, and others of my fellow-citizens of France,
have given me the example of making their voluntary and individual
profession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do this with all that
sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man communicates with
itself.
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this
life.
I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties
consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our
fellow-creatures happy.
But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in
addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the
things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by
the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the
Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my
own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or
Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify
and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe
otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to
mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally
faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in
disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not
believe.
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express
it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far
corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe
his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared
himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade
of a priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify himself for
that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive anything more
destructive to morality than this?
Soon after I had published the pamphlet COMMON SENSE, in America, I saw
the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government
would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. The
adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it had taken place,
whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited, by
pains and penalties, every discussion upon established creeds, and upon
first principles of religion, that until the system of government should
be changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before
the world; but that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the
system of religion would follow. Human inventions and priest-craft
would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed, and
unadulterated belief of one God, and no more.
CHAPTER II - OF MISSIONS AND REVELATIONS.
EVERY national church or religion has established itself by pretending
some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The
Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles
and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not
open to every man alike.
Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation,
or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God
to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came
by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the
Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches
accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them
all.
As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I
proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word
'revelation.' Revelation when applied to religion, means something
communicated immediately from God to man.
No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a
communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that
something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any
other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to
a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it
ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the
first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they
are not obliged to believe it.
It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation
that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing.
Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After
this, it is only an account of something which that person says was
a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to
believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same
manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word
for it that it was made to him.
When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables
of the commandments from the hand of God, they were not obliged to
believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling
them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian
telling me so, the commandments carrying no internal evidence of
divinity with them. They contain some good moral precepts such as any
man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could produce himself,
without having recourse to supernatural intervention. [NOTE: It is,
however, necessary to except the declamation which says that God 'visits
the sins of the fathers upon the children'. This is contrary to every
principle of moral justice.—Author.]
When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven, and brought to
Mahomet by an angel, the account comes to near the same kind of hearsay
evidence and second hand authority as the former. I did not see the
angel myself, and therefore I have a right not to believe it.
When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave
out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and
that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I
have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a
much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even
this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves.
It is only reported by others that they said so. It is hearsay upon
hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such evidence.
It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given
to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born when the
heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and
that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story.
Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology
were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new
thing at that time to believe a man to have been celestially begotten;
the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar
opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with
hundreds; the story therefore had nothing in it either new, wonderful,
or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among
the people called Gentiles, or mythologists, and it was those people
only that believed it. The Jews, who had kept strictly to the belief of
one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology,
never credited the story.
It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian
Church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct
incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed
founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then
followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which
was about twenty or thirty thousand. The statue of Mary succeeded the
statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes changed into the
canonization of saints. The Mythologists had gods for everything; the
Christian Mythologists had saints for everything. The church became as
crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome
was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the
idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes
of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to
abolish the amphibious fraud.
CHAPTER III - CONCERNING THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST, AND HIS HISTORY.
NOTHING that is here said can apply, even with the most distant
disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and
an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practiced was of the
most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality had been
preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many years
before, by the Quakers since, and by many good men in all ages, it has
not been exceeded by any.
Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or
anything else. Not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his
writing. The history of him is altogether the work of other people; and
as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the
necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. His historians, having
brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to
take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story
must have fallen to the ground.
The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told, exceeds
everything that went before it. The first part, that of the miraculous
conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and therefore
the tellers of this part of the story had this advantage, that though
they might not be credited, they could not be detected. They could not
be expected to prove it, because it was not one of those things that
admitted of proof, and it was impossible that the person of whom it was
told could prove it himself.
But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension
through the air, is a thing very different, as to the evidence it admits
of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. The resurrection
and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public
and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or
the sun at noon day, to all Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody
is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it
should be equal to all, and universal; and as the public visibility of
this last related act was the only evidence that could give sanction
to the former part, the whole of it falls to the ground, because that
evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small number of persons,
not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole
world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called
upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did not believe the
resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular
and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is
equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.
It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The story,
so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and
imposition stamped upon the face of it. Who were the authors of it is
as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us to be assured that the
books in which the account is related were written by the persons whose
names they bear. The best surviving evidence we now have respecting this
affair is the Jews. They are regularly descended from the people who
lived in the time this resurrection and ascension is said to have
happened, and they say 'it is not true.' It has long appeared to me a
strange inconsistency to cite the Jews as a proof of the truth of the
story. It is just the same as if a man were to say, I will prove the
truth of what I have told you, by producing the people who say it is
false.
That such a person as Jesus Christ existed, and that he was crucified,
which was the mode of execution at that day, are historical relations
strictly within the limits of probability. He preached most excellent
morality, and the equality of man; but he preached also against the
corruptions and avarice of the Jewish priests, and this brought upon
him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of priest-hood. The
accusation which those priests brought against him was that of sedition
and conspiracy against the Roman government, to which the Jews were
then subject and tributary; and it is not improbable that the Roman
government might have some secret apprehension of the effects of his
doctrine as well as the Jewish priests; neither is it improbable that
Jesus Christ had in contemplation the delivery of the Jewish nation
from the bondage of the Romans. Between the two, however, this virtuous
reformer and revolutionist lost his life. [NOTE: The French work has
here: "However this may be, for one or the other of these suppositions
this virtuous reformer, this revolutionist, too little imitated,
too much forgotten, too much misunderstood, lost his life."—Editor.
(Conway)]
CHAPTER IV - OF THE BASES OF CHRISTIANITY.
IT is upon this plain narrative of facts, together with another case I
am going to mention, that the Christian mythologists, calling themselves
the Christian Church, have erected their fable, which for absurdity
and extravagance is not exceeded by anything that is to be found in the
mythology of the ancients.
The ancient mythologists tell us that the race of Giants made war
against Jupiter, and that one of them threw a hundred rocks against him
at one throw; that Jupiter defeated him with thunder, and confined
him afterwards under Mount Etna; and that every time the Giant turns
himself, Mount Etna belches fire. It is here easy to see that the
circumstance of the mountain, that of its being a volcano, suggested the
idea of the fable; and that the fable is made to fit and wind itself up
with that circumstance.
The Christian mythologists tell that their Satan made war against the
Almighty, who defeated him, and confined him afterwards, not under a
mountain, but in a pit. It is here easy to see that the first fable
suggested the idea of the second; for the fable of Jupiter and the
Giants was told many hundred years before that of Satan.
Thus far the ancient and the Christian mythologists differ very little
from each other. But the latter have contrived to carry the matter much
farther. They have contrived to connect the fabulous part of the story
of Jesus Christ with the fable originating from Mount Etna; and, in
order to make all the parts of the story tie together, they have taken
to their aid the traditions of the Jews; for the Christian mythology is
made up partly from the ancient mythology, and partly from the Jewish
traditions.
The Christian mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit, were
obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is
then introduced into the garden of Eden in the shape of a snake, or a
serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar conversation with
Eve, who is no ways surprised to hear a snake talk; and the issue of
this tete-a-tate is, that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the
eating of that apple damns all mankind.
After giving Satan this triumph over the whole creation, one would have
supposed that the church mythologists would have been kind enough to
send him back again to the pit, or, if they had not done this, that they
would have put a mountain upon him, (for they say that their faith
can remove a mountain) or have put him under a mountain, as the former
mythologists had done, to prevent his getting again among the women,
and doing more mischief. But instead of this, they leave him at large,
without even obliging him to give his parole. The secret of which is,
that they could not do without him; and after being at the trouble of
making him, they bribed him to stay. They promised him ALL the Jews, ALL
the Turks by anticipation, nine-tenths of the world beside, and Mahomet
into the bargain. After this, who can doubt the bountifulness of the
Christian Mythology?
Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in heaven, in which none
of the combatants could be either killed or wounded—put Satan into
the pit—let him out again—given him a triumph over the whole
creation—damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, there Christian
mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together. They represent
this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both God and
man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on purpose to be
sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing [NOTE: The French
work has: "yielding to an unrestrained appetite."—Editor.] had eaten an
apple.
CHAPTER V - EXAMINATION IN DETAIL OF THE PRECEDING BASES.
PUTTING aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity,
or detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to
an examination of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a story more
derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom, more
contradictory to his power, than this story is.
In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the inventors were
under the necessity of giving to the being whom they call Satan a power
equally as great, if not greater, than they attribute to the Almighty.
They have not only given him the power of liberating himself from
the pit, after what they call his fall, but they have made that power
increase afterwards to infinity. Before this fall they represent him
only as an angel of limited existence, as they represent the rest.
After his fall, he becomes, by their account, omnipresent. He exists
everywhere, and at the same time. He occupies the whole immensity of
space.
Not content with this deification of Satan, they represent him as
defeating by stratagem, in the shape of an animal of the creation,
all the power and wisdom of the Almighty. They represent him as having
compelled the Almighty to the direct necessity either of surrendering
the whole of the creation to the government and sovereignty of this
Satan, or of capitulating for its redemption by coming down upon earth,
and exhibiting himself upon a cross in the shape of a man.
Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is, had
they represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit himself
on a cross in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his
new transgression, the story would have been less absurd, less
contradictory. But, instead of this they make the transgressor triumph,
and the Almighty fall.
That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived very good
lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime) is what I have no
doubt of. In the first place, they were educated to believe it, and they
would have believed anything else in the same manner. There are also
many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they conceived
to be the infinite love of God to man, in making a sacrifice of himself,
that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred them from
examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the story. The more
unnatural anything is, the more is it capable of becoming the object
of dismal admiration. [NOTE: The French work has "blind and" preceding
dismal.—Editor.]
CHAPTER VI - OF THE TRUE THEOLOGY.
BUT if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not
present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation
prepared to receive us the instant we are born—a world furnished to our
hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour
down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep
or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these
things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can
our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and
suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that
nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator?
I know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it would be
paying too great a compliment to their credulity to forbear it on that
account. The times and the subject demand it to be done. The suspicion
that the theory of what is called the Christian church is fabulous, is
becoming very extensive in all countries; and it will be a consolation
to men staggering under that suspicion, and doubting what to believe and
what to disbelieve, to see the subject freely investigated. I therefore
pass on to an examination of the books called the Old and the New
Testament.
CHAPTER VII - EXAMINATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
THESE books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelations, (which,
by the bye, is a book of riddles that requires a revelation to explain
it) are, we are told, the word of God. It is, therefore, proper for
us to know who told us so, that we may know what credit to give to the
report. The answer to this question is, that nobody can tell, except
that we tell one another so. The case, however, historically appears to
be as follows:
When the church mythologists established their system, they collected
all the writings they could find, and managed them as they pleased. It
is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings
as now appear under the name of the Old and the New Testament, are in
the same state in which those collectors say they found them; or whether
they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up.
Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of the
collection they had made, should be the WORD OF GOD, and which should
not. They rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful, such as
the books called the Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority of
votes, were voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all
the people since calling themselves Christians had believed otherwise;
for the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other. Who the
people were that did all this, we know nothing of. They call themselves
by the general name of the Church; and this is all we know of the
matter.
As we have no other external evidence or authority for believing these
books to be the word of God, than what I have mentioned, which is no
evidence or authority at all, I come, in the next place, to examine the
internal evidence contained in the books themselves.
In the former part of this essay, I have spoken of revelation. I now
proceed further with that subject, for the purpose of applying it to the
books in question.
Revelation is a communication of something, which the person, to whom
that thing is revealed, did not know before. For if I have done a thing,
or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have done it, or
seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it.
Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth of
which man is himself the actor or the witness; and consequently all the
historical and anecdotal part of the Bible, which is almost the whole of
it, is not within the meaning and compass of the word revelation, and,
therefore, is not the word of God.
When Samson ran off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did so, (and
whether he did or not is nothing to us,) or when he visited his Delilah,
or caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has revelation to do
with these things? If they were facts, he could tell them himself; or
his secretary, if he kept one, could write them, if they were worth
either telling or writing; and if they were fictions, revelation could
not make them true; and whether true or not, we are neither the better
nor the wiser for knowing them. When we contemplate the immensity of
that Being, who directs and governs the incomprehensible WHOLE, of which
the utmost ken of human sight can discover but a part, we ought to feel
shame at calling such paltry stories the word of God.
As to the account of the creation, with which the book of Genesis opens,
it has all the appearance of being a tradition which the Israelites had
among them before they came into Egypt; and after their departure from
that country, they put it at the head of their history, without telling,
as it is most probable that they did not know, how they came by it.
The manner in which the account opens, shows it to be traditionary. It
begins abruptly. It is nobody that speaks. It is nobody that hears. It
is addressed to nobody. It has neither first, second, nor third person.
It has every criterion of being a tradition. It has no voucher. Moses
does not take it upon himself by introducing it with the formality that
he uses on other occasions, such as that of saying, "The Lords spake
unto Moses, saying."
Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the creation, I am at
a loss to conceive. Moses, I believe, was too good a judge of such
subjects to put his name to that account. He had been educated among
the Egyptians, who were a people as well skilled in science, and
particularly in astronomy, as any people of their day; and the silence
and caution that Moses observes, in not authenticating the account, is
a good negative evidence that he neither told it nor believed it.—The
case is, that every nation of people has been world-makers, and the
Israelites had as much right to set up the trade of world-making as any
of the rest; and as Moses was not an Israelite, he might not chose to
contradict the tradition. The account, however, is harmless; and this is
more than can be said for many other parts of the Bible.
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the
cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with
which more than half the Bible [NOTE: It must be borne in mind that by
the "Bible" Paine always means the Old Testament alone.—Editor.] is
filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a
demon, than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that
has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I
sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.
We scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but what
deserves either our abhorrence or our contempt, till we come to the
miscellaneous parts of the Bible. In the anonymous publications, the
Psalms, and the Book of Job, more particularly in the latter, we find
a great deal of elevated sentiment reverentially expressed of the power
and benignity of the Almighty; but they stand on no higher rank than
many other compositions on similar subjects, as well before that time as
since.
The Proverbs which are said to be Solomon's, though most probably
a collection, (because they discover a knowledge of life, which his
situation excluded him from knowing) are an instructive table of ethics.
They are inferior in keenness to the proverbs of the Spaniards, and not
more wise and oeconomical than those of the American Franklin.
All the remaining parts of the Bible, generally known by the name of the
Prophets, are the works of the Jewish poets and itinerant preachers,
who mixed poetry, anecdote, and devotion together—and those works still
retain the air and style of poetry, though in translation. [NOTE: As
there are many readers who do not see that a composition is poetry,
unless it be in rhyme, it is for their information that I add this note.
Poetry consists principally in two things—imagery and composition. The
composition of poetry differs from that of prose in the manner of mixing
long and short syllables together. Take a long syllable out of a line
of poetry, and put a short one in the room of it, or put a long syllable
where a short one should be, and that line will lose its poetical
harmony. It will have an effect upon the line like that of misplacing a
note in a song.
The imagery in those books called the Prophets appertains altogether to
poetry. It is fictitious, and often extravagant, and not admissible in
any other kind of writing than poetry.
To show that these writings are composed in poetical numbers, I will
take ten syllables, as they stand in the book, and make a line of the
same number of syllables, (heroic measure) that shall rhyme with the
last word. It will then be seen that the composition of those books is
poetical measure. The instance I shall first produce is from Isaiah:—
"Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth
'T is God himself that calls attention forth.
Another instance I shall quote is from the mournful Jeremiah, to which
I shall add two other lines, for the purpose of carrying out the figure,
and showing the intention of the poet.
"O, that mine head were waters and mine eyes
Were fountains flowing like the liquid skies;
Then would I give the mighty flood release
And weep a deluge for the human race."—Author.]
There is not, throughout the whole book called the Bible, any word that
describes to us what we call a poet, nor any word that describes what we
call poetry. The case is, that the word prophet, to which a later times
have affixed a new idea, was the Bible word for poet, and the word
'propesying' meant the art of making poetry. It also meant the art of
playing poetry to a tune upon any instrument of music.
We read of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns—of prophesying
with harps, with psalteries, with cymbals, and with every other
instrument of music then in fashion. Were we now to speak of prophesying
with a fiddle, or with a pipe and tabor, the expression would have no
meaning, or would appear ridiculous, and to some people contemptuous,
because we have changed the meaning of the word.
We are told of Saul being among the prophets, and also that he
prophesied; but we are not told what they prophesied, nor what he
prophesied. The case is, there was nothing to tell; for these prophets
were a company of musicians and poets, and Saul joined in the concert,
and this was called prophesying.
The account given of this affair in the book called Samuel, is, that
Saul met a company of prophets; a whole company of them! coming down
with a psaltery, a tabret, a pipe, and a harp, and that they prophesied,
and that he prophesied with them. But it appears afterwards, that Saul
prophesied badly, that is, he performed his part badly; for it is said
that an "evil spirit from God [NOTE: As thos; men who call themselves
divines and commentators are very fond of puzzling one another, I leave
them to contest the meaning of the first part of the phrase, that of an
evil spirit of God. I keep to my text. I keep to the meaning of the word
prophesy.—Author.] came upon Saul, and he prophesied."
Now, were there no other passage in the book called the Bible, than
this, to demonstrate to us that we have lost the original meaning of the
word prophesy, and substituted another meaning in its place, this alone
would be sufficient; for it is impossible to use and apply the word
prophesy, in the place it is here used and applied, if we give to it the
sense which later times have affixed to it. The manner in which it is
here used strips it of all religious meaning, and shews that a man might
then be a prophet, or he might Prophesy, as he may now be a poet or a
musician, without any regard to the morality or the immorality of his
character. The word was originally a term of science, promiscuously
applied to poetry and to music, and not restricted to any subject upon
which poetry and music might be exercised.
Deborah and Barak are called prophets, not because they predicted
anything, but because they composed the poem or song that bears their
name, in celebration of an act already done. David is ranked among the
prophets, for he was a musician, and was also reputed to be (though
perhaps very erroneously) the author of the Psalms. But Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob are not called prophets; it does not appear from any accounts
we have, that they could either sing, play music, or make poetry.
We are told of the greater and the lesser prophets. They might as well
tell us of the greater and the lesser God; for there cannot be degrees
in prophesying consistently with its modern sense. But there are degrees
in poetry, and there-fore the phrase is reconcilable to the case, when
we understand by it the greater and the lesser poets.
It is altogether unnecessary, after this, to offer any observations upon
what those men, styled prophets, have written. The axe goes at once
to the root, by showing that the original meaning of the word has been
mistaken, and consequently all the inferences that have been drawn from
those books, the devotional respect that has been paid to them, and
the laboured commentaries that have been written upon them, under
that mistaken meaning, are not worth disputing about.—In many things,
however, the writings of the Jewish poets deserve a better fate than
that of being bound up, as they now are, with the trash that accompanies
them, under the abused name of the Word of God.
If we permit ourselves to conceive right ideas of things, we must
necessarily affix the idea, not only of unchangeableness, but of the
utter impossibility of any change taking place, by any means or accident
whatever, in that which we would honour with the name of the Word of
God; and therefore the Word of God cannot exist in any written or human
language.
The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is
subject, the want of an universal language which renders translation
necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the
mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of
wilful alteration, are of themselves evidences that human language,
whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of
God.—The Word of God exists in something else.
Did the book called the Bible excel in purity of ideas and expression
all the books now extant in the world, I would not take it for my
rule of faith, as being the Word of God; because the possibility would
nevertheless exist of my being imposed upon. But when I see throughout
the greatest part of this book scarcely anything but a history of the
grossest vices, and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible
tales, I cannot dishonour my Creator by calling it by his name.
CHAPTER VIII - OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
THUS much for the Bible; I now go on to the book called the New
Testament. The new Testament! that is, the 'new' Will, as if there could
be two wills of the Creator.
Had it been the object or the intention of Jesus Christ to establish a
new religion, he would undoubtedly have written the system himself, or
procured it to be written in his life time. But there is no publication
extant authenticated with his name. All the books called the New
Testament were written after his death. He was a Jew by birth and by
profession; and he was the son of God in like manner that every other
person is; for the Creator is the Father of All.
The first four books, called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, do not give
a history of the life of Jesus Christ, but only detached anecdotes of
him. It appears from these books, that the whole time of his being a
preacher was not more than eighteen months; and it was only during this
short time that those men became acquainted with him. They make mention
of him at the age of twelve years, sitting, they say, among the Jewish
doctors, asking and answering them questions. As this was several years
before their acquaintance with him began, it is most probable they had
this anecdote from his parents. From this time there is no account of
him for about sixteen years. Where he lived, or how he employed himself
during this interval, is not known. Most probably he was working at his
father's trade, which was that of a carpenter. It does not appear that
he had any school education, and the probability is, that he could not
write, for his parents were extremely poor, as appears from their not
being able to pay for a bed when he was born. [NOTE: One of the few
errors traceable to Paine's not having a Bible at hand while writing
Part I. There is no indication that the family was poor, but the reverse
may in fact be inferred.—Editor.]
It is somewhat curious that the three persons whose names are the
most universally recorded were of very obscure parentage. Moses was a
foundling; Jesus Christ was born in a stable; and Mahomet was a mule
driver. The first and the last of these men were founders of different
systems of religion; but Jesus Christ founded no new system. He called
men to the practice of moral virtues, and the belief of one God. The
great trait in his character is philanthropy.
The manner in which he was apprehended shows that he was not much known,
at that time; and it shows also that the meetings he then held with
his followers were in secret; and that he had given over or suspended
preaching publicly. Judas could no otherways betray him than by giving
information where he was, and pointing him out to the officers that went
to arrest him; and the reason for employing and paying Judas to do this
could arise only from the causes already mentioned, that of his not
being much known, and living concealed.
The idea of his concealment, not only agrees very ill with his reputed
divinity, but associates with it something of pusillanimity; and
his being betrayed, or in other words, his being apprehended, on the
information of one of his followers, shows that he did not intend to be
apprehended, and consequently that he did not intend to be crucified.
The Christian mythologists tell us that Christ died for the sins of the
world, and that he came on Purpose to die. Would it not then have been
the same if he had died of a fever or of the small pox, of old age, or
of anything else?
The declaratory sentence which, they say, was passed upon Adam, in case
he ate of the apple, was not, that thou shalt surely be crucified, but,
thou shale surely die. The sentence was death, and not the manner of
dying. Crucifixion, therefore, or any other particular manner of dying,
made no part of the sentence that Adam was to suffer, and consequently,
even upon their own tactic, it could make no part of the sentence that
Christ was to suffer in the room of Adam. A fever would have done as
well as a cross, if there was any occasion for either.
This sentence of death, which, they tell us, was thus passed upon Adam,
must either have meant dying naturally, that is, ceasing to live, or
have meant what these mythologists call damnation; and consequently,
the act of dying on the part of Jesus Christ, must, according to their
system, apply as a prevention to one or other of these two things
happening to Adam and to us.
That it does not prevent our dying is evident, because we all die;
and if their accounts of longevity be true, men die faster since the
crucifixion than before: and with respect to the second explanation,
(including with it the natural death of Jesus Christ as a substitute
for the eternal death or damnation of all mankind,) it is impertinently
representing the Creator as coming off, or revoking the sentence, by a
pun or a quibble upon the word death. That manufacturer of, quibbles,
St. Paul, if he wrote the books that bear his name, has helped this
quibble on by making another quibble upon the word Adam. He makes there
to be two Adams; the one who sins in fact, and suffers by proxy;
the other who sins by proxy, and suffers in fact. A religion thus
interlarded with quibble, subterfuge, and pun, has a tendency to
instruct its professors in the practice of these arts. They acquire the
habit without being aware of the cause.
If Jesus Christ was the being which those mythologists tell us he
was, and that he came into this world to suffer, which is a word they
sometimes use instead of 'to die,' the only real suffering he could have
endured would have been 'to live.' His existence here was a state
of exilement or transportation from heaven, and the way back to his
original country was to die.—In fine, everything in this strange system
is the reverse of what it pretends to be. It is the reverse of truth,
and I become so tired of examining into its inconsistencies and
absurdities, that I hasten to the conclusion of it, in order to proceed
to something better.
How much, or what parts of the books called the New Testament, were
written by the persons whose names they bear, is what we can know
nothing of, neither are we certain in what language they were originally
written. The matters they now contain may be classed under two heads:
anecdote, and epistolary correspondence.
The four books already mentioned, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are
altogether anecdotal. They relate events after they had taken place.
They tell what Jesus Christ did and said, and what others did and said
to him; and in several instances they relate the same event differently.
Revelation is necessarily out of the question with respect to those
books; not only because of the disagreement of the writers, but because
revelation cannot be applied to the relating of facts by the persons
who saw them done, nor to the relating or recording of any discourse
or conversation by those who heard it. The book called the Acts of the
Apostles (an anonymous work) belongs also to the anecdotal part.
All the other parts of the New Testament, except the book of enigmas,
called the Revelations, are a collection of letters under the name of
epistles; and the forgery of letters has been such a common practice
in the world, that the probability is at least equal, whether they are
genuine or forged. One thing, however, is much less equivocal, which
is, that out of the matters contained in those books, together with
the assistance of some old stories, the church has set up a system of
religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name
it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended
imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.
The invention of a purgatory, and of the releasing of souls therefrom,
by prayers, bought of the church with money; the selling of pardons,
dispensations, and indulgences, are revenue laws, without bearing that
name or carrying that appearance. But the case nevertheless is, that
those things derive their origin from the proxysm of the crucifixion,
and the theory deduced therefrom, which was, that one person could stand
in the place of another, and could perform meritorious services for him.
The probability, therefore, is, that the whole theory or doctrine of
what is called the redemption (which is said to have been accomplished
by the act of one person in the room of another) was originally
fabricated on purpose to bring forward and build all those secondary
and pecuniary redemptions upon; and that the passages in the books upon
which the idea of theory of redemption is built, have been manufactured
and fabricated for that purpose. Why are we to give this church credit,
when she tells us that those books are genuine in every part, any more
than we give her credit for everything else she has told us; or for the
miracles she says she has performed? That she could fabricate writings
is certain, because she could write; and the composition of the writings
in question, is of that kind that anybody might do it; and that she did
fabricate them is not more inconsistent with probability, than that she
should tell us, as she has done, that she could and did work miracles.
Since, then, no external evidence can, at this long distance of time,
be produced to prove whether the church fabricated the doctrine called
redemption or not, (for such evidence, whether for or against, would be
subject to the same suspicion of being fabricated,) the case can only be
referred to the internal evidence which the thing carries of itself; and
this affords a very strong presumption of its being a fabrication. For
the internal evidence is, that the theory or doctrine of redemption
has for its basis an idea of pecuniary justice, and not that of moral
justice.
If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me
in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for
me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is
changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if
the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to
destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is
then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.
This single reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is
founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which
another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again
with the system of second redemptions, obtained through the means of
money given to the church for pardons, the probability is that the same
persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories;
and that, in truth, there is no such thing as redemption; that it is
fabulous; and that man stands in the same relative condition with his
Maker he ever did stand, since man existed; and that it is his greatest
consolation to think so.
Let him believe this, and he will live more consistently and morally,
than by any other system. It is by his being taught to contemplate
himself as an out-law, as an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as
one thrown as it were on a dunghill, at an immense distance from his
Creator, and who must make his approaches by creeping, and cringing to
intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous disregard
for everything under the name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or
turns what he calls devout. In the latter case, he consumes his life
in grief, or the affectation of it. His prayers are reproaches. His
humility is ingratitude. He calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth
a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name of
vanities. He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF
REASON; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a
system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human
reason, as if man could give reason to himself.
Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility, and this contempt for
human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions. He finds fault
with everything. His selfishness is never satisfied; his ingratitude is
never at an end. He takes on himself to direct the Almighty what to do,
even in the govemment of the universe. He prays dictatorially. When
it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for
sunshine. He follows the same idea in everything that he prays for;
for what is the amount of all his prayers, but an attempt to make the
Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he
were to say—thou knowest not so well as I.
CHAPTER IX - IN WHAT THE TRUE REVELATION CONSISTS.
BUT some perhaps will say—Are we to have no word of God—no revelation?
I answer yes. There is a Word of God; there is a revelation.
THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word,
which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh
universally to man.
Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of
being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.
The idea that God sent Jesus Christ to publish, as they say, the glad
tidings to all nations, from one end of the earth unto the other, is
consistent only with the ignorance of those who know nothing of the
extent of the world, and who believed, as those world-saviours
believed, and continued to believe for several centuries, (and that in
contradiction to the discoveries of philosophers and the experience of
navigators,) that the earth was flat like a trencher; and that a man
might walk to the end of it.
But how was Jesus Christ to make anything known to all nations? He could
speak but one language, which was Hebrew; and there are in the world
several hundred languages. Scarcely any two nations speak the same
language, or understand each other; and as to translations, every
man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to
translate from one language into another, not only without losing a
great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense; and
besides all this, the art of printing was wholly unknown at the time
Christ lived.
It is always necessary that the means that are to accomplish any end
be equal to the accomplishment of that end, or the end cannot be
accomplished. It is in this that the difference between finite and
infinite power and wisdom discovers itself. Man frequently fails in
accomplishing his end, from a natural inability of the power to the
purpose; and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power properly.
But it is impossible for infinite power and wisdom to fail as man
faileth. The means it useth are always equal to the end: but human
language, more especially as there is not an universal language, is
incapable of being used as an universal means of unchangeable and
uniform information; and therefore it is not the means that God useth in
manifesting himself universally to man.
It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a
word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language,
independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various
as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read.
It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it
cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the
will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself
from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and
to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary
for man to know of God.
Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of
the creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the
unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do
we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with
which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it
in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In
fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the
scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the
Creation.
CHAPTER X - CONCERNING GOD, AND THE LIGHTS CAST ON HIS EXISTENCE
AND ATTRIBUTES BY THE BIBLE.
THE only idea man can affix to the name of God, is that of a first
cause, the cause of all things. And, incomprehensibly difficult as it is
for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief
of it, from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it. It is
difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end;
but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the
power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but
it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time.
In like manner of reasoning, everything we behold carries in itself the
internal evidence that it did not make itself. Every man is an evidence
to himself, that he did not make himself; neither could his father make
himself, nor his grandfather, nor any of his race; neither could any
tree, plant, or animal make itself; and it is the conviction arising
from this evidence, that carries us on, as it were, by necessity, to
the belief of a first cause eternally existing, of a nature totally
different to any material existence we know of, and by the power of
which all things exist; and this first cause, man calls God.
It is only by the exercise of reason, that man can discover God. Take
away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything;
and in this case it would be just as consistent to read even the book
called the Bible to a horse as to a man. How then is it that those
people pretend to reject reason?
Almost the only parts in the book called the Bible, that convey to
us any idea of God, are some chapters in Job, and the 19th Psalm; I
recollect no other. Those parts are true deistical compositions;
for they treat of the Deity through his works. They take the book of
Creation as the word of God; they refer to no other book; and all the
inferences they make are drawn from that volume.
I insert in this place the 19th Psalm, as paraphrased into English verse
by Addison. I recollect not the prose, and where I write this I have not
the opportunity of seeing it:
The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue etherial sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great original proclaim.
The unwearied sun, from day to day,
Does his Creator's power display,
And publishes to every land
The work of an Almighty hand.
Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the list'ning earth
Repeats the story of her birth;
Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets, in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.
What though in solemn silence all
Move round this dark terrestrial ball
What though no real voice, nor sound,
Amidst their radiant orbs be found,
In reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine,
THE HAND THAT MADE US IS DIVINE.
What more does man want to know, than that the hand or power that made
these things is divine, is omnipotent? Let him believe this, with the
force it is impossible to repel if he permits his reason to act, and his
rule of moral life will follow of course.
The allusions in job have all of them the same tendency with this Psalm;
that of deducing or proving a truth that would be otherwise unknown,
from truths already known.
I recollect not enough of the passages in Job to insert them correctly;
but there is one that occurs to me that is applicable to the subject I
am speaking upon. "Canst thou by searching find out God; canst thou find
out the Almighty to perfection?"
I know not how the printers have pointed this passage, for I keep no
Bible; but it contains two distinct questions that admit of distinct
answers.
First, Canst thou by searching find out God? Yes. Because, in the first
place, I know I did not make myself, and yet I have existence; and by
searching into the nature of other things, I find that no other thing
could make itself; and yet millions of other things exist; therefore it
is, that I know, by positive conclusion resulting from this search, that
there is a power superior to all those things, and that power is God.
Secondly, Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? No. Not only
because the power and wisdom He has manifested in the structure of the
Creation that I behold is to me incomprehensible; but because even this
manifestation, great as it is is probably but a small display of that
immensity of power and wisdom, by which millions of other worlds, to me
invisible by their distance, were created and continue to exist.
It is evident that both of these questions were put to the reason of the
person to whom they are supposed to have been addressed; and it is only
by admitting the first question to be answered affirmatively, that the
second could follow. It would have been unnecessary, and even absurd, to
have put a second question, more difficult than the first, if the first
question had been answered negatively. The two questions have different
objects; the first refers to the existence of God, the second to his
attributes. Reason can discover the one, but it falls infinitely short
in discovering the whole of the other.
I recollect not a single passage in all the writings ascribed to the men
called apostles, that conveys any idea of what God is. Those writings
are chiefly controversial; and the gloominess of the subject they dwell
upon, that of a man dying in agony on a cross, is better suited to the
gloomy genius of a monk in a cell, by whom it is not impossible they
were written, than to any man breathing the open air of the Creation.
The only passage that occurs to me, that has any reference to the works
of God, by which only his power and wisdom can be known, is related to
have been spoken by Jesus Christ, as a remedy against distrustful care.
"Behold the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin."
This, however, is far inferior to the allusions in Job and in the 19th
Psalm; but it is similar in idea, and the modesty of the imagery is
correspondent to the modesty of the man.
CHAPTER XI - OF THE THEOLOGY OF THE CHRISTIANS; AND THE TRUE THEOLOGY.
As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of
atheism; a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a
man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of man-ism with
but little deism, and is as near to atheism as twilight is to darkness.
It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls
a redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth
and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious or an irreligious
eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade.
The effect of this obscurity has been that of turning everything upside
down, and representing it in reverse; and among the revolutions it has
thus magically produced, it has made a revolution in Theology.
That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle
of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of
the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and
is the true theology.
As to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the study of
human opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is not the
study of God himself in the works that he has made, but in the works
or writings that man has made; and it is not among the least of the
mischiefs that the Christian system has done to the world, that it
has abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a
beautiful innocent, to distress and reproach, to make room for the hag
of superstition.
The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the church admits to be
more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the
book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the
original system of theology. The internal evidence of those orations
proves to a demonstration that the study and contemplation of the works
of creation, and of the power and wisdom of God revealed and manifested
in those works, made a great part of the religious devotion of the
times in which they were written; and it was this devotional study and
contemplation that led to the discovery of the principles upon which
what are now called Sciences are established; and it is to the discovery
of these principles that almost all the Arts that contribute to the
convenience of human life owe their existence. Every principal art has
some science for its parent, though the person who mechanically performs
the work does not always, and but very seldom, perceive the connection.
It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences 'human
inventions;' it is only the application of them that is human.
Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and
unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed.
Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.
For example: Every person who looks at an almanack sees an account when
an eclipse will take place, and he sees also that it never fails to
take place according to the account there given. This shows that man is
acquainted with the laws by which the heavenly bodies move. But it would
be something worse than ignorance, were any church on earth to say that
those laws are an human invention.
It would also be ignorance, or something worse, to say that the
scientific principles, by the aid of which man is enabled to calculate
and foreknow when an eclipse will take place, are an human invention.
Man cannot invent any thing that is eternal and immutable; and the
scientific principles he employs for this purpose must, and are, of
necessity, as eternal and immutable as the laws by which the heavenly
bodies move, or they could not be used as they are to ascertain the time
when, and the manner how, an eclipse will take place.
The scientific principles that man employs to obtain the foreknowledge
of an eclipse, or of any thing else relating to the motion of the
heavenly bodies, are contained chiefly in that part of science that
is called trigonometry, or the properties of a triangle, which, when
applied to the study of the heavenly bodies, is called astronomy;
when applied to direct the course of a ship on the ocean, it is called
navigation; when applied to the construction of figures drawn by a rule
and compass, it is called geometry; when applied to the construction
of plans of edifices, it is called architecture; when applied to the
measurement of any portion of the surface of the earth, it is called
land-surveying. In fine, it is the soul of science. It is an eternal
truth: it contains the mathematical demonstration of which man speaks,
and the extent of its uses are unknown.
It may be said, that man can make or draw a triangle, and therefore a
triangle is an human invention.
But the triangle, when drawn, is no other than the image of the
principle: it is a delineation to the eye, and from thence to the mind,
of a principle that would otherwise be imperceptible. The triangle does
not make the principle, any more than a candle taken into a room that
was dark, makes the chairs and tables that before were invisible. All
the properties of a triangle exist independently of the figure, and
existed before any triangle was drawn or thought of by man. Man had no
more to do in the formation of those properties or principles, than
he had to do in making the laws by which the heavenly bodies move; and
therefore the one must have the same divine origin as the other.
In the same manner as, it may be said, that man can make a triangle,
so also, may it be said, he can make the mechanical instrument called
a lever. But the principle by which the lever acts, is a thing distinct
from the instrument, and would exist if the instrument did not; it
attaches itself to the instrument after it is made; the instrument,
therefore, can act no otherwise than it does act; neither can all the
efforts of human invention make it act otherwise. That which, in all
such cases, man calls the effect, is no other than the principle itself
rendered perceptible to the senses.
Since, then, man cannot make principles, from whence did he gain a
knowledge of them, so as to be able to apply them, not only to things on
earth, but to ascertain the motion of bodies so immensely distant from
him as all the heavenly bodies are? From whence, I ask, could he gain
that knowledge, but from the study of the true theology?
It is the structure of the universe that has taught this knowledge to
man. That structure is an ever-existing exhibition of every principle
upon which every part of mathematical science is founded. The offspring
of this science is mechanics; for mechanics is no other than the
principles of science applied practically. The man who proportions the
several parts of a mill uses the same scientific principles as if he had
the power of constructing an universe, but as he cannot give to matter
that invisible agency by which all the component parts of the immense
machine of the universe have influence upon each other, and act in
motional unison together, without any apparent contact, and to which
man has given the name of attraction, gravitation, and repulsion, he
supplies the place of that agency by the humble imitation of teeth and
cogs. All the parts of man's microcosm must visibly touch. But could
he gain a knowledge of that agency, so as to be able to apply it in
practice, we might then say that another canonical book of the word of
God had been discovered.
If man could alter the properties of the lever, so also could he alter
the properties of the triangle: for a lever (taking that sort of lever
which is called a steel-yard, for the sake of explanation) forms, when
in motion, a triangle. The line it descends from, (one point of that
line being in the fulcrum,) the line it descends to, and the chord of
the arc, which the end of the lever describes in the air, are the
three sides of a triangle. The other arm of the lever describes also a
triangle; and the corresponding sides of those two triangles, calculated
scientifically, or measured geometrically,—and also the sines,
tangents, and secants generated from the angles, and geometrically
measured,—have the same proportions to each other as the different
weights have that will balance each other on the lever, leaving the
weight of the lever out of the case.
It may also be said, that man can make a wheel and axis; that he can put
wheels of different magnitudes together, and produce a mill. Still the
case comes back to the same point, which is, that he did not make the
principle that gives the wheels those powers. This principle is as
unalterable as in the former cases, or rather it is the same principle
under a different appearance to the eye.
The power that two wheels of different magnitudes have upon each other
is in the same proportion as if the semi-diameter of the two wheels
were joined together and made into that kind of lever I have described,
suspended at the part where the semi-diameters join; for the two wheels,
scientifically considered, are no other than the two circles generated
by the motion of the compound lever.
It is from the study of the true theology that all our knowledge of
science is derived; and it is from that knowledge that all the arts have
originated.
The Almighty lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the
structure of the universe, has invited man to study and to imitation. It
is as if he had said to the inhabitants of this globe that we call ours,
"I have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and I have rendered the
starry heavens visible, to teach him science and the arts. He can now
provide for his own comfort, AND LEARN FROM MY MUNIFICENCE TO ALL, TO BE
KIND TO EACH OTHER."
Of what use is it, unless it be to teach man something, that his eye is
endowed with the power of beholding, to an incomprehensible distance, an
immensity of worlds revolving in the ocean of space? Or of what use is
it that this immensity of worlds is visible to man? What has man to do
with the Pleiades, with Orion, with Sirius, with the star he calls the
north star, with the moving orbs he has named Saturn, Jupiter, Mars,
Venus, and Mercury, if no uses are to follow from their being visible?
A less power of vision would have been sufficient for man, if the
immensity he now possesses were given only to waste itself, as it were,
on an immense desert of space glittering with shows.
It is only by contemplating what he calls the starry heavens, as the
book and school of science, that he discovers any use in their being
visible to him, or any advantage resulting from his immensity of
vision. But when he contemplates the subject in this light, he sees an
additional motive for saying, that nothing was made in vain; for in vain
would be this power of vision if it taught man nothing.
CHAPTER XII - THE EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANISM ON EDUCATION; PROPOSED
REFORMS.
As the Christian system of faith has made a revolution in theology, so
also has it made a revolution in the state of learning. That which is
now called learning, was not learning originally. Learning does not
consist, as the schools now make it consist, in the knowledge of
languages, but in the knowledge of things to which language gives names.
The Greeks were a learned people, but learning with them did not consist
in speaking Greek, any more than in a Roman's speaking Latin, or a
Frenchman's speaking French, or an Englishman's speaking English. From
what we know of the Greeks, it does not appear that they knew or studied
any language but their own, and this was one cause of their becoming
so learned; it afforded them more time to apply themselves to better
studies. The schools of the Greeks were schools of science and
philosophy, and not of languages; and it is in the knowledge of the
things that science and philosophy teach that learning consists.
Almost all the scientific learning that now exists, came to us from the
Greeks, or the people who spoke the Greek language. It therefore
became necessary to the people of other nations, who spoke a different
language, that some among them should learn the Greek language, in order
that the learning the Greeks had might be made known in those nations,
by translating the Greek books of science and philosophy into the mother
tongue of each nation.
The study, therefore, of the Greek language (and in the same manner for
the Latin) was no other than the drudgery business of a linguist; and
the language thus obtained, was no other than the means, or as it were
the tools, employed to obtain the learning the Greeks had. It made no
part of the learning itself; and was so distinct from it as to make it
exceedingly probable that the persons who had studied Greek sufficiently
to translate those works, such for instance as Euclid's Elements, did
not understand any of the learning the works contained.
As there is now nothing new to be learned from the dead languages, all
the useful books being already translated, the languages are become
useless, and the time expended in teaching and in learning them is
wasted. So far as the study of languages may contribute to the progress
and communication of knowledge (for it has nothing to do with the
creation of knowledge) it is only in the living languages that new
knowledge is to be found; and certain it is, that, in general, a
youth will learn more of a living language in one year, than of a dead
language in seven; and it is but seldom that the teacher knows much of
it himself. The difficulty of learning the dead languages does not arise
from any superior abstruseness in the languages themselves, but in their
being dead, and the pronunciation entirely lost. It would be the same
thing with any other language when it becomes dead. The best Greek
linguist that now exists does not understand Greek so well as a Grecian
plowman did, or a Grecian milkmaid; and the same for the Latin,
compared with a plowman or a milkmaid of the Romans; and with respect
to pronunciation and idiom, not so well as the cows that she milked. It
would therefore be advantageous to the state of learning to abolish
the study of the dead languages, and to make learning consist, as it
originally did, in scientific knowledge.
The apology that is sometimes made for continuing to teach the dead
languages is, that they are taught at a time when a child is not capable
of exerting any other mental faculty than that of memory. But this
is altogether erroneous. The human mind has a natural disposition to
scientific knowledge, and to the things connected with it. The first and
favourite amusement of a child, even before it begins to play, is that
of imitating the works of man. It builds bouses with cards or sticks; it
navigates the little ocean of a bowl of water with a paper boat; or dams
the stream of a gutter, and contrives something which it calls a mill;
and it interests itself in the fate of its works with a care that
resembles affection. It afterwards goes to school, where its genius is
killed by the barren study of a dead language, and the philosopher is
lost in the linguist.
But the apology that is now made for continuing to teach the dead
languages, could not be the cause at first of cutting down learning to
the narrow and humble sphere of linguistry; the cause therefore must be
sought for elsewhere. In all researches of this kind, the best evidence
that can be produced, is the internal evidence the thing carries with
itself, and the evidence of circumstances that unites with it; both of
which, in this case, are not difficult to be discovered.
Putting then aside, as matter of distinct consideration, the outrage
offered to the moral justice of God, by supposing him to make the
innocent suffer for the guilty, and also the loose morality and low
contrivance of supposing him to change himself into the shape of a man,
in order to make an excuse to himself for not executing his supposed
sentence upon Adam; putting, I say, those things aside as matter of
distinct consideration, it is certain that what is called the
christian system of faith, including in it the whimsical account of
the creation—the strange story of Eve, the snake, and the apple—the
amphibious idea of a man-god—the corporeal idea of the death of a
god—the mythological idea of a family of gods, and the christian
system of arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three, are all
irreconcilable, not only to the divine gift of reason, that God has
given to man, but to the knowledge that man gains of the power and
wisdom of God by the aid of the sciences, and by studying the structure
of the universe that God has made.
The setters up, therefore, and the advocates of the Christian system of
faith, could not but foresee that the continually progressive knowledge
that man would gain by the aid of science, of the power and wisdom of
God, manifested in the structure of the universe, and in all the works
of creation, would militate against, and call into question, the truth
of their system of faith; and therefore it became necessary to their
purpose to cut learning down to a size less dangerous to their project,
and this they effected by restricting the idea of learning to the dead
study of dead languages.
They not only rejected the study of science out of the christian
schools, but they persecuted it; and it is only within about the last
two centuries that the study has been revived. So late as 1610, Galileo,
a Florentine, discovered and introduced the use of telescopes, and by
applying them to observe the motions and appearances of the heavenly
bodies, afforded additional means for ascertaining the true structure
of the universe. Instead of being esteemed for these discoveries, he was
sentenced to renounce them, or the opinions resulting from them, as a
damnable heresy. And prior to that time Virgilius was condemned to be
burned for asserting the antipodes, or in other words, that the earth
was a globe, and habitable in every part where there was land; yet the
truth of this is now too well known even to be told. [NOTE: I cannot
discover the source of this statement concerning the ancient author
whose Irish name Feirghill was Latinized into Virgilius. The British
Museum possesses a copy of the work (Decalogiunt) which was the pretext
of the charge of heresy made by Boniface, Archbishop of Mayence, against
Virgilius, Abbot—bishop of Salzburg, These were leaders of the
rival "British" and "Roman parties, and the British champion made a
countercharge against Boniface of irreligious practices." Boniface had
to express a "regret," but none the less pursued his rival. The Pope,
Zachary II., decided that if his alleged "doctrine, against God and his
soul, that beneath the earth there is another world, other men, or
sun and moon," should be acknowledged by Virgilius, he should be
excommunicated by a Council and condemned with canonical sanctions.
Whatever may have been the fate involved by condemnation with "canonicis
sanctionibus," in the middle of the eighth century, it did not fall on
Virgilius. His accuser, Boniface, was martyred, 755, and it is probable
that Virgilius harmonied his Antipodes with orthodoxy. The gravamen of
the heresy seems to have been the suggestion that there were men not of
the progeny of Adam. Virgilius was made Bishop of Salzburg in 768. He
bore until his death, 789, the curious title, "Geometer and Solitary,"
or "lone wayfarer" (Solivagus). A suspicion of heresy clung to his
memory until 1233, when he was raised by Gregory IX, to sainthood beside
his accuser, St. Boniface.—Editor. (Conway)]
If the belief of errors not morally bad did no mischief, it would make
no part of the moral duty of man to oppose and remove them. There was no
moral ill in believing the earth was flat like a trencher, any more than
there was moral virtue in believing it was round like a globe; neither
was there any moral ill in believing that the Creator made no other
world than this, any more than there was moral virtue in believing that
he made millions, and that the infinity of space is filled with worlds.
But when a system of religion is made to grow out of a supposed system
of creation that is not true, and to unite itself therewith in a manner
almost inseparable therefrom, the case assumes an entirely different
ground. It is then that errors, not morally bad, become fraught with
the same mischiefs as if they were. It is then that the truth, though
otherwise indifferent itself, becomes an essential, by becoming the
criterion that either confirms by corresponding evidence, or denies by
contradictory evidence, the reality of the religion itself. In this
view of the case it is the moral duty of man to obtain every possible
evidence that the structure of the heavens, or any other part of
creation affords, with respect to systems of religion. But this, the
supporters or partizans of the christian system, as if dreading the
result, incessantly opposed, and not only rejected the sciences, but
persecuted the professors. Had Newton or Descartes lived three or four
hundred years ago, and pursued their studies as they did, it is most
probable they would not have lived to finish them; and had Franklin
drawn lightning from the clouds at the same time, it would have been at
the hazard of expiring for it in flames.
Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals, but,
however unwilling the partizans of the Christian system may be to
believe or to acknowledge it, it is nevertheless true, that the age of
ignorance commenced with the Christian system. There was more knowledge
in the world before that period, than for many centuries afterwards; and
as to religious knowledge, the Christian system, as already said,
was only another species of mythology; and the mythology to which it
succeeded, was a corruption of an ancient system of theism. [NOTE by
Paine: It is impossible for us now to know at what time the heathen
mythology began; but it is certain, from the internal evidence that it
carries, that it did not begin in the same state or condition in which
it ended. All the gods of that mythology, except Saturn, were of modern
invention. The supposed reign of Saturn was prior to that which is
called the heathen mythology, and was so far a species of theism that
it admitted the belief of only one God. Saturn is supposed to have
abdicated the govemment in favour of his three sons and one daughter,
Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune, and Juno; after this, thousands of other
gods and demigods were imaginarily created, and the calendar of gods
increased as fast as the calendar of saints and the calendar of courts
have increased since.
All the corruptions that have taken place, in theology and in religion
have been produced by admitting of what man calls 'revealed religion.'
The mythologists pretended to more revealed religion than the christians
do. They had their oracles and their priests, who were supposed to
receive and deliver the word of God verbally on almost all occasions.
Since then all corruptions down from Moloch to modern predestinarianism,
and the human sacrifices of the heathens to the christian sacrifice of
the Creator, have been produced by admitting of what is called revealed
religion, the most effectual means to prevent all such evils and
impositions is, not to admit of any other revelation than that which is
manifested in the book of Creation., and to contemplate the Creation as
the only true and real word of God that ever did or ever will exist;
and every thing else called the word of God is fable and
imposition.—Author.]
It is owing to this long interregnum of science, and to no other cause,
that we have now to look back through a vast chasm of many hundred years
to the respectable characters we call the Ancients. Had the progression
of knowledge gone on proportionably with the stock that before existed,
that chasm would have been filled up with characters rising superior in
knowledge to each other; and those Ancients we now so much admire
would have appeared respectably in the background of the scene. But
the christian system laid all waste; and if we take our stand about
the beginning of the sixteenth century, we look back through that long
chasm, to the times of the Ancients, as over a vast sandy desert, in
which not a shrub appears to intercept the vision to the fertile hills
beyond.
It is an inconsistency scarcely possible to be credited, that any
thing should exist, under the name of a religion, that held it to be
irreligious to study and contemplate the structure of the universe that
God had made. But the fact is too well established to be denied. The
event that served more than any other to break the first link in this
long chain of despotic ignorance, is that known by the name of the
Reformation by Luther. From that time, though it does not appear to have
made any part of the intention of Luther, or of those who are called
Reformers, the Sciences began to revive, and Liberality, their
natural associate, began to appear. This was the only public good the
Reformation did; for, with respect to religious good, it might as well
not have taken place. The mythology still continued the same; and a
multiplicity of National Popes grew out of the downfall of the Pope of
Christendom.
CHAPTER XIII - COMPARISON OF CHRISTIANISM WITH THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS
INSPIRED BY NATURE.
HAVING thus shewn, from the internal evidence of things, the cause
that produced a change in the state of learning, and the motive for
substituting the study of the dead languages, in the place of the
Sciences, I proceed, in addition to the several observations already
made in the former part of this work, to compare, or rather to confront,
the evidence that the structure of the universe affords, with the
christian system of religion. But as I cannot begin this part better
than by referring to the ideas that occurred to me at an early part of
life, and which I doubt not have occurred in some degree to almost every
other person at one time or other, I shall state what those ideas were,
and add thereto such other matter as shall arise out of the subject,
giving to the whole, by way of preface, a short introduction.
My father being of the quaker profession, it was my good fortune to have
an exceedingly good moral education, and a tolerable stock of useful
learning. Though I went to the grammar school, I did not learn Latin,
not only because I had no inclination to learn languages, but because of
the objection the quakers have against the books in which the language
is taught. But this did not prevent me from being acquainted with the
subjects of all the Latin books used in the school.
The natural bent of my mind was to science. I had some turn, and
I believe some talent for poetry; but this I rather repressed than
encouraged, as leading too much into the field of imagination. As
soon as I was able, I purchased a pair of globes, and attended the
philosophical lectures of Martin and Ferguson, and became afterwards
acquainted with Dr. Bevis, of the society called the Royal Society, then
living in the Temple, and an excellent astronomer.
I had no disposition for what was called politics. It presented to
my mind no other idea than is contained in the word jockeyship. When,
therefore, I turned my thoughts towards matters of government, I had to
form a system for myself, that accorded with the moral and philosophic
principles in which I had been educated. I saw, or at least I thought I
saw, a vast scene opening itself to the world in the affairs of America;
and it appeared to me, that unless the Americans changed the plan they
were then pursuing, with respect to the government of England, and
declared themselves independent, they would not only involve themselves
in a multiplicity of new difficulties, but shut out the prospect that
was then offering itself to mankind through their means. It was from
these motives that I published the work known by the name of Common
Sense, which is the first work I ever did publish, and so far as I can
judge of myself, I believe I should never have been known in the world
as an author on any subject whatever, had it not been for the affairs
of America. I wrote Common Sense the latter end of the year 1775, and
published it the first of January, 1776. Independence was declared the
fourth of July following. [NOTE: The pamphlet Common Sense was first
advertised, as "just published," on January 10, 1776. His plea for the
Officers of Excise, written before leaving England, was printed, but not
published until 1793. Despite his reiterated assertion that Common Sense
was the first work he ever published the notion that he was "junius"
still finds some believers. An indirect comment on our Paine-Junians
may be found in Part 2 of this work where Paine says a man capable of
writing Homer "would not have thrown away his own fame by giving it to
another." It is probable that Paine ascribed the Letters of Junius to
Thomas Hollis. His friend F. Lanthenas, in his translation of the Age of
Reason (1794) advertises his translation of the Letters of Junius from
the English "(Thomas Hollis)." This he could hardly have done without
consultation with Paine. Unfortunately this translation of Junius cannot
be found either in the Bibliotheque Nationale or the British Museum, and
it cannot be said whether it contains any attempt at an identification
of Junius—Editor.]
Any person, who has made observations on the state and progress of the
human mind, by observing his own, can not but have observed, that there
are two distinct classes of what are called Thoughts; those that we
produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking, and those
that bolt into the mind of their own accord. I have always made it a
rule to treat those voluntary visitors with civility, taking care to
examine, as well as I was able, if they were worth entertaining; and it
is from them I have acquired almost all the knowledge that I have. As
to the learning that any person gains from school education, it serves
only, like a small capital, to put him in the way of beginning learning
for himself afterwards. Every person of learning is finally his own
teacher; the reason of which is, that principles, being of a distinct
quality to circumstances, cannot be impressed upon the memory; their
place of mental residence is the understanding, and they are never so
lasting as when they begin by conception. Thus much for the introductory
part.
From the time I was capable of conceiving an idea, and acting upon it
by reflection, I either doubted the truth of the christian system, or
thought it to be a strange affair; I scarcely knew which it was: but I
well remember, when about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon
read by a relation of mine, who was a great devotee of the church, upon
the subject of what is called Redemption by the death of the Son of God.
After the sermon was ended, I went into the garden, and as I was going
down the garden steps (for I perfectly recollect the spot) I revolted at
the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to myself that it was
making God Almighty act like a passionate man, that killed his son,
when he could not revenge himself any other way; and as I was sure a man
would be hanged that did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose
they preached such sermons. This was not one of those kind of thoughts
that had any thing in it of childish levity; it was to me a serious
reflection, arising from the idea I had that God was too good to do such
an action, and also too almighty to be under any necessity of doing it.
I believe in the same manner to this moment; and I moreover believe,
that any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind
of a child, cannot be a true system.
It seems as if parents of the christian profession were ashamed to tell
their children any thing about the principles of their religion. They
sometimes instruct them in morals, and talk to them of the goodness of
what they call Providence; for the Christian mythology has five deities:
there is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the God
Providence, and the Goddess Nature. But the christian story of God the
Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it, (for that
is the plain language of the story,) cannot be told by a parent to a
child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and
better, is making the story still worse; as if mankind could be improved
by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery, is
only making an excuse for the incredibility of it.
How different is this to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The
true deist has but one Deity; and his religion consists in contemplating
the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in
endeavouring to imitate him in every thing moral, scientifical, and
mechanical.
The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true Deism, in
the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the quakers: but
they have contracted themselves too much by leaving the works of God out
of their system. Though I reverence their philanthropy, I can not help
smiling at the conceit, that if the taste of a quaker could have been
consulted at the creation, what a silent and drab-colored creation it
would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a
bird been permitted to sing.
Quitting these reflections, I proceed to other matters. After I had
made myself master of the use of the globes, and of the orrery, [NOTE by
Paine: As this book may fall into the bands of persons who do not know
what an orrery is, it is for their information I add this note, as the
name gives no idea of the uses of the thing. The orrery has its name
from the person who invented it. It is a machinery of clock-work,
representing the universe in miniature: and in which the revolution of
the earth round itself and round the sun, the revolution of the moon
round the earth, the revolution of the planets round the sun, their
relative distances from the sun, as the center of the whole system,
their relative distances from each other, and their different
magnitudes, are represented as they really exist in what we call the
heavens.—Author.] and conceived an idea of the infinity of space, and
of the eternal divisibility of matter, and obtained, at least, a general
knowledge of what was called natural philosophy, I began to compare, or,
as I have before said, to confront, the internal evidence those things
afford with the christian system of faith.
Though it is not a direct article of the christian system that this
world that we inhabit is the whole of the habitable creation, yet it is
so worked up therewith, from what is called the Mosaic account of the
creation, the story of Eve and the apple, and the counterpart of that
story, the death of the Son of God, that to believe otherwise, that is,
to believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous
as what we call stars, renders the christian system of faith at once
little and ridiculous; and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the
air. The two beliefs can not be held together in the same mind; and he
who thinks that he believes both, has thought but little of either.
Though the belief of a plurality of worlds was familiar to the
ancients, it is only within the last three centuries that the extent and
dimensions of this globe that we inhabit have been ascertained. Several
vessels, following the tract of the ocean, have sailed entirely round
the world, as a man may march in a circle, and come round by the
contrary side of the circle to the spot he set out from. The circular
dimensions of our world, in the widest part, as a man would measure the
widest round of an apple, or a ball, is only twenty-five thousand and
twenty English miles, reckoning sixty-nine miles and an half to an
equatorial degree, and may be sailed round in the space of about three
years. [NOTE by Paine: Allowing a ship to sail, on an average, three
miles in an hour, she would sail entirely round the world in less than
one year, if she could sail in a direct circle, but she is obliged to
follow the course of the ocean.—Author.]
A world of this extent may, at first thought, appear to us to be
great; but if we compare it with the immensity of space in which it is
suspended, like a bubble or a balloon in the air, it is infinitely less
in proportion than the smallest grain of sand is to the size of
the world, or the finest particle of dew to the whole ocean, and is
therefore but small; and, as will be hereafter shown, is only one of a
system of worlds, of which the universal creation is composed.
It is not difficult to gain some faint idea of the immensity of space
in which this and all the other worlds are suspended, if we follow a
progression of ideas. When we think of the size or dimensions of, a
room, our ideas limit themselves to the walls, and there they stop.
But when our eye, or our imagination darts into space, that is, when
it looks upward into what we call the open air, we cannot conceive any
walls or boundaries it can have; and if for the sake of resting our
ideas we suppose a boundary, the question immediately renews itself, and
asks, what is beyond that boundary? and in the same manner, what beyond
the next boundary? and so on till the fatigued imagination returns and
says, there is no end. Certainly, then, the Creator was not pent for
room when he made this world no larger than it is; and we have to seek
the reason in something else.
If we take a survey of our own world, or rather of this, of which the
Creator has given us the use as our portion in the immense system of
creation, we find every part of it, the earth, the waters, and the air
that surround it, filled, and as it were crowded with life, down from
the largest animals that we know of to the smallest insects the naked
eye can behold, and from thence to others still smaller, and totally
invisible without the assistance of the microscope. Every tree, every
plant, every leaf, serves not only as an habitation, but as a world
to some numerous race, till animal existence becomes so exceedingly
refined, that the effluvia of a blade of grass would be food for
thousands.
Since then no part of our earth is left unoccupied, why is it to be
supposed that the immensity of space is a naked void, lying in eternal
waste? There is room for millions of worlds as large or larger than
ours, and each of them millions of miles apart from each other.
Having now arrived at this point, if we carry our ideas only one thought
further, we shall see, perhaps, the true reason, at least a very good
reason for our happiness, why the Creator, instead of making one immense
world, extending over an immense quantity of space, has preferred
dividing that quantity of matter into several distinct and separate
worlds, which we call planets, of which our earth is one. But before I
explain my ideas upon this subject, it is necessary (not for the sake
of those that already know, but for those who do not) to show what the
system of the universe is.
CHAPTER XIV - SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE.
THAT part of the universe that is called the solar system (meaning the
system of worlds to which our earth belongs, and of which Sol, or in
English language, the Sun, is the center) consists, besides the Sun, of
six distinct orbs, or planets, or worlds, besides the secondary bodies,
called the satellites, or moons, of which our earth has one that attends
her in her annual revolution round the Sun, in like manner as the
other satellites or moons, attend the planets or worlds to which they
severally belong, as may be seen by the assistance of the telescope.
The Sun is the center round which those six worlds or planets revolve at
different distances therefrom, and in circles concentric to each other.
Each world keeps constantly in nearly the same tract round the Sun, and
continues at the same time turning round itself, in nearly an upright
position, as a top turns round itself when it is spinning on the ground,
and leans a little sideways.
It is this leaning of the earth (23 1/2 degrees) that occasions summer
and winter, and the different length of days and nights. If the earth
turned round itself in a position perpendicular to the plane or level
of the circle it moves in round the Sun, as a top turns round when it
stands erect on the ground, the days and nights would be always of the
same length, twelve hours day and twelve hours night, and the season
would be uniformly the same throughout the year.
Every time that a planet (our earth for example) turns round itself, it
makes what we call day and night; and every time it goes entirely round
the Sun, it makes what we call a year, consequently our world turns
three hundred and sixty-five times round itself, in going once round the
Sun.
The names that the ancients gave to those six worlds, and which are
still called by the same names, are Mercury, Venus, this world that we
call ours, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They appear larger to the eye than
the stars, being many million miles nearer to our earth than any of the
stars are. The planet Venus is that which is called the evening star,
and sometimes the morning star, as she happens to set after, or rise
before the Sun, which in either case is never more than three hours.
The Sun as before said being the center, the planet or world nearest the
Sun is Mercury; his distance from the Sun is thirty-four million miles,
and he moves round in a circle always at that distance from the Sun, as
a top may be supposed to spin round in the tract in which a horse goes
in a mill. The second world is Venus; she is fifty-seven million miles
distant from the Sun, and consequently moves round in a circle much
greater than that of Mercury. The third world is this that we inhabit,
and which is eighty-eight million miles distant from the Sun, and
consequently moves round in a circle greater than that of Venus. The
fourth world is Mars; he is distant from the sun one hundred and
thirty-four million miles, and consequently moves round in a circle
greater than that of our earth. The fifth is Jupiter; he is distant from
the Sun five hundred and fifty-seven million miles, and consequently
moves round in a circle greater than that of Mars. The sixth world is
Saturn; he is distant from the Sun seven hundred and sixty-three million
miles, and consequently moves round in a circle that surrounds the
circles or orbits of all the other worlds or planets.
The space, therefore, in the air, or in the immensity of space, that
our solar system takes up for the several worlds to perform their
revolutions in round the Sun, is of the extent in a strait line of the
whole diameter of the orbit or circle in which Saturn moves round the
Sun, which being double his distance from the Sun, is fifteen hundred
and twenty-six million miles; and its circular extent is nearly five
thousand million; and its globical content is almost three thousand five
hundred million times three thousand five hundred million square miles.
[NOTE by Paine: If it should be asked, how can man know these things? I
have one plain answer to give, which is, that man knows how to calculate
an eclipse, and also how to calculate to a minute of time when the
planet Venus, in making her revolutions round the Sun, will come in a
strait line between our earth and the Sun, and will appear to us about
the size of a large pea passing across the face of the Sun. This happens
but twice in about a hundred years, at the distance of about eight years
from each other, and has happened twice in our time, both of which were
foreknown by calculation. It can also be known when they will happen
again for a thousand years to come, or to any other portion of time.
As therefore, man could not be able to do these things if he did not
understand the solar system, and the manner in which the revolutions of
the several planets or worlds are performed, the fact of calculating an
eclipse, or a transit of Venus, is a proof in point that the knowledge
exists; and as to a few thousand, or even a few million miles, more
or less, it makes scarcely any sensible difference in such immense
distances.—Author.]
But this, immense as it is, is only one system of worlds. Beyond this,
at a vast distance into space, far beyond all power of calculation, are
the stars called the fixed stars. They are called fixed, because they
have no revolutionary motion, as the six worlds or planets have that
I have been describing. Those fixed stars continue always at the same
distance from each other, and always in the same place, as the Sun does
in the center of our system. The probability, therefore, is that each of
those fixed stars is also a Sun, round which another system of worlds or
planets, though too remote for us to discover, performs its revolutions,
as our system of worlds does round our central Sun. By this easy
progression of ideas, the immensity of space will appear to us to be
filled with systems of worlds; and that no part of space lies at
waste, any more than any part of our globe of earth and water is left
unoccupied.
Having thus endeavoured to convey, in a familiar and easy manner, some
idea of the structure of the universe, I return to explain what I before
alluded to, namely, the great benefits arising to man in consequence of
the Creator having made a Plurality of worlds, such as our system is,
consisting of a central Sun and six worlds, besides satellites, in
preference to that of creating one world only of a vast extent.
CHAPTER XV - ADVANTAGES OF THE EXISTENCE OF MANY WORLDS IN EACH SOLAR
SYSTEM.
IT is an idea I have never lost sight of, that all our knowledge of
science is derived from the revolutions (exhibited to our eye and from
thence to our understanding) which those several planets or worlds of
which our system is composed make in their circuit round the Sun.
Had then the quantity of matter which these six worlds contain been
blended into one solitary globe, the consequence to us would have
been, that either no revolutionary motion would have existed, or not a
sufficiency of it to give us the ideas and the knowledge of science we
now have; and it is from the sciences that all the mechanical arts that
contribute so much to our earthly felicity and comfort are derived.
As therefore the Creator made nothing in vain, so also must it be
believed that he organized the structure of the universe in the most
advantageous manner for the benefit of man; and as we see, and from
experience feel, the benefits we derive from the structure of the
universe, formed as it is, which benefits we should not have had the
opportunity of enjoying if the structure, so far as relates to our
system, had been a solitary globe, we can discover at least one reason
why a plurality of worlds has been made, and that reason calls forth the
devotional gratitude of man, as well as his admiration.
But it is not to us, the inhabitants of this globe, only, that the
benefits arising from a plurality of worlds are limited. The inhabitants
of each of the worlds of which our system is composed, enjoy the same
opportunities of knowledge as we do. They behold the revolutionary
motions of our earth, as we behold theirs. All the planets revolve
in sight of each other; and, therefore, the same universal school of
science presents itself to all.
Neither does the knowledge stop here. The system of worlds next to us
exhibits, in its revolutions, the same principles and school of science,
to the inhabitants of their system, as our system does to us, and in
like manner throughout the immensity of space.
Our ideas, not only of the almightiness of the Creator, but of his
wisdom and his beneficence, become enlarged in proportion as we
contemplate the extent and the structure of the universe. The solitary
idea of a solitary world, rolling or at rest in the immense ocean of
space, gives place to the cheerful idea of a society of worlds, so
happily contrived as to administer, even by their motion, instruction
to man. We see our own earth filled with abundance; but we forget to
consider how much of that abundance is owing to the scientific knowledge
the vast machinery of the universe has unfolded.
CHAPTER XVI - APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING TO THE SYSTEM OF THE
CHRISTIANS.
BUT, in the midst of those reflections, what are we to think of the
christian system of faith that forms itself upon the idea of only
one world, and that of no greater extent, as is before shown, than
twenty-five thousand miles. An extent which a man, walking at the rate
of three miles an hour for twelve hours in the day, could he keep on in
a circular direction, would walk entirely round in less than two years.
Alas! what is this to the mighty ocean of space, and the almighty power
of the Creator!
From whence then could arise the solitary and strange conceit that
the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on his
protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our
world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple! And,
on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in the boundless
creation had an Eve, an apple, a serpent, and a redeemer? In this case,
the person who is irreverently called the Son of God, and sometimes
God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world
to world, in an endless succession of death, with scarcely a momentary
interval of life.
It has been by rejecting the evidence, that the word, or works of God in
the creation, affords to our senses, and the action of our reason upon
that evidence, that so many wild and whimsical systems of faith, and of
religion, have been fabricated and set up. There may be many systems of
religion that so far from being morally bad are in many respects morally
good: but there can be but ONE that is true; and that one necessarily
must, as it ever will, be in all things consistent with the ever
existing word of God that we behold in his works. But such is the
strange construction of the christian system of faith, that every
evidence the heavens affords to man, either directly contradicts it or
renders it absurd.
It is possible to believe, and I always feel pleasure in encouraging
myself to believe it, that there have been men in the world who
persuaded themselves that what is called a pious fraud, might, at least
under particular circumstances, be productive of some good. But the
fraud being once established, could not afterwards be explained; for
it is with a pious fraud as with a bad action, it begets a calamitous
necessity of going on.
The persons who first preached the christian system of faith, and in
some measure combined with it the morality preached by Jesus Christ,
might persuade themselves that it was better than the heathen mythology
that then prevailed. From the first preachers the fraud went on to
the second, and to the third, till the idea of its being a pious fraud
became lost in the belief of its being true; and that belief became
again encouraged by the interest of those who made a livelihood by
preaching it.
But though such a belief might, by such means, be rendered almost
general among the laity, it is next to impossible to account for the
continual persecution carried on by the church, for several hundred
years, against the sciences, and against the professors of science, if
the church had not some record or tradition that it was originally
no other than a pious fraud, or did not foresee that it could not be
maintained against the evidence that the structure of the universe
afforded.
CHAPTER XVII - OF THE MEANS EMPLOYED IN ALL TIME, AND ALMOST
UNIVERSALLY, TO DECEIVE THE PEOPLES.
HAVING thus shown the irreconcileable inconsistencies between the real
word of God existing in the universe, and that which is called the word
of God, as shown to us in a printed book that any man might make, I
proceed to speak of the three principal means that have been employed in
all ages, and perhaps in all countries, to impose upon mankind.
Those three means are Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy, The first two
are incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always to be
suspected.
With respect to Mystery, everything we behold is, in one sense, a
mystery to us. Our own existence is a mystery: the whole vegetable world
is a mystery. We cannot account how it is that an acorn, when put into
the ground, is made to develop itself and become an oak. We know not how
it is that the seed we sow unfolds and multiplies itself, and returns to
us such an abundant interest for so small a capital.
The fact however, as distinct from the operating cause, is not a
mystery, because we see it; and we know also the means we are to
use, which is no other than putting the seed in the ground. We know,
therefore, as much as is necessary for us to know; and that part of
the operation that we do not know, and which if we did, we could not
perform, the Creator takes upon himself and performs it for us. We are,
therefore, better off than if we had been let into the secret, and left
to do it for ourselves.
But though every created thing is, in this sense, a mystery, the word
mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can
be applied to light. The God in whom we believe is a God of moral truth,
and not a God of mystery or obscurity. Mystery is the antagonist
of truth. It is a fog of human invention that obscures truth, and
represents it in distortion. Truth never envelops itself in mystery;
and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped, is the work of its
antagonist, and never of itself.
Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God, and the practice of
moral truth, cannot have connection with mystery. The belief of a God,
so far from having any thing of mystery in it, is of all beliefs the
most easy, because it arises to us, as is before observed, out of
necessity. And the practice of moral truth, or, in other words, a
practical imitation of the moral goodness of God, is no other than our
acting towards each other as he acts benignly towards all. We cannot
serve God in the manner we serve those who cannot do without such
service; and, therefore, the only idea we can have of serving God, is
that of contributing to the happiness of the living creation that God
has made. This cannot be done by retiring ourselves from the society of
the world, and spending a recluse life in selfish devotion.
The very nature and design of religion, if I may so express it, prove
even to demonstration that it must be free from every thing of mystery,
and unincumbered with every thing that is mysterious. Religion,
considered as a duty, is incumbent upon every living soul alike, and,
therefore, must be on a level to the understanding and comprehension of
all. Man does not learn religion as he learns the secrets and mysteries
of a trade. He learns the theory of religion by reflection. It arises
out of the action of his own mind upon the things which he sees, or upon
what he may happen to hear or to read, and the practice joins itself
thereto.
When men, whether from policy or pious fraud, set up systems of religion
incompatible with the word or works of God in the creation, and not
only above but repugnant to human comprehension, they were under the
necessity of inventing or adopting a word that should serve as a bar
to all questions, inquiries and speculations. The word mystery answered
this purpose, and thus it has happened that religion, which is in itself
without mystery, has been corrupted into a fog of mysteries.
As mystery answered all general purposes, miracle followed as an
occasional auxiliary. The former served to bewilder the mind, the latter
to puzzle the senses. The one was the lingo, the other the legerdemain.
But before going further into this subject, it will be proper to inquire
what is to be understood by a miracle.
In the same sense that every thing may be said to be a mystery, so also
may it be said that every thing is a miracle, and that no one thing is
a greater miracle than another. The elephant, though larger, is not a
greater miracle than a mite: nor a mountain a greater miracle than an
atom. To an almighty power it is no more difficult to make the one than
the other, and no more difficult to make a million of worlds than to
make one. Every thing, therefore, is a miracle, in one sense; whilst,
in the other sense, there is no such thing as a miracle. It is a miracle
when compared to our power, and to our comprehension. It is not a
miracle compared to the power that performs it. But as nothing in this
description conveys the idea that is affixed to the word miracle, it is
necessary to carry the inquiry further.
Mankind have conceived to themselves certain laws, by which what they
call nature is supposed to act; and that a miracle is something contrary
to the operation and effect of those laws. But unless we know the whole
extent of those laws, and of what are commonly called the powers of
nature, we are not able to judge whether any thing that may appear to us
wonderful or miraculous, be within, or be beyond, or be contrary to, her
natural power of acting.
The ascension of a man several miles high into the air, would have
everything in it that constitutes the idea of a miracle, if it were not
known that a species of air can be generated several times lighter than
the common atmospheric air, and yet possess elasticity enough to prevent
the balloon, in which that light air is inclosed, from being compressed
into as many times less bulk, by the common air that surrounds it. In
like manner, extracting flashes or sparks of fire from the human body,
as visibly as from a steel struck with a flint, and causing iron or
steel to move without any visible agent, would also give the idea of a
miracle, if we were not acquainted with electricity and magnetism; so
also would many other experiments in natural philosophy, to those who
are not acquainted with the subject. The restoring persons to life who
are to appearance dead as is practised upon drowned persons, would also
be a miracle, if it were not known that animation is capable of being
suspended without being extinct.
Besides these, there are performances by slight of hand, and by persons
acting in concert, that have a miraculous appearance, which, when known,
are thought nothing of. And, besides these, there are mechanical and
optical deceptions. There is now an exhibition in Paris of ghosts or
spectres, which, though it is not imposed upon the spectators as a fact,
has an astonishing appearance. As, therefore, we know not the extent to
which either nature or art can go, there is no criterion to determine
what a miracle is; and mankind, in giving credit to appearances, under
the idea of their being miracles, are subject to be continually imposed
upon.
Since then appearances are so capable of deceiving, and things not
real have a strong resemblance to things that are, nothing can be more
inconsistent than to suppose that the Almighty would make use of means,
such as are called miracles, that would subject the person who performed
them to the suspicion of being an impostor, and the person who related
them to be suspected of lying, and the doctrine intended to be supported
thereby to be suspected as a fabulous invention.
Of all the modes of evidence that ever were invented to obtain belief to
any system or opinion to which the name of religion has been given, that
of miracle, however successful the imposition may have been, is the most
inconsistent. For, in the first place, whenever recourse is had to show,
for the purpose of procuring that belief (for a miracle, under any
idea of the word, is a show) it implies a lameness or weakness in the
doctrine that is preached. And, in the second place, it is degrading the
Almighty into the character of a show-man, playing tricks to amuse and
make the people stare and wonder. It is also the most equivocal sort of
evidence that can be set up; for the belief is not to depend upon the
thing called a miracle, but upon the credit of the reporter, who says
that he saw it; and, therefore, the thing, were it true, would have no
better chance of being believed than if it were a lie.
Suppose I were to say, that when I sat down to write this book, a hand
presented itself in the air, took up the pen and wrote every word that
is herein written; would any body believe me? Certainly they would not.
Would they believe me a whit the more if the thing had been a fact?
Certainly they would not. Since then a real miracle, were it to happen,
would be subject to the same fate as the falsehood, the inconsistency
becomes the greater of supposing the Almighty would make use of means
that would not answer the purpose for which they were intended, even if
they were real.
If we are to suppose a miracle to be something so entirely out of the
course of what is called nature, that she must go out of that course
to accomplish it, and we see an account given of such a miracle by the
person who said he saw it, it raises a question in the mind very easily
decided, which is,—Is it more probable that nature should go out of
her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our
time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe
that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is, therefore,
at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.
The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large
enough to do it, borders greatly on the marvellous; but it would have
approached nearer to the idea of a miracle, if Jonah had swallowed the
whale. In this, which may serve for all cases of miracles, the matter
would decide itself as before stated, namely, Is it more probable that a
man should have, swallowed a whale, or told a lie?
But suppose that Jonah had really swallowed the whale, and gone with
it in his belly to Nineveh, and to convince the people that it was true
have cast it up in their sight, of the full length and size of a whale,
would they not have believed him to have been the devil instead of a
prophet? or if the whale had carried Jonah to Nineveh, and cast him up
in the same public manner, would they not have believed the whale to
have been the devil, and Jonah one of his imps?
The most extraordinary of all the things called miracles, related in the
New Testament, is that of the devil flying away with Jesus Christ,
and carrying him to the top of a high mountain; and to the top of the
highest pinnacle of the temple, and showing him and promising to him
all the kingdoms of the world. How happened it that he did not discover
America? or is it only with kingdoms that his sooty highness has any
interest.
I have too much respect for the moral character of Christ to believe
that he told this whale of a miracle himself: neither is it easy to
account for what purpose it could have been fabricated, unless it were
to impose upon the connoisseurs of miracles, as is sometimes practised
upon the connoisseurs of Queen Anne's farthings, and collectors of
relics and antiquities; or to render the belief of miracles ridiculous,
by outdoing miracle, as Don Quixote outdid chivalry; or to embarrass the
belief of miracles, by making it doubtful by what power, whether of God
or of the devil, any thing called a miracle was performed. It requires,
however, a great deal of faith in the devil to believe this miracle.
In every point of view in which those things called miracles can be
placed and considered, the reality of them is improbable, and their
existence unnecessary. They would not, as before observed, answer any
useful purpose, even if they were true; for it is more difficult to
obtain belief to a miracle, than to a principle evidently moral, without
any miracle. Moral principle speaks universally for itself. Miracle
could be but a thing of the moment, and seen but by a few; after this it
requires a transfer of faith from God to man to believe a miracle upon
man's report. Instead, therefore, of admitting the recitals of miracles
as evidence of any system of religion being true, they ought to be
considered as symptoms of its being fabulous. It is necessary to the
full and upright character of truth that it rejects the crutch; and it
is consistent with the character of fable to seek the aid that truth
rejects. Thus much for Mystery and Miracle.
As Mystery and Miracle took charge of the past and the present, Prophecy
took charge of the future, and rounded the tenses of faith. It was
not sufficient to know what had been done, but what would be done. The
supposed prophet was the supposed historian of times to come; and if
he happened, in shooting with a long bow of a thousand years, to strike
within a thousand miles of a mark, the ingenuity of posterity could make
it point-blank; and if he happened to be directly wrong, it was only
to suppose, as in the case of Jonah and Nineveh, that God had repented
himself and changed his mind. What a fool do fabulous systems make of
man!
It has been shewn, in a former part of this work, that the original
meaning of the words prophet and prophesying has been changed, and that
a prophet, in the sense of the word as now used, is a creature of modern
invention; and it is owing to this change in the meaning of the words,
that the flights and metaphors of the Jewish poets, and phrases and
expressions now rendered obscure by our not being acquainted with the
local circumstances to which they applied at the time they were used,
have been erected into prophecies, and made to bend to explanations
at the will and whimsical conceits of sectaries, expounders, and
commentators. Every thing unintelligible was prophetical, and every
thing insignificant was typical. A blunder would have served for a
prophecy; and a dish-clout for a type.
If by a prophet we are to suppose a man to whom the Almighty
communicated some event that would take place in future, either there
were such men, or there were not. If there were, it is consistent to
believe that the event so communicated would be told in terms that could
be understood, and not related in such a loose and obscure manner as to
be out of the comprehension of those that heard it, and so equivocal
as to fit almost any circumstance that might happen afterwards. It is
conceiving very irreverently of the Almighty, to suppose he would
deal in this jesting manner with mankind; yet all the things called
prophecies in the book called the Bible come under this description.
But it is with Prophecy as it is with Miracle. It could not answer the
purpose even if it were real. Those to whom a prophecy should be told
could not tell whether the man prophesied or lied, or whether it had
been revealed to him, or whether he conceited it; and if the thing that
he prophesied, or pretended to prophesy, should happen, or some thing
like it, among the multitude of things that are daily happening, nobody
could again know whether he foreknew it, or guessed at it, or whether
it was accidental. A prophet, therefore, is a character useless and
unnecessary; and the safe side of the case is to guard against being
imposed upon, by not giving credit to such relations.
Upon the whole, Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy, are appendages that
belong to fabulous and not to true religion. They are the means by which
so many Lo heres! and Lo theres! have been spread about the world,
and religion been made into a trade. The success of one impostor gave
encouragement to another, and the quieting salvo of doing some good by
keeping up a pious fraud protected them from remorse.
RECAPITULATION.
HAVING now extended the subject to a greater length than I first
intended, I shall bring it to a close by abstracting a summary from the
whole.
First, That the idea or belief of a word of God existing in print, or in
writing, or in speech, is inconsistent in itself for the reasons already
assigned. These reasons, among many others, are the want of an universal
language; the mutability of language; the errors to which translations
are subject, the possibility of totally suppressing such a word; the
probability of altering it, or of fabricating the whole, and imposing it
upon the world.
Secondly, That the Creation we behold is the real and ever existing word
of God, in which we cannot be deceived. It proclaimeth his power, it
demonstrates his wisdom, it manifests his goodness and beneficence.
Thirdly, That the moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral
goodness and beneficence of God manifested in the creation towards all
his creatures. That seeing as we daily do the goodness of God to all
men, it is an example calling upon all men to practise the same towards
each other; and, consequently, that every thing of persecution and
revenge between man and man, and every thing of cruelty to animals, is a
violation of moral duty.
I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I content
myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the power that
gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and manner he
pleases, either with or without this body; and it appears more probable
to me that I shall continue to exist hereafter than that I should have
had existence, as I now have, before that existence began.
It is certain that, in one point, all nations of the earth and all
religions agree. All believe in a God. The things in which they disgrace
are the redundancies annexed to that belief; and therefore, if ever an
universal religion should prevail, it will not be believing any thing
new, but in getting rid of redundancies, and believing as man believed
at first. ["In the childhood of the world," according to the first
(French) version; and the strict translation of the final sentence is:
"Deism was the religion of Adam, supposing him not an imaginary being;
but none the less must it be left to all men to follow, as is their
right, the religion and worship they prefer."—Editor.] Adam, if ever
there was such a man, was created a Deist; but in the mean time, let
every man follow, as he has a right to do, the religion and worship he
prefers.
END OF PART I
THE AGE OF REASON - PART II
Contents
* Preface
* Chapter I - The Old Testament
* Chapter II - The New Testament
* Chapter III - Conclusion
PREFACE
I HAVE mentioned in the former part of The Age of Reason that it had
long been my intention to publish my thoughts upon Religion; but that I
had originally reserved it to a later period in life, intending it to
be the last work I should undertake. The circumstances, however, which
existed in France in the latter end of the year 1793, determined me to
delay it no longer. The just and humane principles of the Revolution
which Philosophy had first diffused, had been departed from. The Idea,
always dangerous to Society as it is derogatory to the Almighty,—that
priests could forgive sins,—though it seemed to exist no longer, had
blunted the feelings of humanity, and callously prepared men for the
commission of all crimes. The intolerant spirit of church persecution
had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, stiled
Revolutionary, supplied the place of an Inquisition; and the Guillotine
of the Stake. I saw many of my most intimate friends destroyed; others
daily carried to prison; and I had reason to believe, and had also
intimations given me, that the same danger was approaching myself.
Under these disadvantages, I began the former part of the Age of Reason;
I had, besides, neither Bible nor Testament [It must be borne in mind
that throughout this work Paine generally means by "Bible" only the Old
Testament, and speaks of the New as the "Testament."—Editor.] to
refer to, though I was writing against both; nor could I procure any;
notwithstanding which I have produced a work that no Bible Believer,
though writing at his ease and with a Library of Church Books about him,
can refute. Towards the latter end of December of that year, a motion
was made and carried, to exclude foreigners from the Convention. There
were but two, Anacharsis Cloots and myself; and I saw I was particularly
pointed at by Bourdon de l'Oise, in his speech on that motion.
Conceiving, after this, that I had but a few days of liberty, I sat down
and brought the work to a close as speedily as possible; and I had not
finished it more than six hours, in the state it has since appeared,
[This is an allusion to the essay which Paine wrote at an earlier part
of 1793. See Introduction.—Editor.] before a guard came there, about
three in the morning, with an order signed by the two Committees of
Public Safety and Surety General, for putting me in arrestation as
a foreigner, and conveying me to the prison of the Luxembourg. I
contrived, in my way there, to call on Joel Barlow, and I put the
Manuscript of the work into his hands, as more safe than in my
possession in prison; and not knowing what might be the fate in France
either of the writer or the work, I addressed it to the protection of
the citizens of the United States.
It is justice that I say, that the guard who executed this order, and
the interpreter to the Committee of General Surety, who accompanied
them to examine my papers, treated me not only with civility, but with
respect. The keeper of the 'Luxembourg, Benoit, a man of good heart,
shewed to me every friendship in his power, as did also all his family,
while he continued in that station. He was removed from it, put
into arrestation, and carried before the tribunal upon a malignant
accusation, but acquitted.
After I had been in Luxembourg about three weeks, the Americans then in
Paris went in a body to the Convention to reclaim me as their countryman
and friend; but were answered by the President, Vadier, who was also
President of the Committee of Surety General, and had signed the order
for my arrestation, that I was born in England. [These excited Americans
do not seem to have understood or reported the most important item in
Vadeer's reply, namely that their application was "unofficial," i.e. not
made through or sanctioned by Gouverneur Morris, American Minister.
For the detailed history of all this see vol. iii.—Editor.] I heard no
more, after this, from any person out of the walls of the prison, till
the fall of Robespierre, on the 9th of Thermidor—July 27, 1794.
About two months before this event, I was seized with a fever that in
its progress had every symptom of becoming mortal, and from the effects
of which I am not recovered. It was then that I remembered with renewed
satisfaction, and congratulated myself most sincerely, on having written
the former part of The Age of Reason. I had then but little expectation
of surviving, and those about me had less. I know therefore by
experience the conscientious trial of my own principles.
I was then with three chamber comrades: Joseph Vanheule of Bruges,
Charles Bastfni, and Michael Robyns of Louvain. The unceasing and
anxious attention of these three friends to me, by night and day, I
remember with gratitude and mention with pleasure. It happened that a
physician (Dr. Graham) and a surgeon, (Mr. Bond,) part of the suite of
General O'Hara, [The officer who at Yorktown, Virginia, carried out
the sword of Cornwallis for surrender, and satirically offered it to
Rochambeau instead of Washington. Paine loaned him 300 pounds when he
(O'Hara) left the prison, the money he had concealed in the lock of
his cell-door.—Editor.] were then in the Luxembourg: I ask not myself
whether it be convenient to them, as men under the English Government,
that I express to them my thanks; but I should reproach myself if I did
not; and also to the physician of the Luxembourg, Dr. Markoski.
I have some reason to believe, because I cannot discover any other, that
this illness preserved me in existence. Among the papers of Robespierre
that were examined and reported upon to the Convention by a Committee of
Deputies, is a note in the hand writing of Robespierre, in the following
words:
"Demander que Thomas Paine soit decrete d'accusation, pour l'interet de
l'Amerique autant que de la France."
[Demand that Thomas Paine be decreed of accusation, for the interest
of America, as well as of France.] From what cause it was that the
intention was not put in execution, I know not, and cannot inform
myself; and therefore I ascribe it to impossibility, on account of that
illness.
The Convention, to repair as much as lay in their power the injustice I
had sustained, invited me publickly and unanimously to return into the
Convention, and which I accepted, to shew I could bear an injury without
permitting it to injure my principles or my disposition. It is not
because right principles have been violated, that they are to be
abandoned.
I have seen, since I have been at liberty, several publications written,
some in America, and some in England, as answers to the former part of
"The Age of Reason." If the authors of these can amuse themselves by so
doing, I shall not interrupt them, They may write against the work, and
against me, as much as they please; they do me more service than they
intend, and I can have no objection that they write on. They will find,
however, by this Second Part, without its being written as an answer to
them, that they must return to their work, and spin their cobweb over
again. The first is brushed away by accident.
They will now find that I have furnished myself with a Bible and
Testament; and I can say also that I have found them to be much worse
books than I had conceived. If I have erred in any thing, in the former
part of the Age of Reason, it has been by speaking better of some parts
than they deserved.
I observe, that all my opponents resort, more or less, to what they call
Scripture Evidence and Bible authority, to help them out. They are
so little masters of the subject, as to confound a dispute about
authenticity with a dispute about doctrines; I will, however, put them
right, that if they should be disposed to write any more, they may know
how to begin.
THOMAS PAINE. October, 1795.
CHAPTER I - THE OLD TESTAMENT
IT has often been said that any thing may be proved from the Bible; but
before any thing can be admitted as proved by Bible, the Bible itself
must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be not true, or the truth of
it be doubtful, it ceases to have authority, and cannot be admitted as
proof of any thing.
It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and
of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on the
world as a mass of truth, and as the word of God; they have disputed
and wrangled, and have anathematized each other about the supposeable
meaning of particular parts and passages therein; one has said and
insisted that such a passage meant such a thing, another that it meant
directly the contrary, and a third, that it meant neither one nor the
other, but something different from both; and this they have called
understanding the Bible.
It has happened, that all the answers that I have seen to the former
part of 'The Age of Reason' have been written by priests: and these
pious men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and understand
the Bible; each understands it differently, but each understands it
best; and they have agreed in nothing but in telling their readers that
Thomas Paine understands it not.
Now instead of wasting their time, and heating themselves in fractious
disputations about doctrinal points drawn from the Bible, these men
ought to know, and if they do not it is civility to inform them,
that the first thing to be understood is, whether there is sufficient
authority for believing the Bible to be the word of God, or whether
there is not?
There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command
of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of
moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph
le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by
any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed
to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon
whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given
them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they
spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women
and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are
repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting
ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the
Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that
the books that tell us so were written by his authority?
It is not the antiquity of a tale that is an evidence of its truth;
on the contrary, it is a symptom of its being fabulous; for the more
ancient any history pretends to be, the more it has the resemblance of
a fable. The origin of every nation is buried in fabulous tradition, and
that of the Jews is as much to be suspected as any other.
To charger the commission of things upon the Almighty, which in their
own nature, and by every rule of moral justice, are crimes, as all
assassination is, and more especially the assassination of infants, is
matter of serious concern. The Bible tells us, that those assassinations
were done by the express command of God. To believe therefore the Bible
to be true, we must unbelieve all our belief in the moral justice of
God; for wherein could crying or smiling infants offend? And to read
the Bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender,
sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself,
if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous, than the
sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be
sufficient to determine my choice.
But in addition to all the moral evidence against the Bible, I will, in
the progress of this work, produce such other evidence as even a
priest cannot deny; and show, from that evidence, that the Bible is not
entitled to credit, as being the word of God.
But, before I proceed to this examination, I will show wherein the Bible
differs from all other ancient writings with respect to the nature of
the evidence necessary to establish its authenticity; and this is is
the more proper to be done, because the advocates of the Bible, in their
answers to the former part of 'The Age of Reason,' undertake to say, and
they put some stress thereon, that the authenticity of the Bible is as
well established as that of any other ancient book: as if our belief of
the one could become any rule for our belief of the other.
I know, however, but of one ancient book that authoritatively challenges
universal consent and belief, and that is Euclid's Elements of Geometry;
[Euclid, according to chronological history, lived three hundred years
before Christ, and about one hundred before Archimedes; he was of the
city of Alexandria, in Egypt.—Author.] and the reason is, because it
is a book of self-evident demonstration, entirely independent of its
author, and of every thing relating to time, place, and circumstance.
The matters contained in that book would have the same authority they
now have, had they been written by any other person, or had the work
been anonymous, or had the author never been known; for the identical
certainty of who was the author makes no part of our belief of the
matters contained in the book. But it is quite otherwise with respect to
the books ascribed to Moses, to Joshua, to Samuel, etc.: those are
books of testimony, and they testify of things naturally incredible;
and therefore the whole of our belief, as to the authenticity of those
books, rests, in the first place, upon the certainty that they were
written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel; secondly, upon the credit we give
to their testimony. We may believe the first, that is, may believe the
certainty of the authorship, and yet not the testimony; in the same
manner that we may believe that a certain person gave evidence upon a
case, and yet not believe the evidence that he gave. But if it should
be found that the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, were not
written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, every part of the authority and
authenticity of those books is gone at once; for there can be no such
thing as forged or invented testimony; neither can there be anonymous
testimony, more especially as to things naturally incredible; such
as that of talking with God face to face, or that of the sun and moon
standing still at the command of a man.
The greatest part of the other ancient books are works of genius; of
which kind are those ascribed to Homer, to Plato, to Aristotle, to
Demosthenes, to Cicero, etc. Here again the author is not an essential
in the credit we give to any of those works; for as works of genius they
would have the same merit they have now, were they anonymous. Nobody
believes the Trojan story, as related by Homer, to be true; for it is
the poet only that is admired, and the merit of the poet will remain,
though the story be fabulous. But if we disbelieve the matters related
by the Bible authors (Moses for instance) as we disbelieve the things
related by Homer, there remains nothing of Moses in our estimation, but
an imposter. As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we
credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no
further: for if we do, we must believe the two miracles which Tacitus
relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing a lame man, and a
blind man, in just the same manner as the same things are told of Jesus
Christ by his historians. We must also believe the miracles cited by
Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia opening to let Alexander and his
army pass, as is related of the Red Sea in Exodus. These miracles are
quite as well authenticated as the Bible miracles, and yet we do not
believe them; consequently the degree of evidence necessary to establish
our belief of things naturally incredible, whether in the Bible or
elsewhere, is far greater than that which obtains our belief to natural
and probable things; and therefore the advocates for the Bible have no
claim to our belief of the Bible because that we believe things stated
in other ancient writings; since that we believe the things stated
in those writings no further than they are probable and credible, or
because they are self-evident, like Euclid; or admire them because they
are elegant, like Homer; or approve them because they are sedate, like
Plato; or judicious, like Aristotle.
Having premised these things, I proceed to examine the authenticity of
the Bible; and I begin with what are called the five books of Moses,
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. My intention is to
shew that those books are spurious, and that Moses is not the author of
them; and still further, that they were not written in the time of Moses
nor till several hundred years afterwards; that they are no other than
an attempted history of the life of Moses, and of the times in which he
is said to have lived, and also of the times prior thereto, written by
some very ignorant and stupid pretenders to authorship, several hundred
years after the death of Moses; as men now write histories of things
that happened, or are supposed to have happened, several hundred or
several thousand years ago.
The evidence that I shall produce in this case is from the books
themselves; and I will confine myself to this evidence only. Were I to
refer for proofs to any of the ancient authors, whom the advocates of
the Bible call prophane authors, they would controvert that authority,
as I controvert theirs: I will therefore meet them on their own ground,
and oppose them with their own weapon, the Bible.
In the first place, there is no affirmative evidence that Moses is
the author of those books; and that he is the author, is altogether an
unfounded opinion, got abroad nobody knows how. The style and manner
in which those books are written give no room to believe, or even to
suppose, they were written by Moses; for it is altogether the style and
manner of another person speaking of Moses. In Exodus, Leviticus and
Numbers, (for every thing in Genesis is prior to the times of Moses and
not the least allusion is made to him therein,) the whole, I say, of
these books is in the third person; it is always, the Lord said unto
Moses, or Moses said unto the Lord; or Moses said unto the people,
or the people said unto Moses; and this is the style and manner that
historians use in speaking of the person whose lives and actions they
are writing. It may be said, that a man may speak of himself in the
third person, and, therefore, it may be supposed that Moses did; but
supposition proves nothing; and if the advocates for the belief that
Moses wrote those books himself have nothing better to advance than
supposition, they may as well be silent.
But granting the grammatical right, that Moses might speak of himself in
the third person, because any man might speak of himself in that manner,
it cannot be admitted as a fact in those books, that it is Moses who
speaks, without rendering Moses truly ridiculous and absurd:—for
example, Numbers xii. 3: "Now the man Moses was very MEEK, above all the
men which were on the face of the earth." If Moses said this of himself,
instead of being the meekest of men, he was one of the most vain and
arrogant coxcombs; and the advocates for those books may now take which
side they please, for both sides are against them: if Moses was not the
author, the books are without authority; and if he was the author, the
author is without credit, because to boast of meekness is the reverse of
meekness, and is a lie in sentiment.
In Deuteronomy, the style and manner of writing marks more evidently
than in the former books that Moses is not the writer. The manner here
used is dramatical; the writer opens the subject by a short introductory
discourse, and then introduces Moses as in the act of speaking, and when
he has made Moses finish his harrangue, he (the writer) resumes his own
part, and speaks till he brings Moses forward again, and at last closes
the scene with an account of the death, funeral, and character of Moses.
This interchange of speakers occurs four times in this book: from the
first verse of the first chapter, to the end of the fifth verse, it is
the writer who speaks; he then introduces Moses as in the act of making
his harrangue, and this continues to the end of the 40th verse of the
fourth chapter; here the writer drops Moses, and speaks historically of
what was done in consequence of what Moses, when living, is supposed to
have said, and which the writer has dramatically rehearsed.
The writer opens the subject again in the first verse of the fifth
chapter, though it is only by saying that Moses called the people of
Israel together; he then introduces Moses as before, and continues him
as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 26th chapter. He does the
same thing at the beginning of the 27th chapter; and continues Moses
as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 28th chapter. At the 29th
chapter the writer speaks again through the whole of the first verse,
and the first line of the second verse, where he introduces Moses for
the last time, and continues him as in the act of speaking, to the end
of the 33d chapter.
The writer having now finished the rehearsal on the part of Moses, comes
forward, and speaks through the whole of the last chapter: he begins by
telling the reader, that Moses went up to the top of Pisgah, that he
saw from thence the land which (the writer says) had been promised to
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that he, Moses, died there in the land of
Moab, that he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, but that no
man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day, that is unto the time in
which the writer lived who wrote the book of Deuteronomy. The writer
then tells us, that Moses was one hundred and ten years of age when he
died—that his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated; and he
concludes by saying, that there arose not a prophet since in Israel
like unto Moses, whom, says this anonymous writer, the Lord knew face to
face.
Having thus shewn, as far as grammatical evidence implies, that
Moses was not the writer of those books, I will, after making a few
observations on the inconsistencies of the writer of the book of
Deuteronomy, proceed to shew, from the historical and chronological
evidence contained in those books, that Moses was not, because he could
not be, the writer of them; and consequently, that there is no authority
for believing that the inhuman and horrid butcheries of men, women, and
children, told of in those books, were done, as those books say they
were, at the command of God. It is a duty incumbent on every true deist,
that he vindicates the moral justice of God against the calumnies of the
Bible.
The writer of the book of Deuteronomy, whoever he was, for it is an
anonymous work, is obscure, and also contradictory with himself in the
account he has given of Moses.
After telling that Moses went to the top of Pisgah (and it does not
appear from any account that he ever came down again) he tells us, that
Moses died there in the land of Moab, and that he buried him in a valley
in the land of Moab; but as there is no antecedent to the pronoun he,
there is no knowing who he was, that did bury him. If the writer meant
that he (God) buried him, how should he (the writer) know it? or why
should we (the readers) believe him? since we know not who the writer
was that tells us so, for certainly Moses could not himself tell where
he was buried.
The writer also tells us, that no man knoweth where the sepulchre of
Moses is unto this day, meaning the time in which this writer lived;
how then should he know that Moses was buried in a valley in the land
of Moab? for as the writer lived long after the time of Moses, as is
evident from his using the expression of unto this day, meaning a great
length of time after the death of Moses, he certainly was not at his
funeral; and on the other hand, it is impossible that Moses himself
could say that no man knoweth where the sepulchre is unto this day. To
make Moses the speaker, would be an improvement on the play of a child
that hides himself and cries nobody can find me; nobody can find Moses.
This writer has no where told us how he came by the speeches which he
has put into the mouth of Moses to speak, and therefore we have a right
to conclude that he either composed them himself, or wrote them from
oral tradition. One or other of these is the more probable, since he
has given, in the fifth chapter, a table of commandments, in which that
called the fourth commandment is different from the fourth commandment
in the twentieth chapter of Exodus. In that of Exodus, the reason given
for keeping the seventh day is, because (says the commandment) God made
the heavens and the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh; but in
that of Deuteronomy, the reason given is, that it was the day on which
the children of Israel came out of Egypt, and therefore, says this
commandment, the Lord thy God commanded thee to kee the sabbath-day This
makes no mention of the creation, nor that of the coming out of Egypt.
There are also many things given as laws of Moses in this book, that are
not to be found in any of the other books; among which is that inhuman
and brutal law, xxi. 18, 19, 20, 21, which authorizes parents, the
father and the mother, to bring their own children to have them stoned
to death for what it pleased them to call stubbornness.—But priests
have always been fond of preaching up Deuteronomy, for Deuteronomy
preaches up tythes; and it is from this book, xxv. 4, they have taken
the phrase, and applied it to tything, that "thou shalt not muzzle
the ox when he treadeth Out the corn:" and that this might not escape
observation, they have noted it in the table of contents at the head of
the chapter, though it is only a single verse of less than two lines. O
priests! priests! ye are willing to be compared to an ox, for the sake
of tythes. [An elegant pocket edition of Paine's Theological Works
(London. R. Carlile, 1822) has in its title a picture of Paine, as a
Moses in evening dress, unfolding the two tables of his "Age of Reason"
to a farmer from whom the Bishop of Llandaff (who replied to this work)
has taken a sheaf and a lamb which he is carrying to a church at the
summit of a well stocked hill.—Editor.]—Though it is impossible for
us to know identically who the writer of Deuteronomy was, it is not
difficult to discover him professionally, that he was some Jewish
priest, who lived, as I shall shew in the course of this work, at least
three hundred and fifty years after the time of Moses.
I come now to speak of the historical and chronological evidence. The
chronology that I shall use is the Bible chronology; for I mean not to
go out of the Bible for evidence of any thing, but to make the Bible
itself prove historically and chronologically that Moses is not the
author of the books ascribed to him. It is therefore proper that I
inform the readers (such an one at least as may not have the opportunity
of knowing it) that in the larger Bibles, and also in some smaller ones,
there is a series of chronology printed in the margin of every page for
the purpose of showing how long the historical matters stated in each
page happened, or are supposed to have happened, before Christ, and
consequently the distance of time between one historical circumstance
and another.
I begin with the book of Genesis.—In Genesis xiv., the writer gives an
account of Lot being taken prisoner in a battle between the four kings
against five, and carried off; and that when the account of Lot being
taken came to Abraham, that he armed all his household and marched to
rescue Lot from the captors; and that he pursued them unto Dan. (ver.
14.)
To shew in what manner this expression of Pursuing them unto Dan applies
to the case in question, I will refer to two circumstances, the one in
America, the other in France. The city now called New York, in America,
was originally New Amsterdam; and the town in France, lately called
Havre Marat, was before called Havre-de-Grace. New Amsterdam was changed
to New York in the year 1664; Havre-de-Grace to Havre Marat in the year
1793. Should, therefore, any writing be found, though without date,
in which the name of New-York should be mentioned, it would be certain
evidence that such a writing could not have been written before, and
must have been written after New Amsterdam was changed to New York, and
consequently not till after the year 1664, or at least during the course
of that year. And in like manner, any dateless writing, with the name
of Havre Marat, would be certain evidence that such a writing must have
been written after Havre-de-Grace became Havre Marat, and consequently
not till after the year 1793, or at least during the course of that
year.
I now come to the application of those cases, and to show that there
was no such place as Dan till many years after the death of Moses; and
consequently, that Moses could not be the writer of the book of Genesis,
where this account of pursuing them unto Dan is given.
The place that is called Dan in the Bible was originally a town of the
Gentiles, called Laish; and when the tribe of Dan seized upon this
town, they changed its name to Dan, in commemoration of Dan, who was the
father of that tribe, and the great grandson of Abraham.
To establish this in proof, it is necessary to refer from Genesis to
chapter xviii. of the book called the Book of judges. It is there said
(ver. 27) that "they (the Danites) came unto Laish to a people that were
quiet and secure, and they smote them with the edge of the sword [the
Bible is filled with murder] and burned the city with fire; and they
built a city, (ver. 28,) and dwelt therein, and [ver. 29,] they called
the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan, their father; howbeit
the name of the city was Laish at the first."
This account of the Danites taking possession of Laish and changing it
to Dan, is placed in the book of Judges immediately after the death of
Samson. The death of Samson is said to have happened B.C. 1120 and
that of Moses B.C. 1451; and, therefore, according to the historical
arrangement, the place was not called Dan till 331 years after the death
of Moses.
There is a striking confusion between the historical and the
chronological arrangement in the book of judges. The last five chapters,
as they stand in the book, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, are put chronologically
before all the preceding chapters; they are made to be 28 years before
the 16th chapter, 266 before the 15th, 245 before the 13th, 195 before
the 9th, go before the 4th, and 15 years before the 1st chapter. This
shews the uncertain and fabulous state of the Bible. According to the
chronological arrangement, the taking of Laish, and giving it the name
of Dan, is made to be twenty years after the death of Joshua, who was
the successor of Moses; and by the historical order, as it stands in
the book, it is made to be 306 years after the death of Joshua, and 331
after that of Moses; but they both exclude Moses from being the writer
of Genesis, because, according to either of the statements, no such a
place as Dan existed in the time of Moses; and therefore the writer of
Genesis must have been some person who lived after the town of Laish had
the name of Dan; and who that person was nobody knows, and consequently
the book of Genesis is anonymous, and without authority.
I come now to state another point of historical and chronological
evidence, and to show therefrom, as in the preceding case, that Moses is
not the author of the book of Genesis.
In Genesis xxxvi. there is given a genealogy of the sons and descendants
of Esau, who are called Edomites, and also a list by name of the kings
of Edom; in enumerating of which, it is said, verse 31, "And these are
the kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the
children of Israel."
Now, were any dateless writing to be found, in which, speaking of any
past events, the writer should say, these things happened before there
was any Congress in America, or before there was any Convention in
France, it would be evidence that such writing could not have been
written before, and could only be written after there was a Congress
in America or a Convention in France, as the case might be; and,
consequently, that it could not be written by any person who died before
there was a Congress in the one country, or a Convention in the other.
Nothing is more frequent, as well in history as in conversation, than
to refer to a fact in the room of a date: it is most natural so to do,
because a fact fixes itself in the memory better than a date; secondly,
because the fact includes the date, and serves to give two ideas at
once; and this manner of speaking by circumstances implies as positively
that the fact alluded to is past, as if it was so expressed. When a
person in speaking upon any matter, says, it was before I was married,
or before my son was born, or before I went to America, or before I went
to France, it is absolutely understood, and intended to be understood,
that he has been married, that he has had a son, that he has been in
America, or been in France. Language does not admit of using this mode
of expression in any other sense; and whenever such an expression is
found anywhere, it can only be understood in the sense in which only it
could have been used.
The passage, therefore, that I have quoted—that "these are the kings
that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the children
of Israel," could only have been written after the first king began to
reign over them; and consequently that the book of Genesis, so far from
having been written by Moses, could not have been written till the time
of Saul at least. This is the positive sense of the passage; but the
expression, any king, implies more kings than one, at least it implies
two, and this will carry it to the time of David; and, if taken in
a general sense, it carries itself through all times of the Jewish
monarchy.
Had we met with this verse in any part of the Bible that professed to
have been written after kings began to reign in Israel, it would have
been impossible not to have seen the application of it. It happens then
that this is the case; the two books of Chronicles, which give a history
of all the kings of Israel, are professedly, as well as in fact, written
after the Jewish monarchy began; and this verse that I have quoted,
and all the remaining verses of Genesis xxxvi. are, word for word, In 1
Chronicles i., beginning at the 43d verse.
It was with consistency that the writer of the Chronicles could say as
he has said, 1 Chron. i. 43, "These are the kings that reigned in Edom,
before there reigned any king ever the children of Israel," because he
was going to give, and has given, a list of the kings that had reigned
in Israel; but as it is impossible that the same expression could have
been used before that period, it is as certain as any thing can be
proved from historical language, that this part of Genesis is taken from
Chronicles, and that Genesis is not so old as Chronicles, and probably
not so old as the book of Homer, or as AEsop's Fables; admitting Homer
to have been, as the tables of chronology state, contemporary with
David or Solomon, and AEsop to have lived about the end of the Jewish
monarchy.
Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which
only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there
remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and
traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies. The story of
Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the
Arabian Tales, without the merit of being entertaining, and the account
of men living to eight and nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the
immortality of the giants of the Mythology.
Besides, the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most
horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the
wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the
pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation,
committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the
history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance:
When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering
excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): "And
Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation,
went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the
officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains
over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them,
'Have ye saved all the women alive?' behold, these caused the children
of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against
the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the
congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, 'kill every male among the
little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with
him; but all the women-children that have not known a man by lying with
him, keep alive for Yourselves.'"
Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have
disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than
Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to
massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters.
Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child
murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of
an executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of
those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a
brother, and what will be their feelings? It is in vain that we attempt
to impose upon nature, for nature will have her course, and the religion
that tortures all her social ties is a false religion.
After this detestable order, follows an account of the plunder taken,
and the manner of dividing it; and here it is that the profaneings of
priestly hypocrisy increases the catalogue of crimes. Verse 37, "And the
Lord's tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen;
and the beeves were thirty and six thousand, of which the Lord's tribute
was threescore and twelve; and the asses were thirty thousand, of which
the Lord's tribute was threescore and one; and the persons were sixteen
thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was thirty and two." In short, the
matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the
Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear;
for it appears, from the 35th verse of this chapter, that the number
of women-children consigned to debauchery by the order of Moses was
thirty-two thousand.
People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended
word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for
granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit
themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the
benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to
believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another
thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be
greater blasphemy, than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders
of the Almighty!
But to return to my subject, that of showing that Moses is not the
author of the books ascribed to him, and that the Bible is spurious.
The two instances I have already given would be sufficient, without any
additional evidence, to invalidate the authenticity of any book that
pretended to be four or five hundred years more ancient than the matters
it speaks of, refers to, them as facts; for in the case of pursuing them
unto Dan, and of the kings that reigned over the children of Israel; not
even the flimsy pretence of prophecy can be pleaded. The expressions are
in the preter tense, and it would be downright idiotism to say that a
man could prophecy in the preter tense.
But there are many other passages scattered throughout those books that
unite in the same point of evidence. It is said in Exodus, (another of
the books ascribed to Moses,) xvi. 35: "And the children of Israel did
eat manna until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna until
they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan."
Whether the children of Israel ate manna or not, or what manna was, or
whether it was anything more than a kind of fungus or small mushroom, or
other vegetable substance common to that part of the country, makes no
part of my argument; all that I mean to show is, that it is not Moses
that could write this account, because the account extends itself beyond
the life time of Moses. Moses, according to the Bible, (but it is such
a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to
believe, or whether any) died in the wilderness, and never came upon
the borders of 'the land of Canaan; and consequently, it could not be
he that said what the children of Israel did, or what they ate when they
came there. This account of eating manna, which they tell us was written
by Moses, extends itself to the time of Joshua, the successor of
Moses, as appears by the account given in the book of Joshua, after
the children of Israel had passed the river Jordan, and came into the
borders of the land of Canaan. Joshua, v. 12: "And the manna ceased on
the morrow, after they had eaten of the old corn of the land; neither
had the children of Israel manna any more, but they did eat of the fruit
of the land of Canaan that year."
But a more remarkable instance than this occurs in Deuteronomy; which,
while it shows that Moses could not be the writer of that book, shows
also the fabulous notions that prevailed at that time about giants' In
Deuteronomy iii. 11, among the conquests said to be made by Moses, is
an account of the taking of Og, king of Bashan: "For only Og, king
of Bashan, remained of the race of giants; behold, his bedstead was a
bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine
cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after
the cubit of a man." A cubit is 1 foot 9 888/1000 inches; the length
therefore of the bed was 16 feet 4 inches, and the breadth 7 feet 4
inches: thus much for this giant's bed. Now for the historical part,
which, though the evidence is not so direct and positive as in the
former cases, is nevertheless very presumable and corroborating
evidence, and is better than the best evidence on the contrary side.
The writer, by way of proving the existence of this giant, refers to his
bed, as an ancient relick, and says, is it not in Rabbath (or Rabbah)
of the children of Ammon? meaning that it is; for such is frequently the
bible method of affirming a thing. But it could not be Moses that said
this, because Moses could know nothing about Rabbah, nor of what was in
it. Rabbah was not a city belonging to this giant king, nor was it one
of the cities that Moses took. The knowledge therefore that this bed was
at Rabbah, and of the particulars of its dimensions, must be referred to
the time when Rabbah was taken, and this was not till four hundred
years after the death of Moses; for which, see 2 Sam. xii. 26: "And Joab
[David's general] fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and
took the royal city," etc.
As I am not undertaking to point out all the contradictions in time,
place, and circumstance that abound in the books ascribed to Moses, and
which prove to demonstration that those books could not be written by
Moses, nor in the time of Moses, I proceed to the book of Joshua, and
to shew that Joshua is not the author of that book, and that it is
anonymous and without authority. The evidence I shall produce is
contained in the book itself: I will not go out of the Bible for proof
against the supposed authenticity of the Bible. False testimony is
always good against itself.
Joshua, according to Joshua i., was the immediate successor of Moses; he
was, moreover, a military man, which Moses was not; and he continued as
chief of the people of Israel twenty-five years; that is, from the time
that Moses died, which, according to the Bible chronology, was B.C.
1451, until B.C. 1426, when, according to the same chronology, Joshua
died. If, therefore, we find in this book, said to have been written
by Joshua, references to facts done after the death of Joshua, it is
evidence that Joshua could not be the author; and also that the book
could not have been written till after the time of the latest fact
which it records. As to the character of the book, it is horrid; it is
a military history of rapine and murder, as savage and brutal as those
recorded of his predecessor in villainy and hypocrisy, Moses; and the
blasphemy consists, as in the former books, in ascribing those deeds to
the orders of the Almighty.
In the first place, the book of Joshua, as is the case in the preceding
books, is written in the third person; it is the historian of Joshua
that speaks, for it would have been absurd and vainglorious that Joshua
should say of himself, as is said of him in the last verse of the sixth
chapter, that "his fame was noised throughout all the country."—I now
come more immediately to the proof.
In Joshua xxiv. 31, it is said "And Israel served the Lord all the days
of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that over-lived Joshua." Now,
in the name of common sense, can it be Joshua that relates what people
had done after he was dead? This account must not only have been written
by some historian that lived after Joshua, but that lived also after the
elders that out-lived Joshua.
There are several passages of a general meaning with respect to time,
scattered throughout the book of Joshua, that carries the time in which
the book was written to a distance from the time of Joshua, but without
marking by exclusion any particular time, as in the passage above
quoted. In that passage, the time that intervened between the death
of Joshua and the death of the elders is excluded descriptively and
absolutely, and the evidence substantiates that the book could not have
been written till after the death of the last.
But though the passages to which I allude, and which I am going to
quote, do not designate any particular time by exclusion, they imply a
time far more distant from the days of Joshua than is contained between
the death of Joshua and the death of the elders. Such is the passage, x.
14, where, after giving an account that the sun stood still upon Gibeon,
and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, at the command of Joshua, (a tale
only fit to amuse children) [NOTE: This tale of the sun standing still
upon Motint Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, is one of
those fables that detects itself. Such a circumstance could not have
happened without being known all over the world. One half would have
wondered why the sun did not rise, and the other why it did not set; and
the tradition of it would be universal; whereas there is not a nation
in the world that knows anything about it. But why must the moon stand
still? What occasion could there be for moonlight in the daytime, and
that too whilst the sun shined? As a poetical figure, the whole is well
enough; it is akin to that in the song of Deborah and Barak, The stars
in their courses fought against Sisera; but it is inferior to the
figurative declaration of Mahomet to the persons who came to expostulate
with him on his goings on, Wert thou, said he, to come to me with the
sun in thy right hand and the moon in thy left, it should not alter my
career. For Joshua to have exceeded Mahomet, he should have put the sun
and moon, one in each pocket, and carried them as Guy Faux carried his
dark lanthorn, and taken them out to shine as he might happen to want
them. The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it
is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes
the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime
again; the account, however, abstracted from the poetical fancy, shews
the ignorance of Joshua, for he should have commanded the earth to have
stood still.—Author.] the passage says: "And there was no day like
that, before it, nor after it, that the Lord hearkened to the voice of a
man."
The time implied by the expression after it, that is, after that day,
being put in comparison with all the time that passed before it, must,
in order to give any expressive signification to the passage, mean a
great length of time:—for example, it would have been ridiculous to
have said so the next day, or the next week, or the next month, or the
next year; to give therefore meaning to the passage, comparative with
the wonder it relates, and the prior time it alludes to, it must mean
centuries of years; less however than one would be trifling, and less
than two would be barely admissible.
A distant, but general time is also expressed in chapter viii.; where,
after giving an account of the taking the city of Ai, it is said, ver.
28th, "And Joshua burned Ai, and made it an heap for ever, a desolation
unto this day;" and again, ver. 29, where speaking of the king of Ai,
whom Joshua had hanged, and buried at the entering of the gate, it is
said, "And he raised thereon a great heap of stones, which remaineth
unto this day," that is, unto the day or time in which the writer of the
book of Joshua lived. And again, in chapter x. where, after speaking of
the five kings whom Joshua had hanged on five trees, and then thrown in
a cave, it is said, "And he laid great stones on the cave's mouth, which
remain unto this very day."
In enumerating the several exploits of Joshua, and of the tribes, and
of the places which they conquered or attempted, it is said, xv. 63, "As
for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah
could not drive them out; but the Jebusites dwell with the children of
Judah AT JERUSALEM unto this day." The question upon this passage is, At
what time did the Jebusites and the children of Judah dwell together at
Jerusalem? As this matter occurs again in judges i. I shall reserve my
observations till I come to that part.
Having thus shewn from the book of Joshua itself, without any auxiliary
evidence whatever, that Joshua is not the author of that book, and
that it is anonymous, and consequently without authority, I proceed, as
before-mentioned, to the book of Judges.
The book of Judges is anonymous on the face of it; and, therefore, even
the pretence is wanting to call it the word of God; it has not so much
as a nominal voucher; it is altogether fatherless.
This book begins with the same expression as the book of Joshua. That of
Joshua begins, chap i. 1, Now after the death of Moses, etc., and this
of the Judges begins, Now after the death of Joshua, etc. This, and the
similarity of stile between the two books, indicate that they are the
work of the same author; but who he was, is altogether unknown; the only
point that the book proves is that the author lived long after the time
of Joshua; for though it begins as if it followed immediately after his
death, the second chapter is an epitome or abstract of the whole book,
which, according to the Bible chronology, extends its history through a
space of 306 years; that is, from the death of Joshua, B.C. 1426 to the
death of Samson, B.C. 1120, and only 25 years before Saul went to seek
his father's asses, and was made king. But there is good reason to
believe, that it was not written till the time of David, at least, and
that the book of Joshua was not written before the same time.
In Judges i., the writer, after announcing the death of Joshua, proceeds
to tell what happened between the children of Judah and the native
inhabitants of the land of Canaan. In this statement the writer, having
abruptly mentioned Jerusalem in the 7th verse, says immediately after,
in the 8th verse, by way of explanation, "Now the children of Judah had
fought against Jerusalem, and taken it;" consequently this book could
not have been written before Jerusalem had been taken. The reader will
recollect the quotation I have just before made from Joshua xv. 63,
where it said that the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at
Jerusalem at this day; meaning the time when the book of Joshua was
written.
The evidence I have already produced to prove that the books I have
hitherto treated of were not written by the persons to whom they are
ascribed, nor till many years after their death, if such persons ever
lived, is already so abundant, that I can afford to admit this passage
with less weight than I am entitled to draw from it. For the case is,
that so far as the Bible can be credited as an history, the city of
Jerusalem was not taken till the time of David; and consequently, that
the book of Joshua, and of Judges, were not written till after the
commencement of the reign of David, which was 370 years after the death
of Joshua.
The name of the city that was afterward called Jerusalem was originally
Jebus, or Jebusi, and was the capital of the Jebusites. The account of
David's taking this city is given in 2 Samuel, v. 4, etc.; also in 1
Chron. xiv. 4, etc. There is no mention in any part of the Bible that it
was ever taken before, nor any account that favours such an opinion.
It is not said, either in Samuel or in Chronicles, that they "utterly
destroyed men, women and children, that they left not a soul to
breathe," as is said of their other conquests; and the silence here
observed implies that it was taken by capitulation; and that the
Jebusites, the native inhabitants, continued to live in the place
after it was taken. The account therefore, given in Joshua, that "the
Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah" at Jerusalem at this day,
corresponds to no other time than after taking the city by David.
Having now shown that every book in the Bible, from Genesis to Judges,
is without authenticity, I come to the book of Ruth, an idle, bungling
story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about a strolling
country-girl creeping slily to bed to her cousin Boaz. [The text of
Ruth does not imply the unpleasant sense Paine's words are likely to
convey.—Editor.] Pretty stuff indeed to be called the word of God. It
is, however, one of the best books in the Bible, for it is free from
murder and rapine.
I come next to the two books of Samuel, and to shew that those books
were not written by Samuel, nor till a great length of time after
the death of Samuel; and that they are, like all the former books,
anonymous, and without authority.
To be convinced that these books have been written much later than the
time of Samuel, and consequently not by him, it is only necessary
to read the account which the writer gives of Saul going to seek his
father's asses, and of his interview with Samuel, of whom Saul went
to enquire about those lost asses, as foolish people now-a-days go to a
conjuror to enquire after lost things.
The writer, in relating this story of Saul, Samuel, and the asses, does
not tell it as a thing that had just then happened, but as an ancient
story in the time this writer lived; for he tells it in the language or
terms used at the time that Samuel lived, which obliges the writer to
explain the story in the terms or language used in the time the writer
lived.
Samuel, in the account given of him in the first of those books, chap.
ix. 13 called the seer; and it is by this term that Saul enquires after
him, ver. 11, "And as they [Saul and his servant] went up the hill to
the city, they found young maidens going out to draw water; and they
said unto them, Is the seer here?" Saul then went according to the
direction of these maidens, and met Samuel without knowing him, and said
unto him, ver. 18, "Tell me, I pray thee, where the seer's house is? and
Samuel answered Saul, and said, I am the seer."
As the writer of the book of Samuel relates these questions and answers,
in the language or manner of speaking used in the time they are said
to have been spoken, and as that manner of speaking was out of use when
this author wrote, he found it necessary, in order to make the story
understood, to explain the terms in which these questions and
answers are spoken; and he does this in the 9th verse, where he says,
"Before-time in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he
spake, Come let us go to the seer; for he that is now called a prophet,
was before-time called a seer." This proves, as I have before said, that
this story of Saul, Samuel, and the asses, was an ancient story at the
time the book of Samuel was written, and consequently that Samuel did
not write it, and that the book is without authenticity.
But if we go further into those books the evidence is still more
positive that Samuel is not the writer of them; for they relate things
that did not happen till several years after the death of Samuel. Samuel
died before Saul; for i Samuel, xxviii. tells, that Saul and the witch
of Endor conjured Samuel up after he was dead; yet the history of
matters contained in those books is extended through the remaining part
of Saul's life, and to the latter end of the life of David, who succeeded
Saul. The account of the death and burial of Samuel (a thing which he
could not write himself) is related in i Samuel xxv.; and the chronology
affixed to this chapter makes this to be B.C. 1060; yet the history of
this first book is brought down to B.C. 1056, that is, to the death of
Saul, which was not till four years after the death of Samuel.
The second book of Samuel begins with an account of things that did not
happen till four years after Samuel was dead; for it begins with the
reign of David, who succeeded Saul, and it goes on to the end of David's
reign, which was forty-three years after the death of Samuel; and,
therefore, the books are in themselves positive evidence that they were
not written by Samuel.
I have now gone through all the books in the first part of the Bible,
to which the names of persons are affixed, as being the authors of those
books, and which the church, styling itself the Christian church, have
imposed upon the world as the writings of Moses, Joshua and Samuel; and
I have detected and proved the falsehood of this imposition.—And now ye
priests, of every description, who have preached and written against the
former part of the 'Age of Reason,' what have ye to say? Will ye with
all this mass of evidence against you, and staring you in the face,
still have the assurance to march into your pulpits, and continue to
impose these books on your congregations, as the works of inspired
penmen and the word of God? when it is as evident as demonstration can
make truth appear, that the persons who ye say are the authors, are not
the authors, and that ye know not who the authors are. What shadow of
pretence have ye now to produce for continuing the blasphemous fraud?
What have ye still to offer against the pure and moral religion of
deism, in support of your system of falsehood, idolatry, and pretended
revelation? Had the cruel and murdering orders, with which the Bible
is filled, and the numberless torturing executions of men, women, and
children, in consequence of those orders, been ascribed to some friend,
whose memory you revered, you would have glowed with satisfaction at
detecting the falsehood of the charge, and gloried in defending his
injured fame. It is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition,
or feel no interest in the honour of your Creator, that ye listen to the
horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference. The
evidence I have produced, and shall still produce in the course of this
work, to prove that the Bible is without authority, will, whilst it
wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve and tranquillize the minds
of millions: it will free them from all those hard thoughts of the
Almighty which priestcraft and the Bible had infused into their minds,
and which stood in everlasting opposition to all their ideas of his
moral justice and benevolence.
I come now to the two books of Kings, and the two books of
Chronicles.—Those books are altogether historical, and are chiefly
confined to the lives and actions of the Jewish kings, who in general
were a parcel of rascals: but these are matters with which we have no
more concern than we have with the Roman emperors, or Homer's account of
the Trojan war. Besides which, as those books are anonymous, and as we
know nothing of the writer, or of his character, it is impossible for
us to know what degree of credit to give to the matters related therein.
Like all other ancient histories, they appear to be a jumble of fable
and of fact, and of probable and of improbable things, but which
distance of time and place, and change of circumstances in the world,
have rendered obsolete and uninteresting.
The chief use I shall make of those books will be that of comparing
them with each other, and with other parts of the Bible, to show the
confusion, contradiction, and cruelty in this pretended word of God.
The first book of Kings begins with the reign of Solomon, which,
according to the Bible chronology, was B.C. 1015; and the second
book ends B.C. 588, being a little after the reign of Zedekiah, whom
Nebuchadnezzar, after taking Jerusalem and conquering the Jews, carried
captive to Babylon. The two books include a space of 427 years.
The two books of Chronicles are an history of the same times, and in
general of the same persons, by another author; for it would be absurd
to suppose that the same author wrote the history twice over. The first
book of Chronicles (after giving the genealogy from Adam to Saul, which
takes up the first nine chapters) begins with the reign of David; and
the last book ends, as in the last book of Kings, soon, after the reign
of Zedekiah, about B.C. 588. The last two verses of the last chapter
bring the history 52 years more forward, that is, to 536. But these
verses do not belong to the book, as I shall show when I come to speak
of the book of Ezra.
The two books of Kings, besides the history of Saul, David, and Solomon,
who reigned over all Israel, contain an abstract of the lives of
seventeen kings, and one queen, who are stiled kings of Judah; and
of nineteen, who are stiled kings of Israel; for the Jewish nation,
immediately on the death of Solomon, split into two parties, who chose
separate kings, and who carried on most rancorous wars against each
other.
These two books are little more than a history of assassinations,
treachery, and wars. The cruelties that the Jews had accustomed
themselves to practise on the Canaanites, whose country they had
savagely invaded, under a pretended gift from God, they afterwards
practised as furiously on each other. Scarcely half their kings died a
natural death, and in some instances whole families were destroyed
to secure possession to the successor, who, after a few years, and
sometimes only a few months, or less, shared the same fate. In 2 Kings
x., an account is given of two baskets full of children's heads, seventy
in number, being exposed at the entrance of the city; they were the
children of Ahab, and were murdered by the orders of Jehu, whom Elisha,
the pretended man of God, had anointed to be king over Israel, on
purpose to commit this bloody deed, and assassinate his predecessor. And
in the account of the reign of Menahem, one of the kings of Israel who
had murdered Shallum, who had reigned but one month, it is said, 2 Kings
xv. 16, that Menahem smote the city of Tiphsah, because they opened
not the city to him, and all the women therein that were with child he
ripped up.
Could we permit ourselves to suppose that the Almighty would distinguish
any nation of people by the name of his chosen people, we must suppose
that people to have been an example to all the rest of the world of
the purest piety and humanity, and not such a nation of ruffians and
cut-throats as the ancient Jews were,—a people who, corrupted by and
copying after such monsters and imposters as Moses and Aaron, Joshua,
Samuel, and David, had distinguished themselves above all others on the
face of the known earth for barbarity and wickedness. If we will not
stubbornly shut our eyes and steel our hearts it is impossible not to
see, in spite of all that long-established superstition imposes upon the
mind, that the flattering appellation of his chosen people is no other
than a LIE which the priests and leaders of the Jews had invented to
cover the baseness of their own characters; and which Christian priests
sometimes as corrupt, and often as cruel, have professed to believe.
The two books of Chronicles are a repetition of the same crimes; but the
history is broken in several places, by the author leaving out the reign
of some of their kings; and in this, as well as in that of Kings, there
is such a frequent transition from kings of Judah to kings of Israel,
and from kings of Israel to kings of Judah, that the narrative
is obscure in the reading. In the same book the history sometimes
contradicts itself: for example, in 2 Kings, i. 17, we are told, but in
rather ambiguous terms, that after the death of Ahaziah, king of Israel,
Jehoram, or Joram, (who was of the house of Ahab), reigned in his stead
in the second Year of Jehoram, or Joram, son of Jehoshaphat, king of
Judah; and in viii. 16, of the same book, it is said, "And in the fifth
year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Jehoshaphat being then
king of Judah, Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat king of judah, began to
reign." That is, one chapter says Joram of Judah began to reign in the
second year of Joram of Israel; and the other chapter says, that Joram
of Israel began to reign in the fifth year of Joram of Judah.
Several of the most extraordinary matters related in one history, as
having happened during the reign of such or such of their kings, are not
to be found in the other, in relating the reign of the same king: for
example, the two first rival kings, after the death of Solomon, were
Rehoboam and Jeroboam; and in i Kings xii. and xiii. an account is given
of Jeroboam making an offering of burnt incense, and that a man, who
is there called a man of God, cried out against the altar (xiii. 2): "O
altar, altar! thus saith the Lord: Behold, a child shall be born unto
the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon thee shall he offer the
priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones
shall be burned upon thee." Verse 4: "And it came to pass, when king
Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, which had cried against the
altar in Bethel, that he put forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay
hold on him; and his hand which he put out against him dried up so that
he could not pull it again to him."
One would think that such an extraordinary case as this, (which is
spoken of as a judgement,) happening to the chief of one of the parties,
and that at the first moment of the separation of the Israelites into
two nations, would, if it,. had been true, have been recorded in both
histories. But though men, in later times, have believed all that the
prophets have said unto them, it does appear that those prophets, or
historians, disbelieved each other: they knew each other too well.
A long account also is given in Kings about Elijah. It runs through
several chapters, and concludes with telling, 2 Kings ii. 11, "And it
came to pass, as they (Elijah and Elisha) still went on, and talked,
that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire,
and parted them both asunder, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into
heaven." Hum! this the author of Chronicles, miraculous as the story is,
makes no mention of, though he mentions Elijah by name; neither does he
say anything of the story related in the second chapter of the same book
of Kings, of a parcel of children calling Elisha bald head; and that
this man of God (ver. 24) "turned back, and looked upon them, and cursed
them in the name of the Lord; and there came forth two she-bears out of
the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." He also passes over
in silence the story told, 2 Kings xiii., that when they were burying a
man in the sepulchre where Elisha had been buried, it happened that the
dead man, as they were letting him down, (ver. 21) "touched the bones
of Elisha, and he (the dead man) revived, and stood up on his feet." The
story does not tell us whether they buried the man, notwithstanding he
revived and stood upon his feet, or drew him up again. Upon all these
stories the writer of the Chronicles is as silent as any writer of the
present day, who did not chose to be accused of lying, or at least of
romancing, would be about stories of the same kind.
But, however these two historians may differ from each other with
respect to the tales related by either, they are silent alike with
respect to those men styled prophets whose writings fill up the latter
part of the Bible. Isaiah, who lived in the time of Hezekiab, is
mentioned in Kings, and again in Chronicles, when these histories are
speaking of that reign; but except in one or two instances at most, and
those very slightly, none of the rest are so much as spoken of, or even
their existence hinted at; though, according to the Bible chronology,
they lived within the time those histories were written; and some of
them long before. If those prophets, as they are called, were men of
such importance in their day, as the compilers of the Bible, and priests
and commentators have since represented them to be, how can it be
accounted for that not one of those histories should say anything about
them?
The history in the books of Kings and of Chronicles is brought forward,
as I have already said, to the year B.C. 588; it will, therefore, be
proper to examine which of these prophets lived before that period.
Here follows a table of all the prophets, with the times in which they
lived before Christ, according to the chronology affixed to the first
chapter of each of the books of the prophets; and also of the number of
years they lived before the books of Kings and Chronicles were written:
TABLE of the Prophets, with the time in which they lived before Christ,
and also before the books of Kings and Chronicles were written:
Years Years before
NAMES. before Kings and Observations.
Christ. Chronicles.
Isaiah............... 760 172 mentioned.
(mentioned only in
Jeremiah............. 629 41 the last [two] chapters
of Chronicles.
Ezekiel.............. 595 7 not mentioned.
Daniel............... 607 19 not mentioned.
Hosea................ 785 97 not mentioned.
Joel................. 800 212 not mentioned.
Amos................. 789 199 not mentioned.
Obadiah.............. 789 199 not mentioned.
Jonah................ 862 274 see the note.
Micah................ 750 162 not mentioned.
Nahum................ 713 125 not mentioned.
Habakkuk............. 620 38 not mentioned.
Zepbaniah............ 630 42 not mentioned.
Haggai Zechariah all three after the year 588 Medachi [NOTE In 2 Kings
xiv. 25, the name of Jonah is mentioned on account of the restoration of
a tract of land by Jeroboam; but nothing further is said of him, nor
is any allusion made to the book of Jonah, nor to his expedition to
Nineveh, nor to his encounter with the whale.—Author.]
This table is either not very honourable for the Bible historians, or
not very honourable for the Bible prophets; and I leave to priests and
commentators, who are very learned in little things, to settle the point
of etiquette between the two; and to assign a reason, why the authors of
Kings and of Chronicles have treated those prophets, whom, in the former
part of the 'Age of Reason,' I have considered as poets, with as much
degrading silence as any historian of the present day would treat Peter
Pindar.
I have one more observation to make on the book of Chronicles; after
which I shall pass on to review the remaining books of the Bible.
In my observations on the book of Genesis, I have quoted a passage from
xxxvi. 31, which evidently refers to a time, after that kings began to
reign over the children of Israel; and I have shown that as this
verse is verbatim the same as in 1 Chronicles i. 43, where it stands
consistently with the order of history, which in Genesis it does not,
that the verse in Genesis, and a great part of the 36th chapter, have
been taken from Chronicles; and that the book of Genesis, though it is
placed first in the Bible, and ascribed to Moses, has been manufactured
by some unknown person, after the book of Chronicles was written, which
was not until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of
Moses.
The evidence I proceed by to substantiate this, is regular, and has in
it but two stages. First, as I have already stated, that the passage in
Genesis refers itself for time to Chronicles; secondly, that the book
of Chronicles, to which this passage refers itself, was not begun to be
written until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of
Moses. To prove this, we have only to look into 1 Chronicles iii. 15,
where the writer, in giving the genealogy of the descendants of
David, mentions Zedekiah; and it was in the time of Zedekiah that
Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, B.C. 588, and consequently more than
860 years after Moses. Those who have superstitiously boasted of the
antiquity of the Bible, and particularly of the books ascribed to Moses,
have done it without examination, and without any other authority
than that of one credulous man telling it to another: for, so far as
historical and chronological evidence applies, the very first book in
the Bible is not so ancient as the book of Homer, by more than three
hundred years, and is about the same age with AEsop's Fables.
I am not contending for the morality of Homer; on the contrary, I think
it a book of false glory, and tending to inspire immoral and mischievous
notions of honour; and with respect to AEsop, though the moral is in
general just, the fable is often cruel; and the cruelty of the fable
does more injury to the heart, especially in a child, than the moral
does good to the judgment.
Having now dismissed Kings and Chronicles, I come to the next in course,
the book of Ezra.
As one proof, among others I shall produce to shew the disorder in which
this pretended word of God, the Bible, has been put together, and the
uncertainty of who the authors were, we have only to look at the first
three verses in Ezra, and the last two in 2 Chronicles; for by what kind
of cutting and shuffling has it been that the first three verses in Ezra
should be the last two verses in 2 Chronicles, or that the last two in 2
Chronicles should be the first three in Ezra? Either the authors did not
know their own works or the compilers did not know the authors.
Last Two Verses of 2 Chronicles.
Ver. 22. Now in the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, that the word
of the Lord, spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be accomplished,
the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made
a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing,
saying.
earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to
build him an house in Jerusalem which is in Judah. Who is there among
you of all his people? the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up.
***
First Three Verses of Ezra.
Ver. 1. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of
the Lord, by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred
up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation
throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying.
2. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given
me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an
house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
3. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and
let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of
the Lord God of Israel (he is the God) which is in Jerusalem.
*** The last verse in Chronicles is broken abruptly, and ends in the
middle of the phrase with the word 'up' without signifying to what
place. This abrupt break, and the appearance of the same verses in
different books, show as I have already said, the disorder and ignorance
in which the Bible has been put together, and that the compilers of
it had no authority for what they were doing, nor we any authority for
believing what they have done. [NOTE I observed, as I passed along,
several broken and senseless passages in the Bible, without thinking
them of consequence enough to be introduced in the body of the work;
such as that, 1 Samuel xiii. 1, where it is said, "Saul reigned one
year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose him
three thousand men," &c. The first part of the verse, that Saul reigned
one year has no sense, since it does not tell us what Saul did, nor
say any thing of what happened at the end of that one year; and it is,
besides, mere absurdity to say he reigned one year, when the very
next phrase says he had reigned two for if he had reigned two, it was
impossible not to have reigned one.
Another instance occurs in Joshua v. where the writer tells us a story
of an angel (for such the table of contents at the head of the chapter
calls him) appearing unto Joshua; and the story ends abruptly, and
without any conclusion. The story is as follows:—Ver. 13. "And it came
to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and
looked, and behold there stood a man over against him with his sword
drawn in his hand; and Joshua went unto him and said unto him, Art thou
for us, or for our adversaries?" Verse 14, "And he said, Nay; but as
captain of the host of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his
face to the earth, and did worship and said unto him, What saith my Lord
unto his servant?" Verse 15, "And the captain of the Lord's host said
unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon
thou standeth is holy. And Joshua did so."—And what then? nothing: for
here the story ends, and the chapter too.
Either this story is broken off in the middle, or it is a story told
by some Jewish humourist in ridicule of Joshua's pretended mission from
God, and the compilers of the Bible, not perceiving the design of
the story, have told it as a serious matter. As a story of humour and
ridicule it has a great deal of point; for it pompously introduces an
angel in the figure of a man, with a drawn sword in his hand, before
whom Joshua falls on his face to the earth, and worships (which is
contrary to their second commandment;) and then, this most important
embassy from heaven ends in telling Joshua to pull off his shoe. It
might as well have told him to pull up his breeches.
It is certain, however, that the Jews did not credit every thing their
leaders told them, as appears from the cavalier manner in which they
speak of Moses, when he was gone into the mount. As for this Moses, say
they, we wot not what is become of him. Exod. xxxii. 1.—Author.
The only thing that has any appearance of certainty in the book of Ezra
is the time in which it was written, which was immediately after the
return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, about B.C. 536. Ezra
(who, according to the Jewish commentators, is the same person as is
called Esdras in the Apocrypha) was one of the persons who returned, and
who, it is probable, wrote the account of that affair. Nebemiah, whose
book follows next to Ezra, was another of the returned persons; and who,
it is also probable, wrote the account of the same affair, in the book
that bears his name. But those accounts are nothing to us, nor to any
other person, unless it be to the Jews, as a part of the history of
their nation; and there is just as much of the word of God in those
books as there is in any of the histories of France, or Rapin's history
of England, or the history of any other country.
But even in matters of historical record, neither of those writers are
to be depended upon. In Ezra ii., the writer gives a list of the tribes
and families, and of the precise number of souls of each, that returned
from Babylon to Jerusalem; and this enrolment of the persons so returned
appears to have been one of the principal objects for writing the
book; but in this there is an error that destroys the intention of the
undertaking.
The writer begins his enrolment in the following manner (ii. 3): "The
children of Parosh, two thousand one hundred seventy and four." Ver. 4,
"The children of Shephatiah, three hundred seventy and two." And in this
manner he proceeds through all the families; and in the 64th verse, he
makes a total, and says, the whole congregation together was forty and
two thousand three hundred and threescore.
But whoever will take the trouble of casting up the several particulars,
will find that the total is but 29,818; so that the error is 12,542.
What certainty then can there be in the Bible for any thing?
[Here Mr. Paine includes the long list of numbers from the Bible of all
the children listed and the total thereof. This can be had directly from
the Bible.]
Nehemiah, in like manner, gives a list of the returned families, and
of the number of each family. He begins as in Ezra, by saying (vii. 8):
"The children of Parosh, two thousand three hundred and seventy-two;"
and so on through all the families. (The list differs in several of the
particulars from that of Ezra.) In ver. 66, Nehemiah makes a total, and
says, as Ezra had said, "The whole congregation together was forty and
two thousand three hundred and threescore." But the particulars of this
list make a total but of 31,089, so that the error here is 11,271. These
writers may do well enough for Bible-makers, but not for any thing where
truth and exactness is necessary.
The next book in course is the book of Esther. If Madam Esther thought
it any honour to offer herself as a kept mistress to Ahasuerus, or as a
rival to Queen Vashti, who had refused to come to a drunken king in the
midst of a drunken company, to be made a show of, (for the account
says, they had been drinking seven days, and were merry,) let Esther and
Mordecai look to that, it is no business of ours, at least it is none of
mine; besides which, the story has a great deal the appearance of being
fabulous, and is also anonymous. I pass on to the book of Job.
The book of Job differs in character from all the books we have hitherto
passed over. Treachery and murder make no part of this book; it is the
meditations of a mind strongly impressed with the vicissitudes of human
life, and by turns sinking under, and struggling against the pressure.
It is a highly wrought composition, between willing submission and
involuntary discontent; and shows man, as he sometimes is, more disposed
to be resigned than he is capable of being. Patience has but a small
share in the character of the person of whom the book treats; on the
contrary, his grief is often impetuous; but he still endeavours to keep
a guard upon it, and seems determined, in the midst of accumulating
ills, to impose upon himself the hard duty of contentment.
I have spoken in a respectful manner of the book of Job in the former
part of the 'Age of Reason,' but without knowing at that time what I
have learned since; which is, that from all the evidence that can be
collected, the book of Job does not belong to the Bible.
I have seen the opinion of two Hebrew commentators, Abenezra and
Spinoza, upon this subject; they both say that the book of Job carries
no internal evidence of being an Hebrew book; that the genius of the
composition, and the drama of the piece, are not Hebrew; that it has
been translated from another language into Hebrew, and that the author
of the book was a Gentile; that the character represented under the name
of Satan (which is the first and only time this name is mentioned in
the Bible) [In a later work Paine notes that in "the Bible" (by which
he always means the Old Testament alone) the word Satan occurs also in 1
Chron. xxi. 1, and remarks that the action there ascribed to Satan is
in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, attributed to Jehovah ("Essay on Dreams"). In these
places, however, and in Ps. cix. 6, Satan means "adversary," and is so
translated (A.S. version) in 2 Sam. xix. 22, and 1 Kings v. 4, xi. 25.
As a proper name, with the article, Satan appears in the Old Testament
only in Job and in Zech. iii. 1, 2. But the authenticity of the passage
in Zechariah has been questioned, and it may be that in finding the
proper name of Satan in Job alone, Paine was following some opinion
met with in one of the authorities whose comments are condensed in his
paragraph.—Editor.] does not correspond to any Hebrew idea; and that
the two convocations which the Deity is supposed to have made of those
whom the poem calls sons of God, and the familiarity which this supposed
Satan is stated to have with the Deity, are in the same case.
It may also be observed, that the book shows itself to be the production
of a mind cultivated in science, which the Jews, so far from being
famous for, were very ignorant of. The allusions to objects of natural
philosophy are frequent and strong, and are of a different cast to any
thing in the books known to be Hebrew. The astronomical names, Pleiades,
Orion, and Arcturus, are Greek and not Hebrew names, and it does not
appear from any thing that is to be found in the Bible that the Jews
knew any thing of astronomy, or that they studied it, they had no
translation of those names into their own language, but adopted the
names as they found them in the poem. [Paine's Jewish critic, David
Levi, fastened on this slip ("Defence of the Old Testament," 1797, p.
152). In the original the names are Ash (Arcturus), Kesil' (Orion),
Kimah' (Pleiades), though the identifications of the constellations in
the A.S.V. have been questioned.—Editor.]
That the Jews did translate the literary productions of the Gentile
nations into the Hebrew language, and mix them with their own, is not a
matter of doubt; Proverbs xxxi. i, is an evidence of this: it is there
said, The word of king Lemuel, the prophecy which his mother taught him.
This verse stands as a preface to the proverbs that follow, and which
are not the proverbs of Solomon, but of Lemuel; and this Lemuel was not
one of the kings of Israel, nor of Judah, but of some other country, and
consequently a Gentile. The Jews however have adopted his proverbs; and
as they cannot give any account who the author of the book of Job was,
nor how they came by the book, and as it differs in character from the
Hebrew writings, and stands totally unconnected with every other
book and chapter in the Bible before it and after it, it has all the
circumstantial evidence of being originally a book of the Gentiles.
[The prayer known by the name of Agur's Prayer, in Proverbs
xxx.,—immediately preceding the proverbs of Lemuel,—and which is the
only sensible, well-conceived, and well-expressed prayer in the Bible,
has much the appearance of being a prayer taken from the Gentiles.
The name of Agur occurs on no other occasion than this; and he is
introduced, together with the prayer ascribed to him, in the same
manner, and nearly in the same words, that Lemuel and his proverbs are
introduced in the chapter that follows. The first verse says, "The words
of Agur, the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy:" here the word prophecy
is used with the same application it has in the following chapter of
Lemuel, unconnected with anything of prediction. The prayer of Agur is
in the 8th and 9th verses, "Remove far from me vanity and lies; give
me neither riches nor poverty, but feed me with food convenient for me;
lest I be full and deny thee and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor
and steal, and take the name of my God in vain." This has not any of the
marks of being a Jewish prayer, for the Jews never prayed but when
they were in trouble, and never for anything but victory, vengeance,
or riches.—Author. (Prov. xxx. 1, and xxxi. 1) the word "prophecy" in
these verses is translated "oracle" or "burden" (marg.) in the revised
version.—The prayer of Agur was quoted by Paine in his plea for the
officers of Excise, 1772.—Editor.]
The Bible-makers, and those regulators of time, the Bible chronologists,
appear to have been at a loss where to place and how to dispose of
the book of Job; for it contains no one historical circumstance, nor
allusion to any, that might serve to determine its place in the Bible.
But it would not have answered the purpose of these men to have informed
the world of their ignorance; and, therefore, they have affixed it to
the aera of B.C. 1520, which is during the time the Israelites were in
Egypt, and for which they have just as much authority and no more than
I should have for saying it was a thousand years before that period. The
probability however is, that it is older than any book in the Bible; and
it is the only one that can be read without indignation or disgust.
We know nothing of what the ancient Gentile world (as it is called) was
before the time of the Jews, whose practice has been to calumniate and
blacken the character of all other nations; and it is from the Jewish
accounts that we have learned to call them heathens. But, as far as
we know to the contrary, they were a just and moral people, and not
addicted, like the Jews, to cruelty and revenge, but of whose profession
of faith we are unacquainted. It appears to have been their custom
to personify both virtue and vice by statues and images, as is done
now-a-days both by statuary and by painting; but it does not follow from
this that they worshipped them any more than we do.—I pass on to the
book of,
Psalms, of which it is not necessary to make much observation. Some of
them are moral, and others are very revengeful; and the greater part
relates to certain local circumstances of the Jewish nation at the time
they were written, with which we have nothing to do. It is, however,
an error or an imposition to call them the Psalms of David; they are a
collection, as song-books are now-a-days, from different song-writers,
who lived at different times. The 137th Psalm could not have been
written till more than 400 years after the time of David, because it
is written in commemoration of an event, the captivity of the Jews in
Babylon, which did not happen till that distance of time. "By the rivers
of Babylon we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged
our harps upon the willows, in the midst thereof; for there they that
carried us away captive required of us a song, saying, sing us one
of the songs of Zion." As a man would say to an American, or to a
Frenchman, or to an Englishman, sing us one of your American songs, or
your French songs, or your English songs. This remark, with respect to
the time this psalm was written, is of no other use than to show (among
others already mentioned) the general imposition the world has been
under with respect to the authors of the Bible. No regard has been paid
to time, place, and circumstance; and the names of persons have been
affixed to the several books which it was as impossible they should
write, as that a man should walk in procession at his own funeral.
The Book of Proverbs. These, like the Psalms, are a collection, and that
from authors belonging to other nations than those of the Jewish nation,
as I have shewn in the observations upon the book of Job; besides which,
some of the Proverbs ascribed to Solomon did not appear till two hundred
and fifty years after the death of Solomon; for it is said in xxv. i,
"These are also proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of
Judah, copied out." It was two hundred and fifty years from the time of
Solomon to the time of Hezekiah. When a man is famous and his name is
abroad he is made the putative father of things he never said or did;
and this, most probably, has been the case with Solomon. It appears to
have been the fashion of that day to make proverbs, as it is now to
make jest-books, and father them upon those who never saw them. [A "Tom
Paine's Jest Book" had appeared in London with little or nothing of
Paine in it.—Editor.]
The book of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, is also ascribed to Solomon,
and that with much reason, if not with truth. It is written as the
solitary reflections of a worn-out debauchee, such as Solomon was, who
looking back on scenes he can no longer enjoy, cries out All is Vanity!
A great deal of the metaphor and of the sentiment is obscure, most
probably by translation; but enough is left to show they were strongly
pointed in the original. [Those that look out of the window shall
be darkened, is an obscure figure in translation for loss of
sight.—Author.] From what is transmitted to us of the character of
Solomon, he was witty, ostentatious, dissolute, and at last melancholy.
He lived fast, and died, tired of the world, at the age of fifty-eight
years.
Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, are worse than
none; and, however it may carry with it the appearance of heightened
enjoyment, it defeats all the felicity of affection, by leaving it no
point to fix upon; divided love is never happy. This was the case
with Solomon; and if he could not, with all his pretensions to wisdom,
discover it beforehand, he merited, unpitied, the mortification he
afterwards endured. In this point of view, his preaching is unnecessary,
because, to know the consequences, it is only necessary to know the
cause. Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines would have
stood in place of the whole book. It was needless after this to say that
all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive
happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.
To be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to
objects that can accompany the mind all the way through life, and that
we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure is
miserable in old age; and the mere drudge in business is but little
better: whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical
science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of
the gloomy dogmas of priests, and of superstition, the study of those
things is the study of the true theology; it teaches man to know and to
admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation,
and are unchangeable, and of divine origin.
Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will recollect, that his mind was
ever young; his temper ever serene; science, that never grows grey, was
always his mistress. He was never without an object; for when we cease
to have an object we become like an invalid in an hospital waiting for
death.
Solomon's Songs, amorous and foolish enough, but which wrinkled
fanaticism has called divine.—The compilers of the Bible have placed
these songs after the book of Ecclesiastes; and the chronologists have
affixed to them the aera of B.C. 1014, at which time Solomon, according
to the same chronology, was nineteen years of age, and was then
forming his seraglio of wives and concubines. The Bible-makers and
the chronologists should have managed this matter a little better,
and either have said nothing about the time, or chosen a time less
inconsistent with the supposed divinity of those songs; for Solomon was
then in the honey-moon of one thousand debaucheries.
It should also have occurred to them, that as he wrote, if he did
write, the book of Ecclesiastes, long after these songs, and in which
he exclaims that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, that he included
those songs in that description. This is the more probable, because he
says, or somebody for him, Ecclesiastes ii. 8, I got me men-singers,
and women-singers [most probably to sing those songs], and musical
instruments of all sorts; and behold (Ver. ii), "all was vanity and
vexation of spirit." The compilers however have done their work but by
halves; for as they have given us the songs they should have given us
the tunes, that we might sing them.
The books called the books of the Prophets fill up all the remaining
part of the Bible; they are sixteen in number, beginning with Isaiah and
ending with Malachi, of which I have given a list in the observations
upon Chronicles. Of these sixteen prophets, all of whom except the
last three lived within the time the books of Kings and Chronicles were
written, two only, Isaiah and Jeremiah, are mentioned in the history of
those books. I shall begin with those two, reserving, what I have to say
on the general character of the men called prophets to another part of
the work.
Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to Isaiah,
will find it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions ever put
together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and, except a short
historical part, and a few sketches of history in the first two or
three chapters, is one continued incoherent, bombastical rant, full of
extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of meaning; a
school-boy would scarcely have been excusable for writing such stuff;
it is (at least in translation) that kind of composition and false taste
that is properly called prose run mad.
The historical part begins at chapter xxxvi., and is continued to the
end of chapter xxxix. It relates some matters that are said to have
passed during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah, at which time Isaiah
lived. This fragment of history begins and ends abruptly; it has not the
least connection with the chapter that precedes it, nor with that which
follows it, nor with any other in the book. It is probable that
Isaiah wrote this fragment himself, because he was an actor in the
circumstances it treats of; but except this part there are scarcely two
chapters that have any connection with each other. One is entitled, at
the beginning of the first verse, the burden of Babylon; another, the
burden of Moab; another, the burden of Damascus; another, the burden of
Egypt; another, the burden of the Desert of the Sea; another, the burden
of the Valley of Vision: as you would say the story of the Knight of the
Burning Mountain, the story of Cinderella, or the glassen slipper, the
story of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, etc., etc.
I have already shown, in the instance of the last two verses of 2
Chronicles, and the first three in Ezra, that the compilers of the Bible
mixed and confounded the writings of different authors with each other;
which alone, were there no other cause, is sufficient to destroy the
authenticity of an compilation, because it is more than presumptive
evidence that the compilers are ignorant who the authors were. A very
glaring instance of this occurs in the book ascribed to Isaiah: the
latter part of the 44th chapter, and the beginning of the 45th, so far
from having been written by Isaiah, could only have been written by some
person who lived at least an hundred and fifty years after Isaiah was
dead.
These chapters are a compliment to Cyrus, who permitted the Jews to
return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity, to rebuild Jerusalem
and the temple, as is stated in Ezra. The last verse of the 44th
chapter, and the beginning of the 45th [Isaiah] are in the following
words: "That saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, and shall perform all
my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt be built; and to
the temple thy foundations shall be laid: thus saith the Lord to his
enointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden to subdue nations
before him, and I will loose the loins of kings to open before him the
two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before
thee," etc.
What audacity of church and priestly ignorance it is to impose this book
upon the world as the writing of Isaiah, when Isaiah, according to their
own chronology, died soon after the death of Hezekiah, which was
B.C. 698; and the decree of Cyrus, in favour of the Jews returning to
Jerusalem, was, according to the same chronology, B.C. 536; which is a
distance of time between the two of 162 years. I do not suppose that the
compilers of the Bible made these books, but rather that they picked up
some loose, anonymous essays, and put them together under the names
of such authors as best suited their purpose. They have encouraged the
imposition, which is next to inventing it; for it was impossible but
they must have observed it.
When we see the studied craft of the scripture-makers, in making
every part of this romantic book of school-boy's eloquence bend to the
monstrous idea of a Son of God, begotten by a ghost on the body of a
virgin, there is no imposition we are not justified in suspecting them
of. Every phrase and circumstance are marked with the barbarous hand of
superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it was impossible they
could have. The head of every chapter, and the top of every page, are
blazoned with the names of Christ and the Church, that the unwary reader
might suck in the error before he began to read.
Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son (Isa. vii. I4), has been
interpreted to mean the person called Jesus Christ, and his mother Mary,
and has been echoed through christendom for more than a thousand years;
and such has been the rage of this opinion, that scarcely a spot in
it but has been stained with blood and marked with desolation in
consequence of it. Though it is not my intention to enter into
controversy on subjects of this kind, but to confine myself to show
that the Bible is spurious,—and thus, by taking away the foundation, to
overthrow at once the whole structure of superstition raised thereon,—I
will however stop a moment to expose the fallacious application of this
passage.
Whether Isaiah was playing a trick with Ahaz, king of Judah, to whom
this passage is spoken, is no business of mine; I mean only to show
the misapplication of the passage, and that it has no more reference
to Christ and his mother, than it has to me and my mother. The story is
simply this:
The king of Syria and the king of Israel (I have already mentioned that
the Jews were split into two nations, one of which was called Judah, the
capital of which was Jerusalem, and the other Israel) made war jointly
against Ahaz, king of Judah, and marched their armies towards Jerusalem.
Ahaz and his people became alarmed, and the account says (Is. vii. 2),
Their hearts were moved as the trees of the wood are moved with the
wind.
In this situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz, and
assures him in the name of the Lord (the cant phrase of all the
prophets) that these two kings should not succeed against him; and to
satisfy Ahaz that this should be the case, tells him to ask a sign.
This, the account says, Ahaz declined doing; giving as a reason that he
would not tempt the Lord; upon which Isaiah, who is the speaker, says,
ver. 14, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold a
virgin shall conceive and bear a son;" and the 16th verse says, "And
before this child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good,
the land which thou abhorrest or dreadest [meaning Syria and the kingdom
of Israel] shall be forsaken of both her kings." Here then was the sign,
and the time limited for the completion of the assurance or promise;
namely, before this child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the
good.
Isaiah having committed himself thus far, it became necessary to him,
in order to avoid the imputation of being a false prophet, and the
consequences thereof, to take measures to make this sign appear. It
certainly was not a difficult thing, in any time of the world, to find
a girl with child, or to make her so; and perhaps Isaiah knew of one
beforehand; for I do not suppose that the prophets of that day were any
more to be trusted than the priests of this: be that, however, as it
may, he says in the next chapter, ver. 2, "And I took unto me faithful
witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of
Jeberechiah, and I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and bare
a son."
Here then is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child and this
virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this story that the
book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid interest of priests in
later times, have founded a theory, which they call the gospel; and
have applied this story to signify the person they call Jesus Christ;
begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call holy, on the body of
a woman engaged in marriage, and afterwards married, whom they call a
virgin, seven hundred years after this foolish story was told; a theory
which, speaking for myself, I hesitate not to believe, and to say, is as
fabulous and as false as God is true. [In Is. vii. 14, it is said that
the child should be called Immanuel; but this name was not given to
either of the children, otherwise than as a character, which the word
signifies. That of the prophetess was called Maher-shalalhash-baz, and
that of Mary was called Jesus.—Author.]
But to show the imposition and falsehood of Isaiah we have only to
attend to the sequel of this story; which, though it is passed over in
silence in the book of Isaiah, is related in 2 Chronicles, xxviii;
and which is, that instead of these two kings failing in their attempt
against Ahaz, king of Judah, as Isaiah had pretended to foretel in the
name of the Lord, they succeeded: Ahaz was defeated and destroyed; an
hundred and twenty thousand of his people were slaughtered; Jerusalem
was plundered, and two hundred thousand women and sons and daughters
carried into captivity. Thus much for this lying prophet and imposter
Isaiah, and the book of falsehoods that bears his name. I pass on to the
book of Jeremiah. This prophet, as he is called, lived in the time that
Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, in the reign of Zedekiah, the last
king of Judah; and the suspicion was strong against him that he was
a traitor in the interest of Nebuchadnezzar. Every thing relating to
Jeremiah shows him to have been a man of an equivocal character: in
his metaphor of the potter and the clay, (ch. xviii.) he guards his
prognostications in such a crafty manner as always to leave himself a
door to escape by, in case the event should be contrary to what he had
predicted. In the 7th and 8th verses he makes the Almighty to say,
"At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a
kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and destroy it, if that nation,
against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent me
of the evil that I thought to do unto them." Here was a proviso against
one side of the case: now for the other side. Verses 9 and 10, "At what
instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to
build and to plant it, if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not
my voice, then I will repent me of the good wherewith I said I would
benefit them." Here is a proviso against the other side; and, according
to this plan of prophesying, a prophet could never be wrong, however
mistaken the Almighty might be. This sort of absurd subterfuge, and
this manner of speaking of the Almighty, as one would speak of a man, is
consistent with nothing but the stupidity of the Bible.
As to the authenticity of the book, it is only necessary to read it in
order to decide positively that, though some passages recorded therein
may have been spoken by Jeremiah, he is not the author of the book. The
historical parts, if they can be called by that name, are in the most
confused condition; the same events are several times repeated, and that
in a manner different, and sometimes in contradiction to each other;
and this disorder runs even to the last chapter, where the history, upon
which the greater part of the book has been employed, begins anew, and
ends abruptly. The book has all the appearance of being a medley of
unconnected anecdotes respecting persons and things of that time,
collected together in the same rude manner as if the various and
contradictory accounts that are to be found in a bundle of newspapers,
respecting persons and things of the present day, were put together
without date, order, or explanation. I will give two or three examples
of this kind.
It appears, from the account of chapter xxxvii. that the army of
Nebuchadnezzer, which is called the army of the Chaldeans, had besieged
Jerusalem some time; and on their hearing that the army of Pharaoh of
Egypt was marching against them, they raised the siege and retreated for
a time. It may here be proper to mention, in order to understand this
confused history, that Nebuchadnezzar had besieged and taken Jerusalem
during the reign of Jehoakim, the redecessor of Zedekiah; and that it
was Nebuchadnezzar who had make Zedekiah king, or rather viceroy; and
that this second siege, of which the book of Jeremiah treats, was in
consequence of the revolt of Zedekiah against Nebuchadnezzar. This
will in some measure account for the suspicion that affixes
itself to Jeremiah of being a traitor, and in the interest of
Nebuchadnezzar,—whom Jeremiah calls, xliii. 10, the servant of God.
Chapter xxxvii. 11-13, says, "And it came to pass, that, when the army
of the Chaldeans was broken up from Jerusalem, for fear of Pharaoh's
army, that Jeremiah went forth out of Jerusalem, to go (as this account
states) into the land of Benjamin, to separate himself thence in the
midst of the people; and when he was in the gate of Benjamin a captain
of the ward was there, whose name was Irijah... and he took Jeremiah the
prophet, saying, Thou fallest away to the Chaldeans; then Jeremiah said,
It is false; I fall not away to the Chaldeans." Jeremiah being thus
stopt and accused, was, after being examined, committed to prison, on
suspicion of being a traitor, where he remained, as is stated in the
last verse of this chapter.
But the next chapter gives an account of the imprisonment of Jeremiah,
which has no connection with this account, but ascribes his imprisonment
to another circumstance, and for which we must go back to chapter
xxi. It is there stated, ver. 1, that Zedekiah sent Pashur the son of
Malchiah, and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest, to Jeremiah,
to enquire of him concerning Nebuchadnezzar, whose army was then before
Jerusalem; and Jeremiah said to them, ver. 8, "Thus saith the Lord,
Behold I set before you the way of life, and the way of death; he that
abideth in this city shall die by the sword and by the famine, and by
the pestilence; but he that goeth out and falleth to the Chaldeans that
besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be unto him for a prey."
This interview and conference breaks off abruptly at the end of the 10th
verse of chapter xxi.; and such is the disorder of this book that we
have to pass over sixteen chapters upon various subjects, in order to
come at the continuation and event of this conference; and this brings
us to the first verse of chapter xxxviii., as I have just mentioned. The
chapter opens with saying, "Then Shaphatiah, the son of Mattan, Gedaliah
the son of Pashur, and Jucal the son of Shelemiah, and Pashur the son of
Malchiah, (here are more persons mentioned than in chapter xxi.) heard
the words that Jeremiah spoke unto all the people, saying, Thus saith
the Lord, He that remaineth in this city, shall die by the sword, by
famine, and by the pestilence; but he that goeth forth to the Chaldeans
shall live; for he shall have his life for a prey, and shall live";
[which are the words of the conference;] therefore, (say they to
Zedekiah,) "We beseech thee, let this man be put to death, for thus he
weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain in this city, and the
hands of all the people, in speaking such words unto them; for this man
seeketh not the welfare of the people, but the hurt:" and at the 6th
verse it is said, "Then they took Jeremiah, and put him into the dungeon
of Malchiah."
These two accounts are different and contradictory. The one ascribes his
imprisonment to his attempt to escape out of the city; the other to his
preaching and prophesying in the city; the one to his being seized by
the guard at the gate; the other to his being accused before Zedekiah
by the conferees. [I observed two chapters in I Samuel (xvi. and xvii.)
that contradict each other with respect to David, and the manner he
became acquainted with Saul; as Jeremiah xxxvii. and xxxviii. contradict
each other with respect to the cause of Jeremiah's imprisonment.
In 1 Samuel, xvi., it is said, that an evil spirit of God troubled Saul,
and that his servants advised him (as a remedy) "to seek out a man who
was a cunning player upon the harp." And Saul said, ver. 17, "Provide me
now a man that can play well, and bring him to me. Then answered one
of his servants, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse, the
Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty man, and a man of
war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with
him; wherefore Saul sent messengers unto Jesse, and said, Send me David,
thy son. And (verse 21) David came to Saul, and stood before him, and
he loved him greatly, and he became his armour-bearer; and when the
evil spirit from God was upon Saul, (verse 23) David took his harp, and
played with his hand, and Saul was refreshed, and was well."
But the next chapter (xvii.) gives an account, all different to this, of
the manner that Saul and David became acquainted. Here it is ascribed
to David's encounter with Goliah, when David was sent by his father to
carry provision to his brethren in the camp. In the 55th verse of
this chapter it is said, "And when Saul saw David go forth against the
Philistine (Goliah) he said to Abner, the captain of the host, Abner,
whose son is this youth? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, 0 king, I
cannot tell. And the king said, Enquire thou whose son the stripling is.
And as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took
him and brought him before Saul, with the head of the Philistine in his
hand; and Saul said unto him, Whose son art thou, thou young man? And
David answered, I am the son of thy servant, Jesse, the Betblehemite,"
These two accounts belie each other, because each of them supposes Saul
and David not to have known each other before. This book, the Bible, is
too ridiculous for criticism.—Author.]
In the next chapter (Jer. xxxix.) we have another instance of the
disordered state of this book; for notwithstanding the siege of the
city by Nebuchadnezzar has been the subject of several of the preceding
chapters, particularly xxxvii. and xxxviii., chapter xxxix. begins as
if not a word had been said upon the subject, and as if the reader was
still to be informed of every particular respecting it; for it begins
with saying, ver. 1, "In the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in
the tenth month, came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and all his army,
against Jerusalem, and besieged it," etc.
But the instance in the last chapter (lii.) is still more glaring; for
though the story has been told over and over again, this chapter still
supposes the reader not to know anything of it, for it begins by saying,
ver. i, "Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign,
and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem, and his mother's name was
Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah." (Ver. 4,) "And it came
to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, that
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against
Jerusalem, and pitched against it, and built forts against it," etc.
It is not possible that any one man, and more particularly Jeremiah,
could have been the writer of this book. The errors are such as could
not have been committed by any person sitting down to compose a work.
Were I, or any other man, to write in such a disordered manner, no
body would read what was written, and every body would suppose that the
writer was in a state of insanity. The only way, therefore, to
account for the disorder is, that the book is a medley of detached
unauthenticated anecdotes, put together by some stupid book-maker, under
the name of Jeremiah; because many of them refer to him, and to the
circumstances of the times he lived in.
Of the duplicity, and of the false predictions of Jeremiah, I shall
mention two instances, and then proceed to review the remainder of the
Bible.
It appears from chapter xxxviii. that when Jeremiah was in prison,
Zedekiah sent for him, and at this interview, which was private,
Jeremiah pressed it strongly on Zedekiah to surrender himself to the
enemy. "If," says he, (ver. 17,) "thou wilt assuredly go forth unto the
king of Babylon's princes, then thy soul shall live," etc. Zedekiah was
apprehensive that what passed at this conference should be known; and
he said to Jeremiah, (ver. 25,) "If the princes [meaning those of Judah]
hear that I have talked with thee, and they come unto thee, and say unto
thee, Declare unto us now what thou hast said unto the king; hide it not
from us, and we will not put thee to death; and also what the king said
unto thee; then thou shalt say unto them, I presented my supplication
before the king that he would not cause me to return to Jonathan's
house, to die there. Then came all the princes unto Jeremiah, and
asked him, and "he told them according to all the words the king had
commanded." Thus, this man of God, as he is called, could tell a lie, or
very strongly prevaricate, when he supposed it would answer his purpose;
for certainly he did not go to Zedekiah to make this supplication,
neither did he make it; he went because he was sent for, and he
employed that opportunity to advise Zedekiah to surrender himself to
Nebuchadnezzar.
In chapter xxxiv. 2-5, is a prophecy of Jeremiah to Zedekiah in these
words: "Thus saith the Lord, Behold I will give this city into the hand
of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire; and thou
shalt not escape out of his hand, but thou shalt surely be taken, and
delivered into his hand; and thine eyes shall behold the eyes of the
king of Babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth to mouth, and thou
shalt go to Babylon. Yet hear the word of the Lord; O Zedekiah, king,
of Judah, thus saith the Lord, Thou shalt not die by the sword, but thou
shalt die in Peace; and with the burnings of thy fathers, the former
kings that were before thee, so shall they burn odours for thee, and
they will lament thee, saying, Ah, Lord! for I have pronounced the word,
saith the Lord."
Now, instead of Zedekiah beholding the eyes of the king of Babylon,
and speaking with him mouth to mouth, and dying in peace, and with the
burning of odours, as at the funeral of his fathers, (as Jeremiah had
declared the Lord himself had pronounced,) the reverse, according to
chapter Iii., 10, 11 was the case; it is there said, that the king of
Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes: then he put out the
eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him in chains, and carried him to Babylon,
and put him in prison till the day of his death.
What then can we say of these prophets, but that they are impostors and
liars?
As for Jeremiah, he experienced none of those evils. He was taken into
favour by Nebuchadnezzar, who gave him in charge to the captain of the
guard (xxxix, 12), "Take him (said he) and look well to him, and do
him no harm; but do unto him even as he shall say unto thee." Jeremiah
joined himself afterwards to Nebuchadnezzar, and went about prophesying
for him against the Egyptians, who had marched to the relief of
Jerusalem while it was besieged. Thus much for another of the lying
prophets, and the book that bears his name.
I have been the more particular in treating of the books ascribed to
Isaiah and Jeremiah, because those two are spoken of in the books of
Kings and Chronicles, which the others are not. The remainder of the
books ascribed to the men called prophets I shall not trouble myself
much about; but take them collectively into the observations I shall
offer on the character of the men styled prophets.
In the former part of the 'Age of Reason,' I have said that the word
prophet was the Bible-word for poet, and that the flights and metaphors
of Jewish poets have been foolishly erected into what are now called
prophecies. I am sufficiently justified in this opinion, not only
because the books called the prophecies are written in poetical
language, but because there is no word in the Bible, except it be the
word prophet, that describes what we mean by a poet. I have also said,
that the word signified a performer upon musical instruments, of which
I have given some instances; such as that of a company of prophets,
prophesying with psalteries, with tabrets, with pipes, with harps, etc.,
and that Saul prophesied with them, 1 Sam. x., 5. It appears from this
passage, and from other parts in the book of Samuel, that the word
prophet was confined to signify poetry and music; for the person who was
supposed to have a visionary insight into concealed things, was not a
prophet but a seer, [I know not what is the Hebrew word that corresponds
to the word seer in English; but I observe it is translated into French
by Le Voyant, from the verb voir to see, and which means the person who
sees, or the seer.—Author.]
[The Hebrew word for Seer, in 1 Samuel ix., transliterated, is
chozeh, the gazer, it is translated in Is. xlvii. 13, "the
stargazers."—Editor.] (i Sam, ix. 9;) and it was not till after the
word seer went out of use (which most probably was when Saul banished
those he called wizards) that the profession of the seer, or the art of
seeing, became incorporated into the word prophet.
According to the modern meaning of the word prophet and prophesying, it
signifies foretelling events to a great distance of time; and it became
necessary to the inventors of the gospel to give it this latitude of
meaning, in order to apply or to stretch what they call the prophecies
of the Old Testament, to the times of the New. But according to the Old
Testament, the prophesying of the seer, and afterwards of the prophet,
so far as the meaning of the word "seer" was incorporated into that of
prophet, had reference only to things of the time then passing, or very
closely connected with it; such as the event of a battle they were going
to engage in, or of a journey, or of any enterprise they were going to
undertake, or of any circumstance then pending, or of any difficulty
they were then in; all of which had immediate reference to themselves
(as in the case already mentioned of Ahaz and Isaiah with respect to the
expression, Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,) and not
to any distant future time. It was that kind of prophesying that
corresponds to what we call fortune-telling; such as casting nativities,
predicting riches, fortunate or unfortunate marriages, conjuring for
lost goods, etc.; and it is the fraud of the Christian church, not that
of the Jews, and the ignorance and the superstition of modern, not that
of ancient times, that elevated those poetical, musical, conjuring,
dreaming, strolling gentry, into the rank they have since had.
But, besides this general character of all the prophets, they had also
a particular character. They were in parties, and they prophesied for
or against, according to the party they were with; as the poetical and
political writers of the present day write in defence of the party they
associate with against the other.
After the Jews were divided into two nations, that of Judah and that of
Israel, each party had its prophets, who abused and accused each other
of being false prophets, lying prophets, impostors, etc.
The prophets of the party of Judah prophesied against the prophets of
the party of Israel; and those of the party of Israel against those
of Judah. This party prophesying showed itself immediately on the
separation under the first two rival kings, Rehoboam and Jeroboam. The
prophet that cursed, or prophesied against the altar that Jeroboam had
built in Bethel, was of the party of Judah, where Rehoboam was king; and
he was way-laid on his return home by a prophet of the party of Israel,
who said unto him (i Kings xiii.) "Art thou the man of God that came
from Judah? and he said, I am." Then the prophet of the party of Israel
said to him "I am a prophet also, as thou art, [signifying of Judah,]
and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him
back with thee unto thine house, that he may eat bread and drink
water; but (says the 18th verse) he lied unto him." The event, however,
according to the story, is, that the prophet of Judah never got back
to Judah; for he was found dead on the road by the contrivance of the
prophet of Israel, who no doubt was called a true prophet by his own
party, and the prophet of Judah a lying prophet.
In 2 Kings, iii., a story is related of prophesying or conjuring that
shews, in several particulars, the character of a prophet. Jehoshaphat
king of Judah, and Joram king of Israel, had for a while ceased their
party animosity, and entered into an alliance; and these two, together
with the king of Edom, engaged in a war against the king of Moab. After
uniting and marching their armies, the story says, they were in great
distress for water, upon which Jehoshaphat said, "Is there not here a
prophet of the Lord, that we may enquire of the Lord by him? and one of
the servants of the king of Israel said here is Elisha. [Elisha was of
the party of Judah.] And Jehoshaphat the king of Judah said, The word of
the Lord is with him." The story then says, that these three kings went
down to Elisha; and when Elisha [who, as I have said, was a Judahmite
prophet] saw the King of Israel, he said unto him, "What have I to do
with thee, get thee to the prophets of thy father and the prophets of
thy mother. Nay but, said the king of Israel, the Lord hath called these
three kings together, to deliver them into the hands of the king of
Moab," (meaning because of the distress they were in for water;) upon
which Elisha said, "As the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand,
surely, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, king
of Judah, I would not look towards thee nor see thee." Here is all
the venom and vulgarity of a party prophet. We are now to see the
performance, or manner of prophesying.
Ver. 15. "'Bring me,' (said Elisha), 'a minstrel'; and it came to pass,
when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him." Here
is the farce of the conjurer. Now for the prophecy: "And Elisha said,
[singing most probably to the tune he was playing], Thus saith the Lord,
Make this valley full of ditches;" which was just telling them what
every countryman could have told them without either fiddle or farce,
that the way to get water was to dig for it.
But as every conjuror is not famous alike for the same thing, so neither
were those prophets; for though all of them, at least those I have
spoken of, were famous for lying, some of them excelled in cursing.
Elisha, whom I have just mentioned, was a chief in this branch of
prophesying; it was he that cursed the forty-two children in the name
of the Lord, whom the two she-bears came and devoured. We are to suppose
that those children were of the party of Israel; but as those who will
curse will lie, there is just as much credit to be given to this story
of Elisha's two she-bears as there is to that of the Dragon of Wantley,
of whom it is said:
Poor children three devoured be,
That could not with him grapple;
And at one sup he eat them up,
As a man would eat an apple.
There was another description of men called prophets, that amused
themselves with dreams and visions; but whether by night or by day
we know not. These, if they were not quite harmless, were but little
mischievous. Of this class are,
EZEKIEL and DANIEL; and the first question upon these books, as upon all
the others, is, Are they genuine? that is, were they written by Ezekiel
and Daniel?
Of this there is no proof; but so far as my own opinion goes, I am more
inclined to believe they were, than that they were not. My reasons for
this opinion are as follows: First, Because those books do not contain
internal evidence to prove they were not written by Ezekiel and Daniel,
as the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc., prove they were
not written by Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc.
Secondly, Because they were not written till after the Babylonish
captivity began; and there is good reason to believe that not any book
in the bible was written before that period; at least it is proveable,
from the books themselves, as I have already shown, that they were not
written till after the commencement of the Jewish monarchy.
Thirdly, Because the manner in which the books ascribed to Ezekiel and
Daniel are written, agrees with the condition these men were in at the
time of writing them.
Had the numerous commentators and priests, who have foolishly employed
or wasted their time in pretending to expound and unriddle those books,
been carred into captivity, as Ezekiel and Daniel were, it would greatly
have improved their intellects in comprehending the reason for this mode
of writing, and have saved them the trouble of racking their invention,
as they have done to no purpose; for they would have found that
themselves would be obliged to write whatever they had to write,
respecting their own affairs, or those of their friends, or of their
country, in a concealed manner, as those men have done.
These two books differ from all the rest; for it is only these that are
filled with accounts of dreams and visions: and this difference arose
from the situation the writers were in as prisoners of war, or prisoners
of state, in a foreign country, which obliged them to convey even
the most trifling information to each other, and all their political
projects or opinions, in obscure and metaphorical terms. They pretend to
have dreamed dreams, and seen visions, because it was unsafe for them to
speak facts or plain language. We ought, however, to suppose, that the
persons to whom they wrote understood what they meant, and that it
was not intended anybody else should. But these busy commentators
and priests have been puzzling their wits to find out what it was not
intended they should know, and with which they have nothing to do.
Ezekiel and Daniel were carried prisoners to Babylon, under the first
captivity, in the time of Jehoiakim, nine years before the second
captivity in the time of Zedekiah. The Jews were then still numerous,
and had considerable force at Jerusalem; and as it is natural to suppose
that men in the situation of Ezekiel and Daniel would be meditating the
recovery of their country, and their own deliverance, it is reasonable
to suppose that the accounts of dreams and visions with which these
books are filled, are no other than a disguised mode of correspondence
to facilitate those objects: it served them as a cypher, or secret
alphabet. If they are not this, they are tales, reveries, and nonsense;
or at least a fanciful way of wearing off the wearisomeness of
captivity; but the presumption is, they are the former.
Ezekiel begins his book by speaking of a vision of cherubims, and of a
wheel within a wheel, which he says he saw by the river Chebar, in
the land of his captivity. Is it not reasonable to suppose that by the
cherubims he meant the temple at Jerusalem, where they had figures of
cherubims? and by a wheel within a wheel (which as a figure has always
been understood to signify political contrivance) the project or means
of recovering Jerusalem? In the latter part of his book he supposes
himself transported to Jerusalem, and into the temple; and he refers
back to the vision on the river Chebar, and says, (xliii- 3,) that this
last vision was like the vision on the river Chebar; which indicates
that those pretended dreams and visions had for their object the
recovery of Jerusalem, and nothing further.
As to the romantic interpretations and applications, wild as the dreams
and visions they undertake to explain, which commentators and priests
have made of those books, that of converting them into things which they
call prophecies, and making them bend to times and circumstances as far
remote even as the present day, it shows the fraud or the extreme folly
to which credulity or priestcraft can go.
Scarcely anything can be more absurd than to suppose that men situated
as Ezekiel and Daniel were, whose country was over-run, and in the
possession of the enemy, all their friends and relations in captivity
abroad, or in slavery at home, or massacred, or in continual danger of
it; scarcely any thing, I say, can be more absurd than to suppose that
such men should find nothing to do but that of employing their time and
their thoughts about what was to happen to other nations a thousand or
two thousand years after they were dead; at the same time nothing more
natural than that they should meditate the recovery of Jerusalem, and
their own deliverance; and that this was the sole object of all the
obscure and apparently frantic writing contained in those books.
In this sense the mode of writing used in those two books being forced
by necessity, and not adopted by choice, is not irrational; but, if we
are to use the books as prophecies, they are false. In Ezekiel xxix.
11., speaking of Egypt, it is said, "No foot of man shall pass through
it, nor foot of beast pass through it; neither shall it be inhabited for
forty years." This is what never came to pass, and consequently it is
false, as all the books I have already reviewed are.—I here close this
part of the subject.
In the former part of 'The Age of Reason' I have spoken of Jonah, and
of the story of him and the whale.—A fit story for ridicule, if it was
written to be believed; or of laughter, if it was intended to try what
credulity could swallow; for, if it could swallow Jonah and the whale it
could swallow anything.
But, as is already shown in the observations on the book of Job and of
Proverbs, it is not always certain which of the books in the Bible are
originally Hebrew, or only translations from the books of the Gentiles
into Hebrew; and, as the book of Jonah, so far from treating of
the affairs of the Jews, says nothing upon that subject, but treats
altogether of the Gentiles, it is more probable that it is a book of
the Gentiles than of the Jews, [I have read in an ancient Persian poem
(Saadi, I believe, but have mislaid the reference) this phrase: "And now
the whale swallowed Jonah: the sun set."—Editor.] and that it has been
written as a fable to expose the nonsense, and satyrize the vicious and
malignant character, of a Bible-prophet, or a predicting priest.
Jonah is represented, first as a disobedient prophet, running away from
his mission, and taking shelter aboard a vessel of the Gentiles, bound
from Joppa to Tarshish; as if he ignorantly supposed, by such a paltry
contrivance, he could hide himself where God could not find him. The
vessel is overtaken by a storm at sea; and the mariners, all of whom are
Gentiles, believing it to be a judgement on account of some one on board
who had committed a crime, agreed to cast lots to discover the offender;
and the lot fell upon Jonah. But before this they had cast all their
wares and merchandise over-board to lighten the vessel, while Jonah,
like a stupid fellow, was fast asleep in the hold.
After the lot had designated Jonah to be the offender, they questioned
him to know who and what he was? and he told them he was an Hebrew;
and the story implies that he confessed himself to be guilty. But these
Gentiles, instead of sacrificing him at once without pity or mercy, as a
company of Bible-prophets or priests would have done by a Gentile in the
same case, and as it is related Samuel had done by Agag, and Moses by
the women and children, they endeavoured to save him, though at the risk
of their own lives: for the account says, "Nevertheless [that is, though
Jonah was a Jew and a foreigner, and the cause of all their misfortunes,
and the loss of their cargo] the men rowed hard to bring the boat
to land, but they could not, for the sea wrought and was tempestuous
against them." Still however they were unwilling to put the fate of the
lot into execution; and they cried, says the account, unto the Lord,
saying, "We beseech thee, O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life,
and lay not upon us innocent blood; for thou, O Lord, hast done as it
pleased thee." Meaning thereby, that they did not presume to judge Jonah
guilty, since that he might be innocent; but that they considered the
lot that had fallen upon him as a decree of God, or as it pleased
God. The address of this prayer shows that the Gentiles worshipped one
Supreme Being, and that they were not idolaters as the Jews represented
them to be. But the storm still continuing, and the danger encreasing,
they put the fate of the lot into execution, and cast Jonah in the sea;
where, according to the story, a great fish swallowed him up whole and
alive!
We have now to consider Jonah securely housed from the storm in the
fish's belly. Here we are told that he prayed; but the prayer is
a made-up prayer, taken from various parts of the Psalms, without
connection or consistency, and adapted to the distress, but not at all
to the condition that Jonah was in. It is such a prayer as a Gentile,
who might know something of the Psalms, could copy out for him. This
circumstance alone, were there no other, is sufficient to indicate that
the whole is a made-up story. The prayer, however, is supposed to have
answered the purpose, and the story goes on, (taking-off at the same
time the cant language of a Bible-prophet,) saying, "The Lord spake unto
the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon dry land."
Jonah then received a second mission to Nineveh, with which he sets
out; and we have now to consider him as a preacher. The distress he is
represented to have suffered, the remembrance of his own disobedience as
the cause of it, and the miraculous escape he is supposed to have had,
were sufficient, one would conceive, to have impressed him with sympathy
and benevolence in the execution of his mission; but, instead of this,
he enters the city with denunciation and malediction in his mouth,
crying, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown."
We have now to consider this supposed missionary in the last act of his
mission; and here it is that the malevolent spirit of a Bible-prophet,
or of a predicting priest, appears in all that blackness of character
that men ascribe to the being they call the devil.
Having published his predictions, he withdrew, says the story, to the
east side of the city.—But for what? not to contemplate in retirement
the mercy of his Creator to himself or to others, but to wait, with
malignant impatience, the destruction of Nineveh. It came to pass,
however, as the story relates, that the Ninevites reformed, and that
God, according to the Bible phrase, repented him of the evil he had said
he would do unto them, and did it not. This, saith the first verse of
the last chapter, displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was very angry.
His obdurate heart would rather that all Nineveh should be destroyed,
and every soul, young and old, perish in its ruins, than that his
prediction should not be fulfilled. To expose the character of a prophet
still more, a gourd is made to grow up in the night, that promises him
an agreeable shelter from the heat of the sun, in the place to which he
is retired; and the next morning it dies.
Here the rage of the prophet becomes excessive, and he is ready to
destroy himself. "It is better, said he, for me to die than to live."
This brings on a supposed expostulation between the Almighty and the
prophet; in which the former says, "Doest thou well to be angry for the
gourd? And Jonah said, I do well to be angry even unto death. Then
said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast
not laboured, neither madest it to grow, which came up in a night, and
perished in a night; and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city,
in which are more than threescore thousand persons, that cannot discern
between their right hand and their left?"
Here is both the winding up of the satire, and the moral of the fable.
As a satire, it strikes against the character of all the Bible-prophets,
and against all the indiscriminate judgements upon men, women and
children, with which this lying book, the bible, is crowded; such as
Noah's flood, the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the
extirpation of the Canaanites, even to suckling infants, and women with
child; because the same reflection 'that there are more than threescore
thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their
left,' meaning young children, applies to all their cases. It satirizes
also the supposed partiality of the Creator for one nation more than for
another.
As a moral, it preaches against the malevolent spirit of prediction; for
as certainly as a man predicts ill, he becomes inclined to wish it. The
pride of having his judgment right hardens his heart, till at last
he beholds with satisfaction, or sees with disappointment, the
accomplishment or the failure of his predictions.—This book ends
with the same kind of strong and well-directed point against prophets,
prophecies and indiscriminate judgements, as the chapter that Benjamin
Franklin made for the Bible, about Abraham and the stranger, ends
against the intolerant spirit of religious persecutions—Thus much for
the book Jonah. [The story of Abraham and the Fire-worshipper, ascribed
to Franklin, is from Saadi. (See my "Sacred Anthology," p. 61.) Paine
has often been called a "mere scoffer," but he seems to have been among
the first to treat with dignity the book of Jonah, so especially liable
to the ridicule of superficial readers, and discern in it the highest
conception of Deity known to the Old Testament.—Editor.]
Of the poetical parts of the Bible, that are called prophecies, I have
spoken in the former part of 'The Age of Reason,' and already in this,
where I have said that the word for prophet is the Bible-word for Poet,
and that the flights and metaphors of those poets, many of which have
become obscure by the lapse of time and the change of circumstances,
have been ridiculously erected into things called prophecies, and
applied to purposes the writers never thought of. When a priest quotes
any of those passages, he unriddles it agreeably to his own views, and
imposes that explanation upon his congregation as the meaning of the
writer. The whore of Babylon has been the common whore of all the
priests, and each has accused the other of keeping the strumpet; so well
do they agree in their explanations.
There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser
prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors,
it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let
them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be
forgotten together.
I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with
an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie; and the priests,
if they can, may replant them. They may, perhaps, stick them in the
ground, but they will never make them grow.—I pass on to the books of
the New Testament.
CHAPTER II - THE NEW TESTAMENT
THE New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the
Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.
As it is nothing extraordinary that a woman should be with child before
she was married, and that the son she might bring forth should be
executed, even unjustly, I see no reason for not believing that such a
woman as Mary, and such a man as Joseph, and Jesus, existed; their mere
existence is a matter of indifference, about which there is no ground
either to believe or to disbelieve, and which comes under the common
head of, It may be so, and what then? The probability however is that
there were such persons, or at least such as resembled them in part
of the circumstances, because almost all romantic stories have been
suggested by some actual circumstance; as the adventures of Robinson
Crusoe, not a word of which is true, were suggested by the case of
Alexander Selkirk.
It is not then the existence or the non-existence, of the persons that
I trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in
the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon,
against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is
blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young woman engaged
to be married, and while under this engagement, she is, to speak plain
language, debauched by a ghost, under the impious pretence, (Luke i.
35,) that "the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the
Highest shall overshadow thee." Notwithstanding which, Joseph afterwards
marries her, cohabits with her as his wife, and in his turn rivals the
ghost. This is putting the story into intelligible language, and when
told in this manner, there is not a priest but must be ashamed to own
it. [Mary, the supposed virgin, mother of Jesus, had several other
children, sons and daughters. See Matt. xiii. 55, 56.—Author.]
Obscenity in matters of faith, however wrapped up, is always a token of
fable and imposture; for it is necessary to our serious belief in God,
that we do not connect it with stories that run, as this does, into
ludicrous interpretations. This story is, upon the face of it, the same
kind of story as that of Jupiter and Leda, or Jupiter and Europa, or any
of the amorous adventures of Jupiter; and shews, as is already stated
in the former part of 'The Age of Reason,' that the Christian faith is
built upon the heathen Mythology.
As the historical parts of the New Testament, so far as concerns Jesus
Christ, are confined to a very short space of time, less than two
years, and all within the same country, and nearly to the same spot, the
discordance of time, place, and circumstance, which detects the fallacy
of the books of the Old Testament, and proves them to be impositions,
cannot be expected to be found here in the same abundance. The New
Testament compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act, in which
there is not room for very numerous violations of the unities. There
are, however, some glaring contradictions, which, exclusive of the
fallacy of the pretended prophecies, are sufficient to show the story of
Jesus Christ to be false.
I lay it down as a position which cannot be controverted, first, that
the agreement of all the parts of a story does not prove that story
to be true, because the parts may agree, and the whole may be false;
secondly, that the disagreement of the parts of a story proves the whole
cannot be true. The agreement does not prove truth, but the disagreement
proves falsehood positively.
The history of Jesus Christ is contained in the four books ascribed to
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.—The first chapter of Matthew begins with
giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ; and in the third chapter of Luke
there is also given a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Did these two agree, it
would not prove the genealogy to be true, because it might nevertheless
be a fabrication; but as they contradict each other in every particular,
it proves falsehood absolutely. If Matthew speaks truth, Luke speaks
falsehood; and if Luke speaks truth, Matthew speaks falsehood: and as
there is no authority for believing one more than the other, there is no
authority for believing either; and if they cannot be believed even
in the very first thing they say, and set out to prove, they are not
entitled to be believed in any thing they say afterwards. Truth is an
uniform thing; and as to inspiration and revelation, were we to admit
it, it is impossible to suppose it can be contradictory. Either then the
men called apostles were imposters, or the books ascribed to them have
been written by other persons, and fathered upon them, as is the case in
the Old Testament.
The book of Matthew gives (i. 6), a genealogy by name from David, up,
through Joseph, the husband of Mary, to Christ; and makes there to be
twent eight generations. The book of Luke gives also a genealogy by
name from Christ, through Joseph the husband of Mary, down to David, and
makes there to be forty-three generations; besides which, there is only
the two names of David and Joseph that are alike in the two lists.—I
here insert both genealogical lists, and for the sake of perspicuity and
comparison, have placed them both in the same direction, that is, from
Joseph down to David.
Genealogy, according to Genealogy, according to
Matthew. Luke.
Christ Christ
2 Joseph 2 Joseph
3 Jacob 3 Heli
4 Matthan 4 Matthat
5 Eleazer 5 Levi
6 Eliud 6 Melchl
7 Achim 7 Janna
8 Sadoc 8 Joseph
9 Azor 9 Mattathias
10 Eliakim 10 Amos
11 Abiud 11 Naum
12 Zorobabel 12 Esli
13 Salathiel 13 Nagge
14 Jechonias 14 Maath
15 Josias 15 Mattathias
16 Amon 16 Semei
17 Manasses 17 Joseph
18 Ezekias 18 Juda
19 Achaz 19 Joanna
20 Joatham 20 Rhesa
21 Ozias 21 Zorobabel
22 Joram 22 Salathiel
23 Josaphat 23 Neri
24 Asa 24 Melchi
25 Abia 25 Addi
26 Roboam 26 Cosam
27 Solomon 27 Elmodam
28 David * 28 Er
29 Jose
30 Eliezer
31 Jorim
32 Matthat
33 Levi
34 Simeon
35 Juda
36 Joseph
37 Jonan
38 Eliakim
39 Melea
40 Menan
41 Mattatha
42 Nathan
43 David
[NOTE: * From the birth of David to the birth of Christ is upwards of
1080 years; and as the life-time of Christ is not included, there are
but 27 full generations. To find therefore the average age of each
person mentioned in the list, at the time his first son was born, it
is only necessary to divide 1080 by 27, which gives 40 years for each
person. As the life-time of man was then but of the same extent it is
now, it is an absurdity to suppose, that 27 following generations should
all be old bachelors, before they married; and the more so, when we are
told that Solomon, the next in succession to David, had a house full of
wives and mistresses before he was twenty-one years of age. So far from
this genealogy being a solemn truth, it is not even a reasonable lie.
The list of Luke gives about twenty-six years for the average age, and
this is too much.—Author.]
Now, if these men, Matthew and Luke, set out with a falsehood between
them (as these two accounts show they do) in the very commencement of
their history of Jesus Christ, and of who, and of what he was, what
authority (as I have before asked) is there left for believing the
strange things they tell us afterwards? If they cannot be believed in
their account of his natural genealogy, how are we to believe them when
they tell us he was the son of God, begotten by a ghost; and that
an angel announced this in secret to his mother? If they lied in one
genealogy, why are we to believe them in the other? If his natural
genealogy be manufactured, which it certainly is, why are we not to
suppose that his celestial genealogy is manufactured also, and that the
whole is fabulous? Can any man of serious reflection hazard his future
happiness upon the belief of a story naturally impossible, repugnant
to every idea of decency, and related by persons already detected of
falsehood? Is it not more safe that we stop ourselves at the plain,
pure, and unmixed belief of one God, which is deism, than that we
commit ourselves on an ocean of improbable, irrational, indecent, and
contradictory tales?
The first question, however, upon the books of the New Testament, as
upon those of the Old, is, Are they genuine? were they written by the
persons to whom they are ascribed? For it is upon this ground only that
the strange things related therein have been credited. Upon this point,
there is no direct proof for or against; and all that this state of a
case proves is doubtfulness; and doubtfulness is the opposite of belief.
The state, therefore, that the books are in, proves against themselves
as far as this kind of proof can go.
But, exclusive of this, the presumption is that the books called the
Evangelists, and ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were not
written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and that they are impositions.
The disordered state of the history in these four books, the silence of
one book upon matters related in the other, and the disagreement that
is to be found among them, implies that they are the productions of some
unconnected individuals, many years after the things they pretend to
relate, each of whom made his own legend; and not the writings of men
living intimately together, as the men called apostles are supposed to
have done: in fine, that they have been manufactured, as the books of
the Old Testament have been, by other persons than those whose names
they bear.
The story of the angel announcing what the church calls the immaculate
conception, is not so much as mentioned in the books ascribed to Mark,
and John; and is differently related in Matthew and Luke. The former
says the angel, appeared to Joseph; the latter says, it was to Mary;
but either Joseph or Mary was the worst evidence that could have been
thought of; for it was others that should have testified for them, and
not they for themselves. Were any girl that is now with child to say,
and even to swear it, that she was gotten with child by a ghost, and
that an angel told her so, would she be believed? Certainly she would
not. Why then are we to believe the same thing of another girl whom we
never saw, told by nobody knows who, nor when, nor where? How strange
and inconsistent is it, that the same circumstance that would weaken
the belief even of a probable story, should be given as a motive for
believing this one, that has upon the face of it every token of absolute
impossibility and imposture.
The story of Herod destroying all the children under two years old,
belongs altogether to the book of Matthew; not one of the rest mentions
anything about it. Had such a circumstance been true, the universality
of it must have made it known to all the writers, and the thing would
have been too striking to have been omitted by any. This writer tell us,
that Jesus escaped this slaughter, because Joseph and Mary were warned
by an angel to flee with him into Egypt; but he forgot to make provision
for John [the Baptist], who was then under two years of age. John,
however, who staid behind, fared as well as Jesus, who fled; and
therefore the story circumstantially belies itself.
Not any two of these writers agree in reciting, exactly in the same
words, the written inscription, short as it is, which they tell us was
put over Christ when he was crucified; and besides this, Mark says, He
was crucified at the third hour, (nine in the morning;) and John says it
was the sixth hour, (twelve at noon.) [According to John, (xix. 14)
the sentence was not passed till about the sixth hour (noon,) and
consequently the execution could not be till the afternoon; but Mark
(xv. 25) Says expressly that he was crucified at the third hour, (nine
in the morning,)—Author.]
The inscription is thus stated in those books:
Matthew—This is Jesus the king of the Jews. Mark—The king of the Jews.
Luke—This is the king of the Jews. John—Jesus of Nazareth the king of
the Jews.
We may infer from these circumstances, trivial as they are, that those
writers, whoever they were, and in whatever time they lived, were
not present at the scene. The only one of the men called apostles who
appears to have been near to the spot was Peter, and when he was accused
of being one of Jesus's followers, it is said, (Matthew xxvi. 74,) "Then
Peter began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man:" yet
we are now called to believe the same Peter, convicted, by their own
account, of perjury. For what reason, or on what authority, should we do
this?
The accounts that are given of the circumstances, that they tell us
attended the crucifixion, are differently related in those four books.
The book ascribed to Matthew says 'there was darkness over all the land
from the sixth hour unto the ninth hour—that the veil of the temple
was rent in twain from the top to the bottom—that there was an
earthquake—that the rocks rent—that the graves opened, that the bodies
of many of the saints that slept arose and came out of their graves
after the resurrection, and went into the holy city and appeared unto
many.' Such is the account which this dashing writer of the book of
Matthew gives, but in which he is not supported by the writers of the
other books.
The writer of the book ascribed to Mark, in detailing the circumstances
of the crucifixion, makes no mention of any earthquake, nor of the rocks
rending, nor of the graves opening, nor of the dead men walking out. The
writer of the book of Luke is silent also upon the same points. And
as to the writer of the book of John, though he details all the
circumstances of the crucifixion down to the burial of Christ, he
says nothing about either the darkness—the veil of the temple—the
earthquake—the rocks—the graves—nor the dead men.
Now if it had been true that these things had happened, and if the
writers of these books had lived at the time they did happen, and
had been the persons they are said to be—namely, the four men called
apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,—it was not possible for them,
as true historians, even without the aid of inspiration, not to have
recorded them. The things, supposing them to have been facts, were of
too much notoriety not to have been known, and of too much importance
not to have been told. All these supposed apostles must have been
witnesses of the earthquake, if there had been any, for it was not
possible for them to have been absent from it: the opening of the graves
and resurrection of the dead men, and their walking about the city, is
of still greater importance than the earthquake. An earthquake is always
possible, and natural, and proves nothing; but this opening of the
graves is supernatural, and directly in point to their doctrine, their
cause, and their apostleship. Had it been true, it would have filled
up whole chapters of those books, and been the chosen theme and general
chorus of all the writers; but instead of this, little and trivial
things, and mere prattling conversation of 'he said this and she said
that' are often tediously detailed, while this most important of all,
had it been true, is passed off in a slovenly manner by a single dash
of the pen, and that by one writer only, and not so much as hinted at by
the rest.
It is an easy thing to tell a lie, but it is difficult to support the
lie after it is told. The writer of the book of Matthew should have told
us who the saints were that came to life again, and went into the city,
and what became of them afterwards, and who it was that saw them; for he
is not hardy enough to say that he saw them himself;—whether they came
out naked, and all in natural buff, he-saints and she-saints, or whether
they came full dressed, and where they got their dresses; whether they
went to their former habitations, and reclaimed their wives, their
husbands, and their property, and how they were received; whether they
entered ejectments for the recovery of their possessions, or brought
actions of crim. con. against the rival interlopers; whether they
remained on earth, and followed their former occupation of preaching or
working; or whether they died again, or went back to their graves alive,
and buried themselves.
Strange indeed, that an army of saints should retum to life, and nobody
know who they were, nor who it was that saw them, and that not a word
more should be said upon the subject, nor these saints have any thing
to tell us! Had it been the prophets who (as we are told) had formerly
prophesied of these things, they must have had a great deal to say.
They could have told us everything, and we should have had posthumous
prophecies, with notes and commentaries upon the first, a little better
at least than we have now. Had it been Moses, and Aaron, and Joshua, and
Samuel, and David, not an unconverted Jew had remained in all Jerusalem.
Had it been John the Baptist, and the saints of the times then present,
everybody would have known them, and they would have out-preached and
out-famed all the other apostles. But, instead of this, these saints are
made to pop up, like Jonah's gourd in the night, for no purpose at all
but to wither in the morning.—Thus much for this part of the story.
The tale of the resurrection follows that of the crucifixion; and in
this as well as in that, the writers, whoever they were, disagree so
much as to make it evident that none of them were there.
The book of Matthew states, that when Christ was put in the sepulchre
the Jews applied to Pilate for a watch or a guard to be placed over the
septilchre, to prevent the body being stolen by the disciples; and that
in consequence of this request the sepulchre was made sure, sealing the
stone that covered the mouth, and setting a watch. But the other books
say nothing about this application, nor about the sealing, nor the
guard, nor the watch; and according to their accounts, there were none.
Matthew, however, follows up this part of the story of the guard or the
watch with a second part, that I shall notice in the conclusion, as it
serves to detect the fallacy of those books.
The book of Matthew continues its account, and says, (xxviii. 1,) that
at the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn, towards the first day of
the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre.
Mark says it was sun-rising, and John says it was dark. Luke says it
was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other
women, that came to the sepulchre; and John states that Mary Magdalene
came alone. So well do they agree about their first evidence! They all,
however, appear to have known most about Mary Magdalene; she was a woman
of large acquaintance, and it was not an ill conjecture that she might
be upon the stroll. [The Bishop of Llandaff, in his famous "Apology,"
censured Paine severely for this insinuation against Mary Magdalene, but
the censure really falls on our English version, which, by a
chapter-heading (Luke vii.), has unwarrantably identified her as the
sinful woman who anointed Jesus, and irrevocably branded her.—Editor.]
The book of Matthew goes on to say (ver. 2): "And behold there was a
great earthquake, for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and
came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it" But
the other books say nothing about any earthquake, nor about the angel
rolling back the stone, and sitting upon it and, according to their
account, there was no angel sitting there. Mark says the angel [Mark
says "a young man," and Luke "two men."—Editor.] was within the
sepulchre, sitting on the right side. Luke says there were two, and they
were both standing up; and John says they were both sitting down, one at
the head and the other at the feet.
Matthew says, that the angel that was sitting upon the stone on the
outside of the sepulchre told the two Marys that Christ was risen, and
that the women went away quickly. Mark says, that the women, upon seeing
the stone rolled away, and wondering at it, went into the sepulchre, and
that it was the angel that was sitting within on the right side, that
told them so. Luke says, it was the two angels that were Standing
up; and John says, it was Jesus Christ himself that told it to Mary
Magdalene; and that she did not go into the sepulchre, but only stooped
down and looked in.
Now, if the writers of these four books had gone into a court of justice
to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is
here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by
supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same
contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger
of having their ears cropt for perjury, and would have justly deserved
it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books, that have been
imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as the
unchangeable word of God.
The writer of the book of Matthew, after giving this account, relates
a story that is not to be found in any of the other books, and which is
the same I have just before alluded to. "Now," says he, [that is, after
the conversation the women had had with the angel sitting upon the
stone,] "behold some of the watch [meaning the watch that he had said
had been placed over the sepulchre] came into the city, and shawed unto
the chief priests all the things that were done; and when they were
assembled with the elders and had taken counsel, they gave large money
unto the soldiers, saying, Say ye, that his disciples came by night, and
stole him away while we slept; and if this come to the governor's ears,
we will persuade him, and secure you. So they took the money, and did as
they were taught; and this saying [that his disciples stole him away] is
commonly reported among the Jews until this day."
The expression, until this day, is an evidence that the book ascribed
to Matthew was not written by Matthew, and that it has been manufactured
long after the times and things of which it pretends to treat; for
the expression implies a great length of intervening time. It would be
inconsistent in us to speak in this manner of any thing happening in our
own time. To give, therefore, intelligible meaning to the expression,
we must suppose a lapse of some generations at least, for this manner of
speaking carries the mind back to ancient time.
The absurdity also of the story is worth noticing; for it shows the
writer of the book of Matthew to have been an exceeding weak and foolish
man. He tells a story that contradicts itself in point of possibility;
for though the guard, if there were any, might be made to say that the
body was taken away while they were asleep, and to give that as a
reason for their not having prevented it, that same sleep must also have
prevented their knowing how, and by whom, it was done; and yet they are
made to say that it was the disciples who did it. Were a man to tender
his evidence of something that he should say was done, and of the manner
of doing it, and of the person who did it, while he was asleep, and
could know nothing of the matter, such evidence could not be received:
it will do well enough for Testament evidence, but not for any thing
where truth is concerned.
I come now to that part of the evidence in those books, that respects
the pretended appearance of Christ after this pretended resurrection.
The writer of the book of Matthew relates, that the angel that was
sitting on the stone at the mouth of the sepulchre, said to the two
Marys (xxviii. 7), "Behold Christ is gone before you into Galilee, there
ye shall see him; lo, I have told you." And the same writer at the next
two verses (8, 9,) makes Christ himself to speak to the same purpose to
these women immediately after the angel had told it to them, and that
they ran quickly to tell it to the disciples; and it is said (ver. 16),
"Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where
Jesus had appointed them; and, when they saw him, they worshipped him."
But the writer of the book of John tells us a story very different to
this; for he says (xx. 19) "Then the same day at evening, being the
first day of the week, [that is, the same day that Christ is said
to have risen,] when the doors were shut, where the disciples were
assembled, for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst of
them."
According to Matthew the eleven were marching to Galilee, to meet Jesus
in a mountain, by his own appointment, at the very time when, according
to John, they were assembled in another place, and that not by
appointment, but in secret, for fear of the Jews.
The writer of the book of Luke xxiv. 13, 33-36, contradicts that of
Matthew more pointedly than John does; for he says expressly, that the
meeting was in Jerusalem the evening of the same day that he (Christ)
rose, and that the eleven were there.
Now, it is not possible, unless we admit these supposed disciples the
right of wilful lying, that the writers of these books could be any of
the eleven persons called disciples; for if, according to Matthew,
the eleven went into Galilee to meet Jesus in a mountain by his own
appointment, on the same day that he is said to have risen, Luke and
John must have been two of that eleven; yet the writer of Luke says
expressly, and John implies as much, that the meeting was that same day,
in a house in Jerusalem; and, on the other hand, if, according to Luke
and John, the eleven were assembled in a house in Jerusalem, Matthew
must have been one of that eleven; yet Matthew says the meeting was in a
mountain in Galilee, and consequently the evidence given in those books
destroy each other.
The writer of the book of Mark says nothing about any meeting in
Galilee; but he says (xvi. 12) that Christ, after his resurrection,
appeared in another form to two of them, as they walked into the
country, and that these two told it to the residue, who would not
believe them. [This belongs to the late addition to Mark, which
originally ended with xvi. 8.—Editor.] Luke also tells a story, in
which he keeps Christ employed the whole of the day of this pretended
resurrection, until the evening, and which totally invalidates the
account of going to the mountain in Galilee. He says, that two of them,
without saying which two, went that same day to a village called Emmaus,
three score furlongs (seven miles and a half) from Jerusalem, and
that Christ in disguise went with them, and stayed with them unto the
evening, and supped with them, and then vanished out of their sight, and
reappeared that same evening, at the meeting of the eleven in Jerusalem.
This is the contradictory manner in which the evidence of this pretended
reappearance of Christ is stated: the only point in which the writers
agree, is the skulking privacy of that reappearance; for whether it
was in the recess of a mountain in Galilee, or in a shut-up house in
Jerusalem, it was still skulking. To what cause then are we to assign
this skulking? On the one hand, it is directly repugnant to the supposed
or pretended end, that of convincing the world that Christ was risen;
and, on the other hand, to have asserted the publicity of it would have
exposed the writers of those books to public detection; and, therefore,
they have been under the necessity of making it a private affair.
As to the account of Christ being seen by more than five hundred at
once, it is Paul only who says it, and not the five hundred who say it
for themselves. It is, therefore, the testimony of but one man, and that
too of a man, who did not, according to the same account, believe a
word of the matter himself at the time it is said to have happened.
His evidence, supposing him to have been the writer of Corinthians xv.,
where this account is given, is like that of a man who comes into a
court of justice to swear that what he had sworn before was false. A man
may often see reason, and he has too always the right of changing his
opinion; but this liberty does not extend to matters of fact.
I now come to the last scene, that of the ascension into heaven.—Here
all fear of the Jews, and of every thing else, must necessarily have
been out of the question: it was that which, if true, was to seal the
whole; and upon which the reality of the future mission of the disciples
was to rest for proof. Words, whether declarations or promises, that
passed in private, either in the recess of a mountain in Galilee, or in
a shut-up house in Jerusalem, even supposing them to have been spoken,
could not be evidence in public; it was therefore necessary that this
last scene should preclude the possibility of denial and dispute; and
that it should be, as I have stated in the former part of 'The Age of
Reason,' as public and as visible as the sun at noon-day; at least it
ought to have been as public as the crucifixion is reported to have
been.—But to come to the point.
In the first place, the writer of the book of Matthew does not say a
syllable about it; neither does the writer of the book of John. This
being the case, is it possible to suppose that those writers, who affect
to be even minute in other matters, would have been silent upon this,
had it been true? The writer of the book of Mark passes it off in a
careless, slovenly manner, with a single dash of the pen, as if he was
tired of romancing, or ashamed of the story. So also does the writer of
Luke. And even between these two, there is not an apparent agreement,
as to the place where this final parting is said to have been. [The last
nine verses of Mark being ungenuine, the story of the ascension
rests exclusively on the words in Luke xxiv. 51, "was carried up into
heaven,"—words omitted by several ancient authorities.—Editor.]
The book of Mark says that Christ appeared to the eleven as they sat at
meat, alluding to the meeting of the eleven at Jerusalem: he then states
the conversation that he says passed at that meeting; and immediately
after says (as a school-boy would finish a dull story,) "So then, after
the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and
sat on the right hand of God." But the writer of Luke says, that the
ascension was from Bethany; that he (Christ) led them out as far as
Bethany, and was parted from them there, and was carried up into heaven.
So also was Mahomet: and, as to Moses, the apostle Jude says, ver. 9.
That 'Michael and the devil disputed about his body.' While we believe
such fables as these, or either of them, we believe unworthily of the
Almighty.
I have now gone through the examination of the four books ascribed to
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; and when it is considered that the whole
space of time, from the crucifixion to what is called the ascension, is
but a few days, apparently not more than three or four, and that all the
circumstances are reported to have happened nearly about the same spot,
Jerusalem, it is, I believe, impossible to find in any story upon record
so many and such glaring absurdities, contradictions, and falsehoods, as
are in those books. They are more numerous and striking than I had any
expectation of finding, when I began this examination, and far more
so than I had any idea of when I wrote the former part of 'The Age of
Reason.' I had then neither Bible nor Testament to refer to, nor could I
procure any. My own situation, even as to existence, was becoming every
day more precarious; and as I was willing to leave something behind me
upon the subject, I was obliged to be quick and concise. The quotations
I then made were from memory only, but they are correct; and the
opinions I have advanced in that work are the effect of the most clear
and long-established conviction,—that the Bible and the Testament are
impositions upon the world;—that the fall of man, the account of Jesus
Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath
of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous
inventions, dishonourable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty;—that
the only true religion is deism, by which I then meant and now mean
the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the
practice of what are called moral virtues;—and that it was upon this
only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of
happiness hereafter. So say I now—and so help me God.
But to retum to the subject.—Though it is impossible, at this distance
of time, to ascertain as a fact who were the writers of those four books
(and this alone is sufficient to hold them in doubt, and where we doubt
we do not believe) it is not difficult to ascertain negatively that
they were not written by the persons to whom they are ascribed. The
contradictions in those books demonstrate two things:
First, that the writers cannot have been eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses
of the matters they relate, or they would have related them without
those contradictions; and, consequently that the books have not been
written by the persons called apostles, who are supposed to have been
witnesses of this kind.
Secondly, that the writers, whoever they were, have not acted in
concerted imposition, but each writer separately and individually for
himself, and without the knowledge of the other.
The same evidence that applies to prove the one, applies equally to
prove both cases; that is, that the books were not written by the men
called apostles, and also that they are not a concerted imposition. As
to inspiration, it is altogether out of the question; we may as well
attempt to unite truth and falsehood, as inspiration and contradiction.
If four men are eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses to a scene, they will
without any concert between them, agree as to time and place, when and
where that scene happened. Their individual knowledge of the thing, each
one knowing it for himself, renders concert totally unnecessary; the
one will not say it was in a mountain in the country, and the other at
a house in town; the one will not say it was at sunrise, and the other
that it was dark. For in whatever place it was and whatever time it was,
they know it equally alike.
And on the other hand, if four men concert a story, they will make their
separate relations of that story agree and corroborate with each other
to support the whole. That concert supplies the want of fact in the one
case, as the knowledge of the fact supersedes, in the other case, the
necessity of a concert. The same contradictions, therefore, that
prove there has been no concert, prove also that the reporters had no
knowledge of the fact, (or rather of that which they relate as a fact,)
and detect also the falsehood of their reports. Those books, therefore,
have neither been written by the men called apostles, nor by imposters
in concert.—How then have they been written?
I am not one of those who are fond of believing there is much of that
which is called wilful lying, or lying originally, except in the case of
men setting up to be prophets, as in the Old Testament; for prophesying
is lying professionally. In almost all other cases it is not difficult
to discover the progress by which even simple supposition, with the aid
of credulity, will in time grow into a lie, and at last be told as a
fact; and whenever we can find a charitable reason for a thing of this
kind, we ought not to indulge a severe one.
The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an
apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision,
and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the
assassination of Julius Caesar not many years before, and they generally
have their origin in violent deaths, or in execution of innocent
persons. In cases of this kind, compassion lends its aid, and
benevolently stretches the story. It goes on a little and a little
farther, till it becomes a most certain truth. Once start a ghost, and
credulity fills up the history of its life, and assigns the cause of its
appearance; one tells it one way, another another way, till there are as
many stories about the ghost, and about the proprietor of the ghost, as
there are about Jesus Christ in these four books.
The story of the appearance of Jesus Christ is told with that strange
mixture of the natural and impossible, that distinguishes legendary tale
from fact. He is represented as suddenly coming in and going out when
the doors are shut, and of vanishing out of sight, and appearing again,
as one would conceive of an unsubstantial vision; then again he is
hungry, sits down to meat, and eats his supper. But as those who tell
stories of this kind never provide for all the cases, so it is here:
they have told us, that when he arose he left his grave-clothes behind
him; but they have forgotten to provide other clothes for him to appear
in afterwards, or to tell us what he did with them when he ascended;
whether he stripped all off, or went up clothes and all. In the case of
Elijah, they have been careful enough to make him throw down his mantle;
how it happened not to be burnt in the chariot of fire, they also have
not told us; but as imagination supplies all deficiencies of this kind,
we may suppose if we please that it was made of salamander's wool.
Those who are not much acquainted with ecclesiastical history, may
suppose that the book called the New Testament has existed ever since
the time of Jesus Christ, as they suppose that the books ascribed
to Moses have existed ever since the time of Moses. But the fact is
historically otherwise; there was no such book as the New Testament till
more than three hundred years after the time that Christ is said to have
lived.
At what time the books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, began
to appear, is altogether a matter of uncertainty. There is not the least
shadow of evidence of who the persons were that wrote them, nor at what
time they were written; and they might as well have been called by the
names of any of the other supposed apostles as by the names they are now
called. The originals are not in the possession of any Christian
Church existing, any more than the two tables of stone written on, they
pretend, by the finger of God, upon Mount Sinai, and given to Moses,
are in the possession of the Jews. And even if they were, there is no
possibility of proving the hand-writing in either case. At the time
those four books were written there was no printing, and consequently
there could be no publication otherwise than by written copies, which
any man might make or alter at pleasure, and call them originals. Can
we suppose it is consistent with the wisdom of the Almighty to commit
himself and his will to man upon such precarious means as these; or that
it is consistent we should pin our faith upon such uncertainties? We
cannot make nor alter, nor even imitate, so much as one blade of grass
that he has made, and yet we can make or alter words of God as easily
as words of man. [The former part of the 'Age of Reason' has not been
published two years, and there is already an expression in it that is
not mine. The expression is: The book of Luke was carried by a majority
of one voice only. It may be true, but it is not I that have said it.
Some person who might know of that circumstance, has added it in a note
at the bottom of the page of some of the editions, printed either in
England or in America; and the printers, after that, have erected it
into the body of the work, and made me the author of it. If this has
happened within such a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of
printing, which prevents the alteration of copies individually, what may
not have happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no
printing, and when any man who could write could make a written copy and
call it an original by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John?—Author.]
[The spurious addition to Paine's work alluded to in his footnote drew on
him a severe criticism from Dr. Priestley ("Letters to a Philosophical
Unbeliever," p. 75), yet it seems to have been Priestley himself who, in
his quotation, first incorporated into Paine's text the footnote added
by the editor of the American edition (1794). The American added:
"Vide Moshiem's (sic) Ecc. History," which Priestley omits. In a modern
American edition I notice four verbal alterations introduced into the
above footnote.—Editor.]
About three hundred and fifty years after the time that Christ is
said to have lived, several writings of the kind I am speaking of were
scattered in the hands of divers individuals; and as the church had
begun to form itself into an hierarchy, or church government, with
temporal powers, it set itself about collecting them into a code, as
we now see them, called 'The New Testament.' They decided by vote, as I
have before said in the former part of the Age of Reason, which of those
writings, out of the collection they had made, should be the word of
God, and which should not. The Robbins of the Jews had decided, by vote,
upon the books of the Bible before.
As the object of the church, as is the case in all national
establishments of churches, was power and revenue, and terror the
means it used, it is consistent to suppose that the most miraculous and
wonderful of the writings they had collected stood the best chance of
being voted. And as to the authenticity of the books, the vote stands in
the place of it; for it can be traced no higher.
Disputes, however, ran high among the people then calling themselves
Christians, not only as to points of doctrine, but as to the
authenticity of the books. In the contest between the person called St.
Augustine, and Fauste, about the year 400, the latter says, "The books
called the Evangelists have been composed long after the times of the
apostles, by some obscure men, who, fearing that the world would not
give credit to their relation of matters of which they could not be
informed, have published them under the names of the apostles; and
which are so full of sottishness and discordant relations, that there is
neither agreement nor connection between them."
And in another place, addressing himself to the advocates of those
books, as being the word of God, he says, "It is thus that your
predecessors have inserted in the scriptures of our Lord many things
which, though they carry his name, agree not with his doctrine." This is
not surprising, since that we have often proved that these things have
not been written by himself, nor by his apostles, but that for the
greatest part they are founded upon tales, upon vague reports, and put
together by I know not what half-Jews, with but little agreement between
them; and which they have nevertheless published under the name of the
apostles of our Lord, and have thus attributed to them their own errors
and their lies. [I have taken these two extracts from Boulanger's Life
of Paul, written in French; Boulanger has quoted them from the writings
of Augustine against Fauste, to which he refers.—Author.]
This Bishop Faustus is usually styled "The Manichaeum," Augustine having
entitled his book, Contra Frustum Manichaeum Libri xxxiii., in which
nearly the whole of Faustus' very able work is quoted.—Editor.]
The reader will see by those extracts that the authenticity of the
books of the New Testament was denied, and the books treated as tales,
forgeries, and lies, at the time they were voted to be the word of God.
But the interest of the church, with the assistance of the faggot, bore
down the opposition, and at last suppressed all investigation. Miracles
followed upon miracles, if we will believe them, and men were taught to
say they believed whether they believed or not. But (by way of throwing
in a thought) the French Revolution has excommunicated the church
from the power of working miracles; she has not been able, with the
assistance of all her saints, to work one miracle since the revolution
began; and as she never stood in greater need than now, we may, without
the aid of divination, conclude that all her former miracles are
tricks and lies. [Boulanger in his life of Paul, has collected from the
ecclesiastical histories, and the writings of the fathers as they are
called, several matters which show the opinions that prevailed among the
different sects of Christians, at the time the Testament, as we now see
it, was voted to be the word of God. The following extracts are from the
second chapter of that work:
[The Marcionists (a Christian sect) asserted that the evangelists were
filled with falsities. The Manichaeans, who formed a very numerous
sect at the commencement of Christianity, rejected as false all the New
Testament, and showed other writings quite different that they gave for
authentic. The Corinthians, like the Marcionists, admitted not the Acts
of the Apostles. The Encratites and the Sevenians adopted neither the
Acts, nor the Epistles of Paul. Chrysostom, in a homily which he made
upon the Acts of the Apostles, says that in his time, about the year
400, many people knew nothing either of the author or of the book. St.
Irene, who lived before that time, reports that the Valentinians, like
several other sects of the Christians, accused the scriptures of being
filled with imperfections, errors, and contradictions. The Ebionites, or
Nazarenes, who were the first Christians, rejected all the Epistles of
Paul, and regarded him as an impostor. They report, among other things,
that he was originally a Pagan; that he came to Jerusalem, where he
lived some time; and that having a mind to marry the daughter of the
high priest, he had himself been circumcised; but that not being able to
obtain her, he quarrelled with the Jews and wrote against circumcision,
and against the observation of the Sabbath, and against all the legal
ordinances.—Author.] [Much abridged from the Exam. Crit. de la Vie de
St. Paul, by N.A. Boulanger, 1770.—Editor.]
When we consider the lapse of more than three hundred years intervening
between the time that Christ is said to have lived and the time the
New Testament was formed into a book, we must see, even without the
assistance of historical evidence, the exceeding uncertainty there is
of its authenticity. The authenticity of the book of Homer, so far as
regards the authorship, is much better established than that of the New
Testament, though Homer is a thousand years the most ancient. It was
only an exceeding good poet that could have written the book of Homer,
and, therefore, few men only could have attempted it; and a man capable
of doing it would not have thrown away his own fame by giving it to
another. In like manner, there were but few that could have composed
Euclid's Elements, because none but an exceeding good geometrician could
have been the author of that work.
But with respect to the books of the New Testament, particularly such
parts as tell us of the resurrection and ascension of Christ, any person
who could tell a story of an apparition, or of a man's walking, could
have made such books; for the story is most wretchedly told. The chance,
therefore, of forgery in the Testament is millions to one greater than
in the case of Homer or Euclid. Of the numerous priests or parsons of
the present day, bishops and all, every one of them can make a sermon,
or translate a scrap of Latin, especially if it has been translated
a thousand times before; but is there any amongst them that can write
poetry like Homer, or science like Euclid? The sum total of a parson's
learning, with very few exceptions, is a, b, ab, and hic, haec, hoc;
and their knowledge of science is, three times one is three; and this is
more than sufficient to have enabled them, had they lived at the time,
to have written all the books of the New Testament.
As the opportunities of forgery were greater, so also was the
inducement. A man could gain no advantage by writing under the name of
Homer or Euclid; if he could write equal to them, it would be better
that he wrote under his own name; if inferior, he could not succeed.
Pride would prevent the former, and impossibility the latter. But with
respect to such books as compose the New Testament, all the inducements
were on the side of forgery. The best imagined history that could have
been made, at the distance of two or three hundred years after the time,
could not have passed for an original under the name of the real
writer; the only chance of success lay in forgery; for the church wanted
pretence for its new doctrine, and truth and talents were out of the
question.
But as it is not uncommon (as before observed) to relate stories of
persons walking after they are dead, and of ghosts and apparitions of
such as have fallen by some violent or extraordinary means; and as the
people of that day were in the habit of believing such things, and of
the appearance of angels, and also of devils, and of their getting into
people's insides, and shaking them like a fit of an ague, and of their
being cast out again as if by an emetic—(Mary Magdalene, the book of
Mark tells us had brought up, or been brought to bed of seven devils;)
it was nothing extraordinary that some story of this kind should get
abroad of the person called Jesus Christ, and become afterwards the
foundation of the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Each writer told a tale as he heard it, or thereabouts, and gave to his
book the name of the saint or the apostle whom tradition had given as
the eye-witness. It is only upon this ground that the contradictions in
those books can be accounted for; and if this be not the case, they are
downright impositions, lies, and forgeries, without even the apology of
credulity.
That they have been written by a sort of half Jews, as the foregoing
quotations mention, is discernible enough. The frequent references
made to that chief assassin and impostor Moses, and to the men called
prophets, establishes this point; and, on the other hand, the church
has complimented the fraud, by admitting the Bible and the Testament
to reply to each other. Between the Christian-Jew and the
Christian-Gentile, the thing called a prophecy, and the thing prophesied
of, the type and the thing typified, the sign and the thing signified,
have been industriously rummaged up, and fitted together like old locks
and pick-lock keys. The story foolishly enough told of Eve and the
serpent, and naturally enough as to the enmity between men and serpents
(for the serpent always bites about the heel, because it cannot reach
higher, and the man always knocks the serpent about the head, as the
most effectual way to prevent its biting;) ["It shall bruise thy head,
and thou shalt bruise his heel." Gen. iii. 15.—Author.] this foolish
story, I say, has been made into a prophecy, a type, and a promise to
begin with; and the lying imposition of Isaiah to Ahaz, 'That a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son,' as a sign that Ahaz should conquer,
when the event was that he was defeated (as already noticed in the
observations on the book of Isaiah), has been perverted, and made to
serve as a winder up.
Jonah and the whale are also made into a sign and type. Jonah is Jesus,
and the whale is the grave; for it is said, (and they have made Christ
to say it of himself, Matt. xii. 40), "For as Jonah was three days and
three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days
and three nights in the heart of the earth." But it happens, awkwardly
enough, that Christ, according to their own account, was but one day
and two nights in the grave; about 36 hours instead of 72; that is, the
Friday night, the Saturday, and the Saturday night; for they say he was
up on the Sunday morning by sunrise, or before. But as this fits quite
as well as the bite and the kick in Genesis, or the virgin and her son
in Isaiah, it will pass in the lump of orthodox things.—Thus much for
the historical part of the Testament and its evidences.
Epistles of Paul—The epistles ascribed to Paul, being fourteen in
number, almost fill up the remaining part of the Testament. Whether
those epistles were written by the person to whom they are ascribed is
a matter of no great importance, since that the writer, whoever he was,
attempts to prove his doctrine by argument. He does not pretend to
have been witness to any of the scenes told of the resurrection and the
ascension; and he declares that he had not believed them.
The story of his being struck to the ground as he was journeying to
Damascus, has nothing in it miraculous or extraordinary; he escaped with
life, and that is more than many others have done, who have been struck
with lightning; and that he should lose his sight for three days, and be
unable to eat or drink during that time, is nothing more than is common
in such conditions. His companions that were with him appear not to have
suffered in the same manner, for they were well enough to lead him the
remainder of the journey; neither did they pretend to have seen any
vision.
The character of the person called Paul, according to the accounts
given of him, has in it a great deal of violence and fanaticism; he had
persecuted with as much heat as he preached afterwards; the stroke
he had received had changed his thinking, without altering his
constitution; and either as a Jew or a Christian he was the same zealot.
Such men are never good moral evidences of any doctrine they preach.
They are always in extremes, as well of action as of belief.
The doctrine he sets out to prove by argument, is the resurrection of
the same body: and he advances this as an evidence of immortality.
But so much will men differ in their manner of thinking, and in the
conclusions they draw from the same premises, that this doctrine of
the resurrection of the same body, so far from being an evidence of
immortality, appears to me to be an evidence against it; for if I have
already died in this body, and am raised again in the same body in which
I have died, it is presumptive evidence that I shall die again. That
resurrection no more secures me against the repetition of dying, than an
ague-fit, when past, secures me against another. To believe therefore in
immortality, I must have a more elevated idea than is contained in the
gloomy doctrine of the resurrection.
Besides, as a matter of choice, as well as of hope, I had rather have a
better body and a more convenient form than the present. Every animal
in the creation excels us in something. The winged insects, without
mentioning doves or eagles, can pass over more space with greater ease
in a few minutes than man can in an hour. The glide of the smallest
fish, in proportion to its bulk, exceeds us in motion almost beyond
comparison, and without weariness. Even the sluggish snail can ascend
from the bottom of a dungeon, where man, by the want of that ability,
would perish; and a spider can launch itself from the top, as a playful
amusement. The personal powers of man are so limited, and his heavy
frame so little constructed to extensive enjoyment, that there is
nothing to induce us to wish the opinion of Paul to be true. It is too
little for the magnitude of the scene, too mean for the sublimity of the
subject.
But all other arguments apart, the consciousness of existence is the
only conceivable idea we can have of another life, and the continuance
of that consciousness is immortality. The consciousness of existence, or
the knowing that we exist, is not necessarily confined to the same form,
nor to the same matter, even in this life.
We have not in all cases the same form, nor in any case the same matter,
that composed our bodies twenty or thirty years ago; and yet we are
conscious of being the same persons. Even legs and arms, which make up
almost half the human frame, are not necessary to the consciousness of
existence. These may be lost or taken away and the full consciousness
of existence remain; and were their place supplied by wings, or other
appendages, we cannot conceive that it could alter our consciousness of
existence. In short, we know not how much, or rather how little, of our
composition it is, and how exquisitely fine that little is, that creates
in us this consciousness of existence; and all beyond that is like the
pulp of a peach, distinct and separate from the vegetative speck in the
kernel.
Who can say by what exceeding fine action of fine matter it is that a
thought is produced in what we call the mind? and yet that thought
when produced, as I now produce the thought I am writing, is capable
of becoming immortal, and is the only production of man that has that
capacity.
Statues of brass and marble will perish; and statues made in imitation
of them are not the same statues, nor the same workmanship, any more
than the copy of a picture is the same picture. But print and reprint
a thought a thousand times over, and that with materials of any kind,
carve it in wood, or engrave it on stone, the thought is eternally
and identically the same thought in every case. It has a capacity of
unimpaired existence, unaffected by change of matter, and is essentially
distinct, and of a nature different from every thing else that we know
of, or can conceive. If then the thing produced has in itself a capacity
of being immortal, it is more than a token that the power that produced
it, which is the self-same thing as consciousness of existence, can
be immortal also; and that as independently of the matter it was first
connected with, as the thought is of the printing or writing it first
appeared in. The one idea is not more difficult to believe than the
other; and we can see that one is true.
That the consciousness of existence is not dependent on the same form
or the same matter, is demonstrated to our senses in the works of
the creation, as far as our senses are capable of receiving that
demonstration. A very numerous part of the animal creation preaches to
us, far better than Paul, the belief of a life hereafter. Their little
life resembles an earth and a heaven, a present and a future state; and
comprises, if it may be so expressed, immortality in miniature.
The most beautiful parts of the creation to our eye are the winged
insects, and they are not so originally. They acquire that form and
that inimitable brilliancy by progressive changes. The slow and creeping
caterpillar worm of to day, passes in a few days to a torpid figure, and
a state resembling death; and in the next change comes forth in all the
miniature magnificence of life, a splendid butterfly. No resemblance of
the former creature remains; every thing is changed; all his powers
are new, and life is to him another thing. We cannot conceive that the
consciousness of existence is not the same in this state of the animal
as before; why then must I believe that the resurrection of the same
body is necessary to continue to me the consciousness of existence
hereafter?
In the former part of 'The Agee of Reason.' I have called the creation
the true and only real word of God; and this instance, or this text, in
the book of creation, not only shows to us that this thing may be so,
but that it is so; and that the belief of a future state is a rational
belief, founded upon facts visible in the creation: for it is not more
difficult to believe that we shall exist hereafter in a better state and
form than at present, than that a worm should become a butterfly, and
quit the dunghill for the atmosphere, if we did not know it as a fact.
As to the doubtful jargon ascribed to Paul in 1 Corinthians xv., which
makes part of the burial service of some Christian sectaries, it is
as destitute of meaning as the tolling of a bell at the funeral; it
explains nothing to the understanding, it illustrates nothing to the
imagination, but leaves the reader to find any meaning if he can. "All
flesh," says he, "is not the same flesh. There is one flesh of men,
another of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds." And what
then? nothing. A cook could have said as much. "There are also," says
he, "bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial; the glory of the celestial
is one and the glory of the terrestrial is the other." And what then?
nothing. And what is the difference? nothing that he has told. "There
is," says he, "one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and
another glory of the stars." And what then? nothing; except that he says
that one star differeth from another star in glory, instead of distance;
and he might as well have told us that the moon did not shine so bright
as the sun. All this is nothing better than the jargon of a conjuror,
who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous
people who come to have their fortune told. Priests and conjurors are of
the same trade.
Sometimes Paul affects to be a naturalist, and to prove his system of
resurrection from the principles of vegetation. "Thou fool" says he,
"that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." To which one
might reply in his own language, and say, Thou fool, Paul, that which
thou sowest is not quickened except it die not; for the grain that dies
in the ground never does, nor can vegetate. It is only the living grains
that produce the next crop. But the metaphor, in any point of view, is
no simile. It is succession, and [not] resurrection.
The progress of an animal from one state of being to another, as from a
worm to a butterfly, applies to the case; but this of a grain does not,
and shows Paul to have been what he says of others, a fool.
Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul were written by him
or not, is a matter of indifference; they are either argumentative or
dogmatical; and as the argument is defective, and the dogmatical part is
merely presumptive, it signifies not who wrote them. And the same may
be said for the remaining parts of the Testament. It is not upon the
Epistles, but upon what is called the Gospel, contained in the four
books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and upon the pretended
prophecies, that the theory of the church, calling itself the Christian
Church, is founded. The Epistles are dependant upon those, and must
follow their fate; for if the story of Jesus Christ be fabulous, all
reasoning founded upon it, as a supposed truth, must fall with it.
We know from history, that one of the principal leaders of this church,
Athanasius, lived at the time the New Testament was formed; [Athanasius
died, according to the Church chronology, in the year 371—Author.] and
we know also, from the absurd jargon he has left us under the name of
a creed, the character of the men who formed the New Testament; and we
know also from the same history that the authenticity of the books of
which it is composed was denied at the time. It was upon the vote of
such as Athanasius that the Testament was decreed to be the word of God;
and nothing can present to us a more strange idea than that of decreeing
the word of God by vote. Those who rest their faith upon such authority
put man in the place of God, and have no true foundation for future
happiness. Credulity, however, is not a crime, but it becomes criminal
by resisting conviction. It is strangling in the womb of the conscience
the efforts it makes to ascertain truth. We should never force belief
upon ourselves in any thing.
I here close the subject on the Old Testament and the New. The evidence
I have produced to prove them forgeries, is extracted from the books
themselves, and acts, like a two-edge sword, either way. If the evidence
be denied, the authenticity of the Scriptures is denied with it, for it
is Scripture evidence: and if the evidence be admitted, the authenticity
of the books is disproved. The contradictory impossibilities, contained
in the Old Testament and the New, put them in the case of a man who
swears for and against. Either evidence convicts him of perjury, and
equally destroys reputation.
Should the Bible and the Testament hereafter fall, it is not that I
have done it. I have done no more than extracted the evidence from
the confused mass of matters with which it is mixed, and arranged that
evidence in a point of light to be clearly seen and easily comprehended;
and, having done this, I leave the reader to judge for himself, as I
have judged for myself.
CHAPTER III - CONCLUSION
IN the former part of 'The Age of Reason' I have spoken of the three
frauds, mystery, miracle, and Prophecy; and as I have seen nothing in
any of the answers to that work that in the least affects what I have
there said upon those subjects, I shall not encumber this Second Part
with additions that are not necessary.
I have spoken also in the same work upon what is celled revelation, and
have shown the absurd misapplication of that term to the books of
the Old Testament and the New; for certainly revelation is out of the
question in reciting any thing of which man has been the actor or the
witness. That which man has done or seen, needs no revelation to tell
him he has done it, or seen it—for he knows it already—nor to enable
him to tell it or to write it. It is ignorance, or imposition, to apply
the term revelation in such cases; yet the Bible and Testament are
classed under this fraudulent description of being all revelation.
Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between God and man,
can only be applied to something which God reveals of his will to man;
but though the power of the Almighty to make such a communication is
necessarily admitted, because to that power all things are possible,
yet, the thing so revealed (if any thing ever was revealed, and which,
by the bye, it is impossible to prove) is revelation to the person only
to whom it is made. His account of it to another is not revelation; and
whoever puts faith in that account, puts it in the man from whom the
account comes; and that man may have been deceived, or may have dreamed
it; or he may be an impostor and may lie. There is no possible criterion
whereby to judge of the truth of what he tells; for even the morality of
it would be no proof of revelation. In all such cases, the proper
answer should be, "When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be
revelation; but it is not and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe
it to be revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the
word of man as the word of God, and put man in the place of God." This
is the manner in which I have spoken of revelation in the former part of
The Age of Reason; and which, whilst it reverentially admits revelation
as a possible thing, because, as before said, to the Almighty all things
are possible, it prevents the imposition of one man upon another, and
precludes the wicked use of pretended revelation.
But though, speaking for myself, I thus admit the possibility of
revelation, I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did communicate
any thing to man, by any mode of speech, in any language, or by any kind
of vision, or appearance, or by any means which our senses are capable
of receiving, otherwise than by the universal display of himself in the
works of the creation, and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to
bad actions, and disposition to good ones. [A fair parallel of the then
unknown aphorism of Kant: "Two things fill the soul with wonder and
reverence, increasing evermore as I meditate more closely upon them:
the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me." (Kritik
derpraktischen Vernunfe, 1788). Kant's religious utterances at the
beginning of the French Revolution brought on him a royal mandate
of silence, because he had worked out from "the moral law within" a
principle of human equality precisely similar to that which Paine had
derived from his Quaker doctrine of the "inner light" of every man.
About the same time Paine's writings were suppressed in England. Paine
did not understand German, but Kant, though always independent in
the formation of his opinions, was evidently well acquainted with the
literature of the Revolution, in America, England, and France.—Editor.]
The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the
greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their
origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It
has been the most dishonourable belief against the character of the
divinity, the most destructive to morality, and the peace and happiness
of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist. It is better,
far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to
roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there
were any such, than that we permitted one such impostor and monster
as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the
pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit among us.
Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men,
women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody
persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious wars, that since
that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but
from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous
belief that God has spoken to man? The lies of the Bible have been the
cause of the one, and the lies of the Testament [of] the other.
Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by the
sword; but of what period of time do they speak? It was impossible that
twelve men could begin with the sword: they had not the power; but no
sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently powerful to
employ the sword than they did so, and the stake and faggot too; and
Mahomet could not do it sooner. By the same spirit that Peter cut off
the ear of the high priest's servant (if the story be true) he would
cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he been able. Besides
this, Christianity grounds itself originally upon the [Hebrew] Bible,
and the Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that in the
worst use of it—not to terrify, but to extirpate. The Jews made
no converts: they butchered all. The Bible is the sire of the [New]
Testament, and both are called the word of God. The Christians read
both books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing
called Christianity is made up of both. It is then false to say that
Christianity was not established by the sword.
The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the only
reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists than
Christians. They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and they
call the scriptures a dead letter. [This is an interesting and correct
testimony as to the beliefs of the earlier Quakers, one of whom was
Paine's father.—Editor.] Had they called them by a worse name, they had
been nearer the truth.
It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the
Creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial miseries,
and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among mankind,
to expel all ideas of a revealed religion as a dangerous heresy, and an
impious fraud. What is it that we have learned from this pretended thing
called revealed religion? Nothing that is useful to man, and every
thing that is dishonourable to his Maker. What is it the Bible teaches
us?—repine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches
us?—to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman
engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called
faith.
As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly
scattered in those books, they make no part of this pretended thing,
revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and the
bonds by which society is held together, and without which it cannot
exist; and are nearly the same in all religions, and in all societies.
The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and where it
attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous. The doctrine of not
retaliating injuries is much better expressed in Proverbs, which is
a collection as well from the Gentiles as the Jews, than it is in the
Testament. It is there said, (Xxv. 2 I) "If thine enemy be hungry,
give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink:"
[According to what is called Christ's sermon on the mount, in the book
of Matthew, where, among some other [and] good things, a great deal of
this feigned morality is introduced, it is there expressly said, that
the doctrine of forbearance, or of not retaliating injuries, was not
any part of the doctrine of the Jews; but as this doctrine is found in
"Proverbs," it must, according to that statement, have been copied from
the Gentiles, from whom Christ had learned it. Those men whom Jewish and
Christian idolators have abusively called heathen, had much better and
clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be found in the Old
Testament, so far as it is Jewish, or in the New. The answer of Solon on
the question, "Which is the most perfect popular govemment," has never
been exceeded by any man since his time, as containing a maxim of
political morality, "That," says he, "where the least injury done to
the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole
constitution." Solon lived about 500 years before Christ.—Author.] but
when it is said, as in the Testament, "If a man smite thee on the right
cheek, turn to him the other also," it is assassinating the dignity of
forbearance, and sinking man into a spaniel.
Loving, of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides
no meaning. It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he does not
revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense, for
there is no end to retaliation; each retaliates on the other, and calls
it justice: but to love in proportion to the injury, if it could be
done, would be to offer a premium for a crime. Besides, the word enemies
is too vague and general to be used in a moral maxim, which ought
always to be clear and defined, like a proverb. If a man be the enemy
of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious
opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an enemy
at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon us, and
it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we put the best
construction upon a thing that it will bear. But even this erroneous
motive in him makes no motive for love on the other part; and to say
that we can love voluntarily, and without a motive, is morally and
physically impossible.
Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first
place, are impossible to be performed, and if they could be would be
productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime. The maxim
of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine
of loving enemies; for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime
or for his enmity.
Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies, are in general
the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the
doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act
the reverse of what it preaches. For my own part, I disown the doctrine,
and consider it as a feigned or fabulous morality; yet the man does not
exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men,
either in the American Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that
I have, in any case, returned evil for evil. But it is not incumbent on
man to reward a bad action with a good one, or to return good for evil;
and wherever it is done, it is a voluntary act, and not a duty. It
is also absurd to suppose that such doctrine can make any part of a
revealed religion. We imitate the moral character of the Creator by
forbearing with each other, for he forbears with all; but this doctrine
would imply that he loved man, not in proportion as he was good, but as
he was bad.
If we consider the nature of our condition here, we must see there is
no occasion for such a thing as revealed religion. What is it we want
to know? Does not the creation, the universe we behold, preach to us the
existence of an Almighty power, that governs and regulates the whole?
And is not the evidence that this creation holds out to our senses
infinitely stronger than any thing we can read in a book, that any
imposter might make and call the word of God? As for morality, the
knowledge of it exists in every man's conscience.
Here we are. The existence of an Almighty power is sufficiently
demonstrated to us, though we cannot conceive, as it is impossible we
should, the nature and manner of its existence. We cannot conceive how
we came here ourselves, and yet we know for a fact that we are here.
We must know also, that the power that called us into being, can if he
please, and when he pleases, call us to account for the manner in which
we have lived here; and therefore without seeking any other motive
for the belief, it is rational to believe that he will, for we know
beforehand that he can. The probability or even possibility of the thing
is all that we ought to know; for if we knew it as a fact, we should be
the mere slaves of terror; our belief would have no merit, and our best
actions no virtue.
Deism then teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived, all
that is necessary or proper to be known. The creation is the Bible of
the deist. He there reads, in the hand-writing of the Creator himself,
the certainty of his existence, and the immutability of his power; and
all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries. The probability
that we may be called to account hereafter, will, to reflecting minds,
have the influence of belief; for it is not our belief or disbelief that
can make or unmake the fact. As this is the state we are in, and which
it is proper we should be in, as free agents, it is the fool only, and
not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will live as if
there were no God.
But the belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the strange
fable of the Christian creed, and with the wild adventures related in
the Bible, and the obscurity and obscene nonsense of the Testament, that
the mind of man is bewildered as in a fog. Viewing all these things in
a confused mass, he confounds fact with fable; and as he cannot believe
all, he feels a disposition to reject all. But the belief of a God is
a belief distinct from all other things, and ought not to be confounded
with any. The notion of a Trinity of Gods has enfeebled the belief of
one God. A multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief; and
in proportion as anything is divided, it is weakened.
Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form instead of fact; of
notion instead of principle: morality is banished to make room for
an imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its origin in a
supposed debauchery; a man is preached instead of a God; an execution is
an object for gratitude; the preachers daub themselves with the blood,
like a troop of assassins, and pretend to admire the brilliancy it gives
them; they preach a humdrum sermon on the merits of the execution; then
praise Jesus Christ for being executed, and condemn the Jews for doing
it.
A man, by hearing all this nonsense lumped and preached together,
confounds the God of the Creation with the imagined God of the
Christians, and lives as if there were none.
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none
more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant
to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called
Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too
inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only
atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of
despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so
far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or
hereafter.
The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it every
evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple deism. It must have
been the first and will probably be the last that man believes. But pure
and simple deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments.
They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine but by mixing it with
human inventions, and making their own authority a part; neither does it
answer the avarice of priests, but by incorporating themselves and their
functions with it, and becoming, like the government, a party in the
system. It is this that forms the otherwise mysterious connection of
church and state; the church human, and the state tyrannic.
Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the
belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of
belief; he would stand in awe of God, and of himself, and would not do
the thing that could not be concealed from either. To give this belief
the full opportunity of force, it is necessary that it acts alone. This
is deism.
But when, according to the Christian Trinitarian scheme, one part of God
is represented by a dying man, and another part, called the Holy Ghost,
by a flying pigeon, it is impossible that belief can attach itself to
such wild conceits. [The book called the book of Matthew, says, (iii.
16,) that the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of a dove. It might as
well have said a goose; the creatures are equally harmless, and the one
is as much a nonsensical lie as the other. Acts, ii. 2, 3, says, that
it descended in a mighty rushing wind, in the shape of cloven tongues:
perhaps it was cloven feet. Such absurd stuff is fit only for tales of
witches and wizards.—Author.]
It has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the other
invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator,
as it is of government to hold him in ignorance of his rights.
The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are
calculated for mutual support. The study of theology as it stands in
Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing;
it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no
data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no conclusion. Not any
thing can be studied as a science without our being in possession of the
principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with
Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.
Instead then of studying theology, as is now done, out of the Bible and
Testament, the meanings of which books are always controverted, and the
authenticity of which is disproved, it is necessary that we refer to the
Bible of the creation. The principles we discover there are eternal, and
of divine origin: they are the foundation of all the science that exists
in the world, and must be the foundation of theology.
We can know God only through his works. We cannot have a conception of
any one attribute, but by following some principle that leads to it.
We have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not the means of
comprehending something of its immensity. We can have no idea of his
wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which it acts. The
principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the Creator of man is
the Creator of science, and it is through that medium that man can see
God, as it were, face to face.
Could a man be placed in a situation, and endowed with power of vision
to behold at one view, and to contemplate deliberately, the structure of
the universe, to mark the movements of the several planets, the cause
of their varying appearances, the unerring order in which they revolve,
even to the remotest comet, their connection and dependence on each
other, and to know the system of laws established by the Creator, that
governs and regulates the whole; he would then conceive, far beyond what
any church theology can teach him, the power, the wisdom, the vastness,
the munificence of the Creator. He would then see that all the knowledge
man has of science, and that all the mechanical arts by which he renders
his situation comfortable here, are derived from that source: his mind,
exalted by the scene, and convinced by the fact, would increase in
gratitude as it increased in knowledge: his religion or his worship
would become united with his improvement as a man: any employment he
followed that had connection with the principles of the creation,—as
everything of agriculture, of science, and of the mechanical arts,
has,—would teach him more of God, and of the gratitude he owes to
him, than any theological Christian sermon he now hears. Great objects
inspire great thoughts; great munificence excites great gratitude; but
the grovelling tales and doctrines of the Bible and the Testament are
fit only to excite contempt.
Though man cannot arrive, at least in this life, at the actual scene I
have described, he can demonstrate it, because he has knowledge of the
principles upon which the creation is constructed. We know that the
greatest works can be represented in model, and that the universe can be
represented by the same means. The same principles by which we measure
an inch or an acre of ground will measure to millions in extent. A
circle of an inch diameter has the same geometrical properties as a
circle that would circumscribe the universe. The same properties of a
triangle that will demonstrate upon paper the course of a ship, will
do it on the ocean; and, when applied to what are called the heavenly
bodies, will ascertain to a minute the time of an eclipse, though those
bodies are millions of miles distant from us. This knowledge is of
divine origin; and it is from the Bible of the creation that man has
learned it, and not from the stupid Bible of the church, that teaches
man nothing. [The Bible-makers have undertaken to give us, in the first
chapter of Genesis, an account of the creation; and in doing this they
have demonstrated nothing but their ignorance. They make there to have
been three days and three nights, evenings and mornings, before there
was any sun; when it is the presence or absence of the sun that is the
cause of day and night—and what is called his rising and setting that
of morning and evening. Besides, it is a puerile and pitiful idea, to
suppose the Almighty to say, "Let there be light." It is the imperative
manner of speaking that a conjuror uses when he says to his cups and
balls, Presto, be gone—and most probably has been taken from it,
as Moses and his rod is a conjuror and his wand. Longinus calls this
expression the sublime; and by the same rule the conjurer is sublime
too; for the manner of speaking is expressively and grammatically the
same. When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how
nearly it borders on the ridiculous. The sublime of the critics, like
some parts of Edmund Burke's sublime and beautiful, is like a windmill
just visible in a fog, which imagination might distort into a flying
mountain, or an archangel, or a flock of wild geese.—Author.]
All the knowledge man has of science and of machinery, by the aid of
which his existence is rendered comfortable upon earth, and without
which he would be scarcely distinguishable in appearance and condition
from a common animal, comes from the great machine and structure of the
universe. The constant and unwearied observations of our ancestors
upon the movements and revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in what are
supposed to have been the early ages of the world, have brought this
knowledge upon earth. It is not Moses and the prophets, nor Jesus
Christ, nor his apostles, that have done it. The Almighty is the great
mechanic of the creation, the first philosopher, and original teacher of
all science. Let us then learn to reverence our master, and not forget
the labours of our ancestors.
Had we, at this day, no knowledge of machinery, and were it possible
that man could have a view, as I have before described, of the structure
and machinery of the universe, he would soon conceive the idea of
constructing some at least of the mechanical works we now have; and the
idea so conceived would progressively advance in practice. Or could a
model of the universe, such as is called an orrery, be presented before
him and put in motion, his mind would arrive at the same idea. Such an
object and such a subject would, whilst it improved him in knowledge
useful to himself as a man and a member of society, as well as
entertaining, afford far better matter for impressing him with a
knowledge of, and a belief in the Creator, and of the reverence and
gratitude that man owes to him, than the stupid texts of the Bible and
the Testament, from which, be the talents of the preacher; what they
may, only stupid sermons can be preached. If man must preach, let him
preach something that is edifying, and from the texts that are known to
be true.
The Bible of the creation is inexhaustible in texts. Every part of
science, whether connected with the geometry of the universe, with
the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties of
inanimate matter, is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy—for
gratitude, as for human improvement. It will perhaps be said, that if
such a revolution in the system of religion takes place, every preacher
ought to be a philosopher. Most certainly, and every house of devotion a
school of science.
It has been by wandering from the immutable laws of science, and the
light of reason, and setting up an invented thing called "revealed
religion," that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have been formed
of the Almighty. The Jews have made him the assassin of the human
species, to make room for the religion of the Jews. The Christians have
made him the murderer of himself, and the founder of a new religion
to supersede and expel the Jewish religion. And to find pretence and
admission for these things, they must have supposed his power or his
wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable; and the changeableness of the
will is the imperfection of the judgement. The philosopher knows that
the laws of the Creator have never changed, with respect either to the
principles of science, or the properties of matter. Why then is it to be
supposed they have changed with respect to man?
I here close the subject. I have shown in all the foregoing parts of
this work that the Bible and Testament are impositions and forgeries;
and I leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it to be refuted,
if any one can do it; and I leave the ideas that are suggested in the
conclusion of the work to rest on the mind of the reader; certain as
I am that when opinions are free, either in matters of govemment or
religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail.
END OF PART II
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