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Title: The
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Produced
by Norman M. Wolcott.
[Redactor’s Note: The text is reproduced from The
Writings of Thomas Paine Collected and Edited by Moncure Daniel Conway, Vol.
IV 1894 - 1896. In this version the notes are enclosed in square brackets.
A Table of contents for this part has been added not found in the
printed edition.]
VOLUME
IV.
by
Thomas Paine (1796)
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 And
Chapter
XI - Of The Theology Of The Christians; And The True Theology
Chapter
XII - The Effects Of Christianism On Education; Proposed Reforms
Chapter
XIII - Comparison Of Christianism With The Religious Ideas
Inspired
By Nature
Chapter
XIV - System Of The Universe
Chapter
XV - Advantages Of The Existence Of Many Worlds In Each Solar
Chapter
XVI - Applications Of The Preceding To The System Of The
Chapter
XVII - Of The Means Employed In All Time, And Almost
Universally,
To Deceive The Peoples
Recapitulation
Part
Two
Preface
Chapter
I - The Old Testament
Chapter
II - The New Testament
Chapter
III - Conclusion
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 I’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,
Gouvemeur 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.
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 ‘propesytng’ 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 be 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 be 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 crouded 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 (231/2 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,
Jupitcr, 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 lirie 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
be 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
invelops 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 prohesying 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 multitunic 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 Testamut, and
speaks of the Now 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 Rochambcau 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.—Edifor.] 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 Isracl 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 shawing 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 nowa-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-tune 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 succeded 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 Chroniclcs 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 Mdachi [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 Josbua, 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 be 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 (“Detence
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 cartive 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 Benjaman 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.
1O14, 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 sores; 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
Clialdeans 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 be 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 ob