[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.]

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THE WRITINGS

OF

THOMAS PAINE

COLLECTED AND EDITED BY

MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY

VOLUME IV.

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The Age of Reason

by Thomas Paine  (1796)

Contents

Editor's Introduction

Part One

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

Attributes By The Bible

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

System

Chapter XVI - Applications Of The Preceding To The System Of The

Christians

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

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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.

T. PAINE.

"PARIS, December 4, 1795,"

Eaton's cheap edition appeared January 1, 1796, with the above letter

on the reverse of the title. The blank in the note was probably

"Symonds" in the original, and possibly that publisher was imposed

upon. Eaton, already in trouble for printing one of Paine's political

pamphlets, fled to America, and an edition of the "Age of Reason" was

issued under a new title; no publisher appears; it is said to be

"printed for, and sold by all the Booksellers in Great Britain and

Ireland." It is also said to be "By Thomas Paine, author of several

remarkable performances." I have never found any copy of this

anonymous edition except the one in my possession. It is evidently

the edition which was suppressed by the prosecution of Williams for

selling a copy of it.

A comparison with Paine's revised edition reveals a good many

clerical and verbal errors in Symonds, though few that affect the

sense. The worst are in the preface, where, instead of "1793," the

misleading date "1790" is given as the year at whose close Paine

completed Part First, -- an error that spread far and wide and was

fastened on by his calumnious American "biographer," Cheetham, to

prove his inconsistency. The editors have been fairly demoralized by,

and have altered in different ways, the following sentence of the

preface in Symonds: "The intolerant spirit of religious persecution

had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, styled

Revolutionary, supplied the place of the Inquisition; and the

Guillotine of the State outdid the Fire and Faggot of the Church."

The rogue who copied this little knew the care with which Paine

weighed words, and that he would never call persecution "religious,"

nor connect the guillotine with the "State," nor concede that with

all its horrors it had outdone the history of fire and faggot. What

Paine wrote was: "The intolerant spirit of church persecution had

transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, styled

Revolutionary, supplied the place of an Inquisition and the

Guillotine, of the Stake."

An original letter of Paine, in the possession of Joseph Cowen,

ex-M.P., which that gentleman permits me to bring to light, besides

being one of general interest makes clear the circumstances of the

original publication. Although the name of the correspondent does not

appear on the letter, it was certainly written to Col. John Fellows

of New York, who copyrighted Part I. of the "Age of Reason." He

published the pamphlets of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine confided his

manuscript on his way to prison. Fellows was afterwards Paine's

intimate friend in New York, and it was chiefly due to him that some

portions of the author's writings, left in manuscript to Madame

Bonneville while she was a freethinker were rescued from her devout

destructiveness after her return to Catholicism. The letter which Mr.

Cowen sends me, is dated at Paris, January 20, 1797.

"SIR, -- Your friend Mr. Caritat being on the point of his departure

for America, I make it the opportunity of writing to you. I received

two letters from you with some pamphlets a considerable time past, in

which you inform me of your entering a copyright of the first part of

the Age of Reason: when I return to America we will settle for that

matter.

"As Doctor Franklin has been my intimate friend for thirty years past

you will naturally see the reason of my continuing the connection

with his grandson. I printed here (Paris) about fifteen thousand of

the second part of the Age of Reason, which I sent to Mr. F[ranklin]

Bache. I gave him notice of it in September 1795 and the copy-right

by my own direction was entered by him. The books did not arrive till

April following, but he had advertised it long before.

"I sent to him in August last a manuscript letter of about 70 pages,

from me to Mr. Washington to be printed in a pamphlet. Mr. Barnes of

Philadelphia carried the letter from me over to London to be

forwarded to America. It went by the ship Hope, Cap: Harley, who

since his return from America told me that he put it into the post

office at New York for Bache. I have yet no certain account of its

publication. I mention this that the letter may be enquired after, in

case it has not been published or has not arrived to Mr. Bache.

Barnes wrote to me, from London 29 August informing me that he was

offered three hundred pounds sterling for the manuscript. The offer

was refused because it was my intention it should not appear till it

appeared in America, as that, and not England was the place for its

operation.

"You ask me by your letter to Mr. Caritat for a list of my several

works, in order to publish a collection of them. This is an

undertaking I have always reserved for myself. It not only belongs to

me of right, but nobody but myself can do it; and as every author is

accountable (at least in reputation) for his works, he only is the

person to do it. If he neglects it in his life-time the case is

altered. It is my intention to return to America in the course of the

present year. I shall then [do] it by subscription, with historical

notes. As this work will employ many persons in different parts of

the Union, I will confer with you upon the subject, and such part of

it as will suit you to undertake, will be at your choice. I have

sustained so much loss, by disinterestedness and inattention to money

matters, and by accidents, that I am obliged to look closer to my

affairs than I have done. The printer (an Englishman) whom I employed

here to print the second part of 'the Age of Reason' made a

manuscript copy of the work while he was printing it, which he sent

to London and sold. It was by this means that an edition of it came

out in London.

"We are waiting here for news from America of the state of the

federal elections. You will have heard long before this reaches you

that the French government has refused to receive Mr. Pinckney as

minister. While Mr. Monroe was minister he had the opportunity of

softening matters with this government, for he was in good credit

with them tho' they were in high indignation at the infidelity of the

Washington Administration. It is time that Mr. Washington retire, for

he has played off so much prudent hypocrisy between France and

England that neither government believes anything he says.

"Your friend, etc.,

"THOMAS PAINE."

It would appear that Symonds' stolen edition must have got ahead of

that sent by Paine to Franklin Bache, for some of its errors continue

in all modern American editions to the present day, as well as in

those of England. For in England it was only the shilling edition --

that revised by Paine -- which was suppressed. Symonds, who

ministered to the half-crown folk, and who was also publisher of

replies to Paine, was left undisturbed about his pirated edition, and

the new Society for the suppression of Vice and Immorality fastened

on one Thomas Williams, who sold pious tracts but was also convicted

(June 24, 1797) of having sold one copy of the "Age of Reason."

Erskine, who had defended Paine at his trial for the "Rights of Man,"

conducted the prosecution of Williams. He gained the victory from a

packed jury, but was not much elated by it, especially after a

certain adventure on his way to Lincoln's Inn. He felt his coat

clutched and beheld at his feet a woman bathed in tears. She led him

into the small book-shop of Thomas Williams, not yet called up for

judgment, and there he beheld his victim stitching tracts in a

wretched little room, where there were three children, two suffering

with Smallpox. He saw that it would be ruin and even a sort of murder

to take away to prison the husband, who was not a freethinker, and

lamented his publication of the book, and a meeting of the Society

which had retained him was summoned. There was a full meeting, the

Bishop of London (Porteus) in the chair. Erskine reminded them that

Williams was yet to be brought up for sentence, described the scene

he had witnessed, and Williams' penitence, and, as the book was now

suppressed, asked permission to move for a nominal sentence. Mercy,

he urged, was a part of the Christianity they were defending. Not one

of the Society took his side, -- not even "philanthropic" Wilberforce

-- and Erskine threw up his brief. This action of Erskine led the

Judge to give Williams only a year in prison instead of the three he

said had been intended.

While Williams was in prison the orthodox colporteurs were

circulating Erskine's speech on Christianity, but also an anonymous

sermon "On the Existence and Attributes of the Deity," all of which

was from Paine's "Age of Reason," except a brief "Address to the

Deity" appended. This picturesque anomaly was repeated in the

circulation of Paine's "Discourse to the Theophilanthropists" (their

and the author's names removed) under the title of "Atheism Refuted."

Both of these pamphlets are now before me, and beside them a London

tract of one page just sent for my spiritual benefit. This is headed

"A Word of Caution." It begins by mentioning the "pernicious

doctrines of Paine," the first being "that there is No GOD" (sic,)

then proceeds to adduce evidences of divine existence taken from

Paine's works. It should be added that this one dingy page is the

only "survival" of the ancient Paine effigy in the tract form which I

have been able to find in recent years, and to this no Society or

Publisher's name is attached.

The imprisonment of Williams was the beginning of a thirty years' war

for religious liberty in England, in the course of which occurred

many notable events, such as Eaton receiving homage in his pillory at

Choring Cross, and the whole Carlile family imprisoned, -- its head

imprisoned more than nine years for publishing the "Age of Reason."

This last victory of persecution was suicidal. Gentlemen of wealth,

not adherents of Paine, helped in setting Carlile up in business in

Fleet Street, where free-thinking publications have since been sold

without interruption. But though Liberty triumphed in one sense, the

"Age of Reason." remained to some extent suppressed among those whose

attention it especially merited. Its original prosecution by a

Society for the Suppression of Vice (a device to, relieve the Crown)

amounted to a libel upon a morally clean book, restricting its

perusal in families; and the fact that the shilling book sold by and

among humble people was alone prosecuted, diffused among the educated

an equally false notion that the "Age of Reason" was vulgar and

illiterate. The theologians, as we have seen, estimated more justly

the ability of their antagonist, the collaborator of Franklin,

Rittenhouse, and Clymer, on whom the University of Pennsylvania had

conferred the degree of Master of Arts, -- but the gentry confused

Paine with the class described by Burke as "the swinish multitude."

Skepticism, or its free utterance, was temporarily driven out of

polite circles by its complication with the out-lawed vindicator of

the "Rights of Man." But that long combat has now passed away. Time

has reduced the "Age of Reason" from a flag of popular radicalism to

a comparatively conservative treatise, so far as its negations are

concerned. An old friend tells me that in his youth he heard a sermon

in which the preacher declared that "Tom Paine was so wicked that he

could not be buried; his bones were thrown into a box which was

bandied about the world till it came to a button-manufacturer; and

now Paine is travelling round the world in the form of buttons!" This

variant of the Wandering Jew myth may now be regarded as unconscious

homage to the author whose metaphorical bones may be recognized in

buttons now fashionable, and some even found useful in holding

clerical vestments together.

But the careful reader will find in Paine's "Age of Reason" something

beyond negations, and in conclusion I will especially call attention

to the new departure in Theism indicated in a passage corresponding

to a famous aphorism of Kant, indicated by a note in Part II. The

discovery already mentioned, that Part I. was written at least

fourteen years before Part II., led me to compare the two; and it is

plain that while the earlier work is an amplification of Newtonian

Deism, based on the phenomena of planetary motion, the work of 1795

bases belief in God on "the universal display of himself in the works

of the creation and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad

actions, and disposition to do good ones." This exaltation of the

moral nature of man to be the foundation of theistic religion, though

now familiar, was a hundred years ago a new affirmation; it has led

on a conception of deity subversive of last-century deism, it has

steadily humanized religion, and its ultimate philosophical and

ethical results have not yet been reached.

CHAPTER I - THE AUTHOR'S PROFESSION OF FAITH.

IT has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my

thoughts upon religion; I am well aware of the difficulties that

attend the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to a

more advanced period of life. I intended it to be the last offering I

should make to my fellow-citizens of all nations, and that at a time

when the purity of the motive that induced me to it could not admit

of a question, even by those who might disapprove the work.

The circumstance that has now taken place in France, of the total

abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of

everything appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and

compulsive articles of faith, has not only precipitated my intention,

but rendered a work of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest, in the

general wreck of superstition, of false systems of government, and

false theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the

theology that is true.

As several of my colleagues, and others of my fellow-citizens of

France, have given me the example of making their voluntary and

individual profession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do this

with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man

communicates with itself.

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

this life.

I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties

consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our

fellow-creatures happy.

But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in

addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the

things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the

Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the

Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is

my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or

Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to

terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe

otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to

mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be

mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in

believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe

what he does not believe.

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express

it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far

corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe

his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has

prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up

the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify

himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive

anything more destructive to morality than this?

Soon after I had published the pamphlet COMMON SENSE, in America, I

saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of

government would be followed by a revolution in the system of

religion. The adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it

had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so

effectually prohibited, by pains and penalties, every discussion upon

established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that until

the system of government should be changed, those subjects could not

be brought fairly and openly before the world; but that whenever this

should be done, a revolution in the system of religion would follow.

Human inventions and priest-craft would be detected; and man would

return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God, and

no more.

CHAPTER II - OF MISSIONS AND REVELATIONS.

EVERY national church or religion has established itself by

pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain

individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus

Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if

the way to God was not open to every man alike.

Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call

revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God

was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that

their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that

their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven.

Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own

part, I disbelieve them all.

As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I

proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word

'revelation.' Revelation when applied to religion, means something

communicated immediately from God to man.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a

communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case,

that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not

revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only.

When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to

a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those

persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to

every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it.

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a

revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in

writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first

communication. After this, it is only an account of something which

that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find

himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to

believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to

me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two

tables of the commandments from the hand of God, they were not

obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it

than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than

some historian telling me so, the commandments carrying no internal

evidence of divinity with them. They contain some good moral precepts

such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could

produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural

intervention. [NOTE: It is, however, necessary to except the

declamation which says that God 'visits the sins of the fathers upon

the children'. This is contrary to every principle of moral justice.

-- Author.]

When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven, and brought to

Mahomet by an angel, the account comes to near the same kind of

hearsay evidence and second hand authority as the former. I did not

see the angel myself, and therefore I have a right not to believe it.

When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or

gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a

man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told

him so, I have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance

required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we

have not even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter

themselves. It is only reported by others that they said so. It is

hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such

evidence.

It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was

given to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born

when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the

world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of

such a story. Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the

heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods.

It was not a new thing at that time to believe a man to have been

celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was then a

matter of familiar opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their

accounts, had cohabited with hundreds; the story therefore had

nothing in it either new, wonderful, or obscene; it was conformable

to the opinions that then prevailed among the people called Gentiles,

or mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it. The

Jews, who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more,

and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the

story.

It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the

Christian Church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A

direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the

reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that

then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality,

which was about twenty or thirty thousand. The statue of Mary

succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes

changed into the canonization of saints. The Mythologists had gods

for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything.

The church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been

with the other; and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theory

is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists,

accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains

to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.

CHAPTER III - CONCERNING THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST, AND HIS

HISTORY.

NOTHING that is here said can apply, even with the most distant

disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous

and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practiced was

of the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality

had been preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek

philosophers, many years before, by the Quakers since, and by many

good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any.

Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or

anything else. Not a line of what is called the New Testament is of

his writing. The history of him is altogether the work of other

people; and as to the account given of his resurrection and

ascension, it was the necessary counterpart to the story of his

birth. His historians, having brought him into the world in a

supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same

manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.

The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told, exceeds

everything that went before it. The first part, that of the

miraculous conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity;

and therefore the tellers of this part of the story had this

advantage, that though they might not be credited, they could not be

detected. They could not be expected to prove it, because it was not

one of those things that admitted of proof, and it was impossible

that the person of whom it was told could prove it himself.

But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his

ascension through the air, is a thing very different, as to the

evidence it admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the

womb. The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken

place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the

ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon day, to all Jerusalem at

least. A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that

the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal;

and as the public visibility of this last related act was the only

evidence that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it

falls to the ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead

of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are

introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and

all the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. But it

appears that Thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they

say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration

himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me,

and for every other person, as for Thomas.

It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The

story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of

fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it. Who were the

authors of it is as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us to

be assured that the books in which the account is related were

written by the persons whose names they bear. The best surviving

evidence we now have respecting this affair is the Jews. They are

regularly descended from the people who lived in the time this

resurrection and ascension is said to have happened, and they say 'it

is not true.' It has long appeared to me a strange inconsistency to

cite the Jews as a proof of the truth of the story. It is just the

same as if a man were to say, I will prove the truth of what I have

told you, by producing the people who say it is false.

That such a person as Jesus Christ existed, and that he was

crucified, which was the mode of execution at that day, are

historical relations strictly within the limits of probability. He

preached most excellent morality, and the equality of man; but he

preached also against the corruptions and avarice of the Jewish

priests, and this brought upon him the hatred and vengeance of the

whole order of priest-hood. The accusation which those priests

brought against him was that of sedition and conspiracy against the

Roman government, to which the Jews were then subject and tributary;

and it is not improbable that the Roman government might have some

secret apprehension of the effects of his doctrine as well as the

Jewish priests; neither is it improbable that Jesus Christ had in

contemplation the delivery of the Jewish nation from the bondage of

the Romans. Between the two, however, this virtuous reformer and

revolutionist lost his life. [NOTE: The French work has here:

"However this may be, for one or the other of these suppositions this

virtuous reformer, this revolutionist, too little imitated, too much

forgotten, too much misunderstood, lost his life." -- Editor. (Conway)]

CHAPTER IV - OF THE BASES OF CHRISTIANITY.

IT is upon this plain narrative of facts, together with another case

I am going to mention, that the Christian mythologists, calling

themselves the Christian Church, have erected their fable, which for

absurdity and extravagance is not exceeded by anything that is to be

found in the mythology of the ancients.

The ancient mythologists tell us that the race of Giants made war

against Jupiter, and that one of them threw a hundred rocks against

him at one throw; that Jupiter defeated him with thunder, and

confined him afterwards under Mount Etna; and that every time the

Giant turns himself, Mount Etna belches fire. It is here easy to see

that the circumstance of the mountain, that of its being a volcano,

suggested the idea of the fable; and that the fable is made to fit

and wind itself up with that circumstance.

The Christian mythologists tell that their Satan made war against the

Almighty, who defeated him, and confined him afterwards, not under a

mountain, but in a pit. It is here easy to see that the first fable

suggested the idea of the second; for the fable of Jupiter and the

Giants was told many hundred years before that of Satan.

Thus far the ancient and the Christian mythologists differ very

little from each other. But the latter have contrived to carry the

matter much farther. They have contrived to connect the fabulous part

of the story of Jesus Christ with the fable originating from Mount

Etna; and, in order to make all the parts of the story tie together,

they have taken to their aid the traditions of the Jews; for the

Christian mythology is made up partly from the ancient mythology, and

partly from the Jewish traditions.

The Christian mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit,

were obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the

fable. He is then introduced into the garden of Eden in the shape of

a snake, or a serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar

conversation with Eve, who is no ways surprised to hear a snake talk;

and the issue of this tete-a-tate is, that he persuades her to eat an

apple, and the eating of that apple damns all mankind.

After giving Satan this triumph over the whole creation, one would

have supposed that the church mythologists would have been kind

enough to send him back again to the pit, or, if they had not done

this, that they would have put a mountain upon him, (for they say

that their faith can remove a mountain) or have put him under a

mountain, as the former mythologists had done, to prevent his getting

again among the women, and doing more mischief. But instead of this,

they leave him at large, without even obliging him to give his

parole. The secret of which is, that they could not do without him;

and after being at the trouble of making him, they bribed him to

stay. They promised him ALL the Jews, ALL the Turks by anticipation,

nine-tenths of the world beside, and Mahomet into the bargain. After

this, who can doubt the bountifulness of the Christian Mythology?

Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in heaven, in which

none of the combatants could be either killed or wounded -- put Satan

into the pit -- let him out again -- given him a triumph over the

whole creation -- damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, there

Christian mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together.

They represent this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at

once both God and man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten,

on purpose to be sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing

[NOTE: The French work has: "yielding to an unrestrained appetite." --

Editor.] had eaten an apple.

CHAPTER V - EXAMINATION IN DETAIL OF THE PRECEDING BASES.

PUTTING aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity,

or detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to

an examination of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a story

more derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom,

more contradictory to his power, than this story is.

In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the inventors were

under the necessity of giving to the being whom they call Satan a

power equally as great, if not greater, than they attribute to the

Almighty. They have not only given him the power of liberating

himself from the pit, after what they call his fall, but they have

made that power increase afterwards to infinity. Before this fall

they represent him only as an angel of limited existence, as they

represent the rest. After his fall, he becomes, by their account,

omnipresent. He exists everywhere, and at the same time. He occupies

the whole immensity of space.

Not content with this deification of Satan, they represent him as

defeating by stratagem, in the shape of an animal of the creation,

all the power and wisdom of the Almighty. They represent him as

having compelled the Almighty to the direct necessity either of

surrendering the whole of the creation to the government and

sovereignty of this Satan, or of capitulating for its redemption by

coming down upon earth, and exhibiting himself upon a cross in the

shape of a man.

Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is,

had they represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit

himself on a cross in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his

new transgression, the story would have been less absurd, less

contradictory. But, instead of this they make the transgressor

triumph, and the Almighty fall.

That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived very

good lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime) is what I

have no doubt of. In the first place, they were educated to believe

it, and they would have believed anything else in the same manner.

There are also many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by

what they conceived to be the infinite love of God to man, in making

a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden

and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and profaneness

of the story. The more unnatural anything is, the more is it capable

of becoming the object of dismal admiration. [NOTE: The French work

has "blind and" preceding dismal. -- Editor.]

CHAPTER VI - OF THE TRUE THEOLOGY.

BUT if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they

not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair

creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born -- a world

furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up

the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance?

Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still

goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future,

nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other

subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man

become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of

the Creator?

I know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it would be

paying too great a compliment to their, credulity to forbear it on

that account. The times and the subject demand it to be done. The

suspicion that the theory of what is called the Christian church is

fabulous, is becoming very extensive in all countries; and it will be

a consolation to men staggering under that suspicion, and doubting

what to believe and what to disbelieve, to see the subject freely

investigated. I therefore pass on to an examination of the books

called the Old and the New Testament.

CHAPTER VII - EXAMINATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

THESE books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelations,

(which, by the bye, is a book of riddles that requires a revelation

to explain it) are, we are told, the word of God. It is, therefore,

proper for us to know who told us so, that we may know what credit to

give to the report. The answer to this question is, that nobody can

tell, except that we tell one another so. The case, however,

historically appears to be as follows:

When the church mythologists established their system, they collected

all the writings they could find, and managed them as they pleased.

It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the

writings as now appear under the name of the Old and the New

Testament, are in the same state in which those collectors say they

found them; or whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them

up.

Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of the

collection they had made, should be the WORD OF GOD, and which should

not. They rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful, such as

the books called the Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority

of votes, were voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise,

all the people since calling themselves Christians had believed

otherwise; for the belief of the one comes from the vote of the

other. Who the people were that did all this, we know nothing of.

They call themselves by the general name of the Church; and this is

all we know of the matter.

As we have no other external evidence or authority for believing

these books to be the word of God, than what I have mentioned, which

is no evidence or authority at all, I come, in the next place, to

examine the internal evidence contained in the books themselves.

In the former part of this essay, I have spoken of revelation. I now

proceed further with that subject, for the purpose of applying it to

the books in question.

Revelation is a communication of something, which the person, to whom

that thing is revealed, did not know before. For if I have done a

thing, or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have done

it, or seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it.

Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth

of which man is himself the actor or the witness; and consequently

all the historical and anecdotal part of the Bible, which is almost

the whole of it, is not within the meaning and compass of the word

revelation, and, therefore, is not the word of God.

When Samson ran off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did so,

(and whether he did or not is nothing to us,) or when he visited his

Delilah, or caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has

revelation to do with these things? If they were facts, he could tell

them himself; or his secretary, if he kept one, could write them, if

they were worth either telling or writing; and if they were fictions,

revelation could not make them true; and whether true or not, we are

neither the better nor the wiser for knowing them. When we

contemplate the immensity of that Being, who directs and governs the

incomprehensible WHOLE, of which the utmost ken of human sight can

discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry

stories the word of God.

As to the account of the creation, with which the book of Genesis

opens, it has all the appearance of being a tradition which the

Israelites had among them before they came into Egypt; and after

their departure from that country, they put it at the head of their

history, without telling, as it is most probable that they did not

know, how they came by it. The manner in which the account opens,

shows it to be traditionary. It begins abruptly. It is nobody that

speaks. It is nobody that hears. It is addressed to nobody. It has

neither first, second, nor third person. It has every criterion of

being a tradition. It has no voucher. Moses does not take it upon

himself by introducing it with the formality that he uses on other

occasions, such as that of saying, "The Lords spake unto Moses,

saying."

Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the creation, I am at a

loss to conceive. Moses, I believe, was too good a judge of such

subjects to put his name to that account. He had been educated among

the Egyptians, who were a people as well skilled in science, and

particularly in astronomy, as any people of their day; and the

silence and caution that Moses observes, in not authenticating the

account, is a good negative evidence that he neither told it nor

believed it. -- The case is, that every nation of people has been

world-makers, and the Israelites had as much right to set up the

trade of world-making as any of the rest; and as Moses was not an

Israelite, he might not chose to contradict the tradition. The

account, however, is harmless; and this is more than can be said for

many other parts of the Bible.

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries,

the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness,

with which more than half the Bible [NOTE: It must be borne in mind

that by the "Bible" Paine always means the Old Testament alone. --

Editor.] is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the

word of a demon, than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness,

that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own

part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.

We scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but what

deserves either our abhorrence or our contempt, till we come to the

miscellaneous parts of the Bible. In the anonymous publications, the

Psalms, and the Book of Job, more particularly in the latter, we find

a great deal of elevated sentiment reverentially expressed of the

power and benignity of the Almighty; but they stand on no higher rank

than many other compositions on similar subjects, as well before that

time as since.

The Proverbs which are said to be Solomon's, though most probably a

collection, (because they discover a knowledge of life, which his

situation excluded him from knowing) are an instructive table of

ethics. They are inferior in keenness to the proverbs of the

Spaniards, and not more wise and oeconomical than those of the

American Franklin.

All the remaining parts of the Bible, generally known by the name of

the Prophets, are the works of the Jewish poets and itinerant

preachers, who mixed poetry, anecdote, and devotion together -- and

those works still retain the air and style of poetry, though in

translation. [NOTE: As there are many readers who do not see that a

composition is poetry, unless it be in rhyme, it is for their

information that I add this note.

Poetry consists principally in two things -- imagery and composition.

The composition of poetry differs from that of prose in the manner of

mixing long and short syllables together. Take a long syllable out of

a line of poetry, and put a short one in the room of it, or put a

long syllable where a short one should be, and that line will lose

its poetical harmony. It will have an effect upon the line like that

of misplacing a note in a song.

The imagery in those books called the Prophets appertains altogether

to poetry. It is fictitious, and often extravagant, and not

admissible in any other kind of writing than poetry.

To show that these writings are composed in poetical numbers, I will

take ten syllables, as they stand in the book, and make a line of the

same number of syllables, (heroic measure) that shall rhyme with the

last word. It will then be seen that the composition of those books

is poetical measure. The instance I shall first produce is from

Isaiah: --

"Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth

'T is God himself that calls attention forth.

Another instance I shall quote is from the mournful Jeremiah, to

which I shall add two other lines, for the purpose of carrying out

the figure, and showing the intention of the poet.

"O, that mine head were waters and mine eyes

Were fountains flowing like the liquid skies;

Then would I give the mighty flood release

And weep a deluge for the human race." -- Author.]

There is not, throughout the whole book called the Bible, any word

that describes to us what we call a poet, nor any word that describes

what we call poetry. The case is, that the word prophet, to which a

later times have affixed a new idea, was the Bible word for poet, and

the word '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 object of the church, as is the case in all national

establishments of churches, was power and revenue, and terror the

means it used, it is consistent to suppose that the most miraculous

and wonderful of the writings they had collected stood the best

chance of being voted. And as to the authenticity of the books, the

vote stands in the place of it; for it can be traced no higher.

Disputes, however, ran high among the people then calling themselves

Christians, not only as to points of doctrine, but as to the

authenticity of the books. In the contest between the person called

St. Augustine, and Fauste, about the year 400, the latter says, "The

books called the Evangelists have been composed long after the times

of the apostles, by some obscure men, who, fearing that the world

would not give credit to their relation of matters of which they

could not be informed, have published them under the names of the

apostles; and which are so full of sottishness and discordant

relations, that there is neither agreement nor connection between

them."

And in another place, addressing himself to the advocates of those

books, as being the word of God, he says, "It is thus that your

predecessors have inserted in the scriptures of our Lord many things

which, though they carry his name, agree not with his doctrine. This

is not surprising, since that we have often proved that these things

have not been written by himself, nor by his apostles, but that for

the greatest part they are founded upon tales, upon vague reports,

and put together by I know not what half Jews, with but little

agreement between them; and which they have nevertheless published

under the name of the apostles of our Lord, and have thus attributed

to them their own errors and their lies. [I have taken these two

extracts from Boulanger's Life of Paul, written in French; Boulanger

has quoted them from the writings of Augustine against Fauste, to

which he refers. -- Author.

This Bishop Faustus is usually styled "The Manichaeum," Augustine

having entitled his book, Contra Fsustum Manichaeum Libri xxxiii., in

which nearly the whole of Faustus' very able work is quoted. --

Editor.]

The reader will see by those extracts that the authenticity of the

books of the New Testament was denied, and the books treated as

tales, forgeries, and lies, at the time they were voted to be the

word of God. But the interest of the church, with the assistance of

the faggot, bore down the opposition, and at last suppressed all

investigation. Miracles followed upon miracles, if we will believe

them, and men were taught to say they believed whether they believed

or not. But (by way of throwing in a thought) the French Revolution

has excommunicated the church from the power of working miracles; she

has not been able, with the assistance of all her saints, to work one

miracle since the revolution began; and as she never stood in greater

need than now, we may, without the aid of divination, conclude that

all her former miracles are tricks and lies. [Boulanger in his life

of Paul, has collected from the ecclesiastical histories, and the

writings of the fathers as they are called, several matters which

show the opinions that prevailed among the different sects of

Christians, at the time the Testament, as we now see it, was voted to

be the word of God. The following extracts are from the second

chapter of that work:

The Marcionists (a Christian sect) asserted that the evangelists were

filled with falsities. The Manichaeans, who formed a very numerous

sect at the commencement of Christianity, rejected as false all the

New Testament, and showed other writings quite different that they

gave for authentic. The Cerinthians, like the Marcionists, admitted

not the Acts of the Apostles. The Encratites and the Sevenians

adopted neither the Acts, nor the Epistles of Paul. Chrysostom, in a

homily which he made upon the Acts of the Apostles, says that in his

time, about the year 400, many people knew nothing either of the

author or of the book. St. Irene, who lived before that time, reports

that the Valentinians, like several other sects of the Christians,

accused the scriptures of being filled with imperfections, errors,

and contradictions. The Ebionites, or Nazarenes, who were the first

Christians, rejected all the Epistles of Paul, and regarded him as an

impostor. They report, among other things, that he was originally a

Pagan; that he came to Jerusalem, where he lived some time; and that

having a mind to marry the daughter of the high priest, he had

himself been circumcised; but that not being able to obtain her, he

quarrelled with the Jews and wrote against circumcision, and against

the observation of the Sabbath, and against all the legal ordinances.

-- Author. [Much abridged from the Exam. Crit. de la Vie de St. Paul,

by N.A. Boulanger, 1770. -- Editor.]

When we consider the lapse of more than three hundred years

intervening between the time that Christ is said to have lived and

the time the New Testament was formed into a book, we must see, even

without the assistance of historical evidence, the exceeding

uncertainty there is of its authenticity. The authenticity of the

book of Homer, so far as regards the authorship, is much better

established than that of the New Testament, though Homer is a

thousand years the most ancient. It was only an exceeding good poet

that could have written the book of Homer, and, therefore, few men

only could have attempted it; and a man capable of doing it would not

have thrown away his own fame by giving it to another. In like

manner, there were but few that could have composed Euclid's

Elements, because none but an exceeding good geometrician could have

been the author of that work.

But with respect to the books of the New Testament, particularly such

parts as tell us of the resurrection and ascension of Christ, any

person who could tell a story of an apparition, or of a man's

walking, could have made such books; for the story is most wretchedly

told. The chance, therefore, of forgery in the Testament is millions

to one greater than in the case of Homer or Euclid. Of the numerous

priests or parsons of the present day, bishops and all, every one of

them can make a sermon, or translate a scrap of Latin, especially if

it has been translated a thousand times before; but is there any

amongst them that can write poetry like Homer, or science like

Euclid? The sum total of a parson's learning, with very few

exceptions, is a, b, ab, and hic, haec, hoc; and their knowledge of

science is, three times one is three; and this is more than

sufficient to have enabled them, had they lived at the time, to have

written all the books of the New Testament.

As the opportunities of forgery were greater, so also was the

inducement. A man could gain no advantage by writing under the name

of Homer or Euclid; if he could write equal to them, it would be

better that he wrote under his own name; if inferior, he could not

succeed. Pride would prevent the former, and impossibility the

latter. But with respect to such books as compose the New Testament,

all the inducements were on the side of forgery. The best imagined

history that could have been made, at the distance of two or three

hundred years after the time, could not have passed for an original

under the name of the real writer; the only chance of success lay in

forgery; for the church wanted pretence for its new doctrine, and

truth and talents were out of the question.

But as it is not uncommon (as before observed) to relate stories of

persons walking after they are dead, and of ghosts and apparitions of

such as have fallen by some violent or extraordinary means; and as

the people of that day were in the habit of believing such things,

and of the appearance of angels, and also of devils, and of their

getting into people's insides, and shaking them like a fit of an

ague, and of their being cast out again as if by an emetic -- (Mary

Magdalene, the book of Mark tells us had brought up, or been brought

to bed of seven devils;) it was nothing extraordinary that some story

of this kind should get abroad of the person called Jesus Christ, and

become afterwards the foundation of the four books ascribed to

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each writer told a tale as he heard

it, or thereabouts, and gave to his book the name of the saint or the

apostle whom tradition had given as the eye-witness. It is only upon

this ground that the contradictions in those books can be accounted

for; and if this be not the case, they are downright impositions,

lies, and forgeries, without even the apology of credulity.

That they have been written by a sort of half Jews, as the foregoing

quotations mention, is discernible enough. The frequent references

made to that chief assassin and impostor Moses, and to the men called

prophets, establishes this point; and, on the other hand, the church

has complimented the fraud, by admitting the Bible and the Testament

to reply to each other. Between the Christian-Jew and the

Christian-Gentile, the thing called a prophecy, and the thing

prophesied of, the type and the thing typified, the sign and the

thing signified, have been industriously rummaged up, and fitted

together like old locks and pick-lock keys. The story foolishly

enough told of Eve and the serpent, and naturally enough as to the

enmity between men and serpents (for the serpent always bites about

the heel, because it cannot reach higher, and the man always knocks

the serpent about the head, as the most effectual way to prevent its

biting;) ["It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."

Gen. iii. 15. -- Author.] this foolish story, I say, has been made

into a prophecy, a type, and a promise to begin with; and the lying

imposition of Isaiah to Ahaz, 'That a virgin shall conceive and bear

a son,' as a sign that Ahaz should conquer, when the event was that

he was defeated (as already noticed in the observations on the book

of Isaiah), has been perverted, and made to serve as a winder up.

Jonah and the whale are also made into a sign and type. Jonah is

Jesus, and the whale is the grave; for it is said, (and they have

made Christ to say it of himself, Matt. xii. 40), "For as Jonah was

three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of

man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." But it

happens, awkwardly enough, that Christ, according to their own

account, was but one day and two nights in the grave; about 36 hours

instead of 72; that is, the Friday night, the Saturday, and the

Saturday night; for they say he was up on the Sunday morning by

sunrise, or before. But as this fits quite as well as the bite and

the kick in Genesis, or the virgin and her son in Isaiah, it will

pass in the lump of orthodox things. -- Thus much for the historical

part of the Testament and its evidences.

Epistles of Paul -- The epistles ascribed to Paul, being fourteen in

number, almost fill up the remaining part of the Testament. Whether

those epistles were written by the person to whom they are ascribed

is a matter of no great importance, since that the writer, whoever he

was, attempts to prove his doctrine by argument. He does not pretend

to have been witness to any of the scenes told of the resurrection

and the ascension; and he declares that he had not believed them.

The story of his being struck to the ground as he was journeying to

Damascus, has nothing in it miraculous or extraordinary; he escaped

with life, and that is more than many others have done, who have been

struck with lightning; and that he should lose his sight for three

days, and be unable to eat or drink during that time, is nothing more

than is common in such conditions. His companions that were with him

appear not to have suffered in the same manner, for they were well

enough to lead him the remainder of the journey; neither did they

pretend to have seen any vision.

The character of the person called Paul, according to the accounts

given of him, has in it a great deal of violence and fanaticism; he

had persecuted with as much heat as he preached afterwards; the

stroke he had received had changed his thinking, without altering his

constitution; and either as a Jew or a Christian he was the same

zealot. Such men are never good moral evidences of any doctrine they

preach. They are always in extremes, as well of action as of belief.

The doctrine he sets out to prove by argument, is the resurrection of

the same body: and he advances this as an evidence of immortality.

But so much will men differ in their manner of thinking, and in the

conclusions they draw from the same premises, that this doctrine of

the resurrection of the same body, so far from being an evidence of

immortality, appears to me to be an evidence against it; for if I have

already died in this body, and am raised again in the same body in

which I have died, it is presumptive evidence that I shall die again.

That resurrection no more secures me against the repetition of dying,

than an ague-fit, when past, secures me against another. To believe

therefore in immortality, I must have a more elevated idea than is

contained in the gloomy doctrine of the resurrection.

Besides, as a matter of choice, as well as of hope, I had rather have

a better body and a more convenient form than the present. Every

animal in the creation excels us in something. The winged insects,

without mentioning doves or eagles, can pass over more space with

greater ease in a few minutes than man can in an hour. The glide of

the smallest fish, in proportion to its bulk, exceeds us in motion

almost beyond comparison, and without weariness. Even the sluggish

snail can ascend from the bottom of a dungeon, where man, by the want

of that ability, would perish; and a spider can launch itself from

the top, as a playful amusement. The personal powers of man are so

limited, and his heavy frame so little constructed to extensive

enjoyment, that there is nothing to induce us to wish the opinion of

Paul to be true. It is too little for the magnitude of the scene, too

mean for the sublimity of the subject.

But all other arguments apart, the consciousness of existence is the

only conceivable idea we can have of another life, and the

continuance of that consciousness is immortality. The consciousness

of existence, or the knowing that we exist, is not necessarily

confined to the same form, nor to the same matter, even in this life.

We have not in all cases the same form, nor in any case the same

matter, that composed our bodies twenty or thirty years ago; and yet

we are conscious of being the same persons. Even legs and arms, which

make up almost half the human frame, are not necessary to the

consciousness of existence. These may be lost or taken away and the

full consciousness of existence remain; and were their place supplied

by wings, or other appendages, we cannot conceive that it could alter

our consciousness of existence. In short, we know not how much, or

rather how little, of our composition it is, and how exquisitely fine

that little is, that creates in us this consciousness of existence;

and all beyond that is like the pulp of a peach, distinct and

separate from the vegetative speck in the kernel.

Who can say by what exceeding fine action of fine matter it is that a

thought is produced in what we call the mind? and yet that thought

when produced, as I now produce the thought I am writing, is capable

of becoming immortal, and is the only production of man that has that

capacity.

Statues of brass and marble will perish; and statues made in

imitation of them are not the same statues, nor the same workmanship,

any more than the copy of a picture is the same picture. But print

and reprint a thought a thousand times over, and that with materials

of any kind, carve it in wood, or engrave it on stone, the thought is

eternally and identically the same thought in every case. It has a

capacity of unimpaired existence, unaffected by change of matter, and

is essentially distinct, and of a nature different from every thing

else that we know of, or can conceive. If then the thing produced has

in itself a capacity of being immortal, it is more than a token that

the power that produced it, which is the self-same thing as

consciousness of existence, can be immortal also; and that as

independently of the matter it was first connected with, as the

thought is of the printing or writing it first appeared in. The one

idea is not more difficult to believe than the other; and we can see

that one is true.

That the consciousness of existence is not dependent on the same form

or the same matter, is demonstrated to our senses in the works of the

creation, as far as our senses are capable of receiving that

demonstration. A very numerous part of the animal creation preaches

to us, far better than Paul, the belief of a life hereafter. Their

little life resembles an earth and a heaven, a present and a future

state; and comprises, if it may be so expressed, immortality in

miniature.

The most beautiful parts of the creation to our eye are the winged

insects, and they are not so originally. They acquire that form and

that inimitable brilliancy by progressive changes. The slow and

creeping caterpillar worm of to day, passes in a few days to a torpid

figure, and a state resembling death; and in the next change comes

forth in all the miniature magnificence of life, a splendid

butterfly. No resemblance of the former creature remains; every thing

is changed; all his powers are new, and life is to him another thing.

We cannot conceive that the consciousness of existence is not the

same in this state of the animal as before; why then must I believe

that the resurrection of the same body is necessary to continue to me

the consciousness of existence hereafter?

In the former part of 'The Agee of Reason.' I have called the

creation the true and only real word of God; and this instance, or

this text, in the book of creation, not only shows to us that this

thing may be so, but that it is so; and that the belief of a future

state is a rational belief, founded upon facts visible in the

creation: for it is not more difficult to believe that we shall exist

hereafter in a better state and form than at present, than that a

worm should become a butterfly, and quit the dunghill for the

atmosphere, if we did not know it as a fact.

As to the doubtful jargon ascribed to Paul in 1 Corinthians xv.,

which makes part of the burial service of some Christian sectaries,

it is as destitute of meaning as the tolling of a bell at the

funeral; it explains nothing to the understanding, it illustrates

nothing to the imagination, but leaves the reader to find any meaning

if he can. "All flesh," says he, "is not the same flesh. There is one

flesh of men, another of beasts, another of fishes, and another of

birds." And what then? nothing. A cook could have said as much.

"There are also," says he, "bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial;

the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is

the other." And what then? nothing. And what is the difference?

nothing that he has told. "There is," says he, "one glory of the sun,

and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars." And

what then? nothing; except that he says that one star differeth from

another star in glory, instead of distance; and he might as well have

told us that the moon did not shine so bright as the sun. All this is

nothing better than the jargon of a conjuror, who picks up phrases he

does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have

their fortune told. Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.

Sometimes Paul affects to be a naturalist, and to prove his system of

resurrection from the principles of vegetation. "Thou fool" says he,

"that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." To which one

might reply in his own language, and say, Thou fool, Paul, that which

thou sowest is not quickened except it die not; for the grain that

dies in the ground never does, nor can vegetate. It is only the

living grains that produce the next crop. But the metaphor, in any

point of view, is no simile. It is succession, and [not] resurrection.

The progress of an animal from one state of being to another, as from

a worm to a butterfly, applies to the case; but this of a grain does

not, and shows Paul to have been what he says of others, a fool.

Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul were written by him or

not, is a matter of indifference; they are either argumentative or

dogmatical; and as the argument is defective, and the dogmatical part

is merely presumptive, it signifies not who wrote them. And the same

may be said for the remaining parts of the Testament. It is not upon

the Epistles, but upon what is called the Gospel, contained in the

four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and upon the

pretended prophecies, that the theory of the church, calling itself

the Christian Church, is founded. The Epistles are dependant upon

those, and must follow their fate; for if the story of Jesus Christ

be fabulous, all reasoning founded upon it, as a supposed truth, must

fall with it.

We know from history, that one of the principal leaders of this

church, Athanasius, lived at the time the New Testament was formed;

[Athanasius died, according to the Church chronology, in the year 371

-- Author.] and we know also, from the absurd jargon he has left us

under the name of a creed, the character of the men who formed the

New Testament; and we know also from the same history that the

authenticity of the books of which it is composed was denied at the

time. It was upon the vote of such as Athanasius that the Testament

was decreed to be the word of God; and nothing can present to us a

more strange idea than that of decreeing the word of God by vote.

Those who rest their faith upon such authority put man in the place

of God, and have no true foundation for future happiness. Credulity,

however, is not a crime, but it becomes criminal by resisting

conviction. It is strangling in the womb of the conscience the

efforts it makes to ascertain truth. We should never force belief

upon ourselves in any thing.

I here close the subject on the Old Testament and the New. The

evidence I have produced to prove them forgeries, is extracted from

the books themselves, and acts, like a two-edge sword, either way. If

the evidence be denied, the authenticity of the Scriptures is denied

with it, for it is Scripture evidence: and if the evidence be

admitted, the authenticity of the books is disproved. The

contradictory impossibilities, contained in the Old Testament and the

New, put them in the case of a man who swears for and against. Either

evidence convicts him of perjury, and equally destroys reputation.

Should the Bible and the Testament hereafter fall, it is not that I

have done it. I have done no more than extracted the evidence from

the confused mass of matters with which it is mixed, and arranged

that evidence in a point of light to be clearly seen and easily

comprehended; and, having done this, I leave the reader to judge for

himself, as I have judged for myself.

CHAPTER III - CONCLUSION

IN the former part of 'The Age of Reason' I have spoken of the three

frauds, mystery, miracle, and Prophecy; and as I have seen nothing in

any of the answers to that work that in the least affects what I have

there said upon those subjects, I shall not encumber this Second Part

with additions that are not necessary.

I have spoken also in the same work upon what is celled revelation,

and have shown the absurd misapplication of that term to the books of

the Old Testament and the New; for certainly revelation is out of the

question in reciting any thing of which man has been the actor or the

witness. That which man has done or seen, needs no revelation to tell

him he has done it, or seen it -- for he knows it already -- nor to

enable him to tell it or to write it. It is ignorance, or imposition,

to apply the term revelation in such cases; yet the Bible and

Testament are classed under this fraudulent description of being all

revelation.

Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between God and man,

can only be applied to something which God reveals of his will to

man; but though the power of the Almighty to make such a

communication is necessarily admitted, because to that power all

things are possible, yet, the thing so revealed (if any thing ever

was revealed, and which, by the bye, it is impossible to prove) is

revelation to the person only to whom it is made. His account of it

to another is not revelation; and whoever puts faith in that account,

puts it in the man from whom the account comes; and that man may have

been deceived, or may have dreamed it; or he may be an impostor and

may lie. There is no possible criterion whereby to judge of the truth

of what he tells; for even the morality of it would be no proof of

revelation. In all such cases, the proper answer should be, "When it

is revealed to me, I will believe it to be revelation; but it is not

and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be revelation

before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of man as

the word of God, and put man in the place of God." This is the manner

in which I have spoken of revelation in the former part of The Age of

Reason; and which, whilst it reverentially admits revelation as a

possible thing, because, as before said, to the Almighty all things

are possible, it prevents the imposition of one man upon another, and

precludes the wicked use of pretended revelation.

But though, speaking for myself, I thus admit the possibility of

revelation, I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did

communicate any thing to man, by any mode of speech, in any language,

or by any kind of vision, or appearance, or by any means which our

senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than by the universal

display of himself in the works of the creation, and by that

repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition to

good ones. [A fair parallel of the then unknown aphorism of Kant:

"Two things fill the soul with wonder and reverence, increasing

evermore as I meditate more closely upon them: the starry heavens

above me and the moral law within me." (Kritik derpraktischen

Vernunfe, 1788). Kant's religious utterances at the beginning of the

French Revolution brought on him a royal mandate of silence, because

he had worked out from "the moral law within" a principle of human

equality precisely similar to that which Paine had derived from his

Quaker doctrine of the "inner light" of every man. About the same

time Paine's writings were suppressed in England. Paine did not

understand German, but Kant, though always independent in the

formation of his opinions, was evidently well acquainted with the

literature of the Revolution, in America, England, and France. --

Editor.]

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the

greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their

origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has

been the most dishonourable belief against the character of the

divinity, the most destructive to morality, and the peace and

happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist.

It is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a

thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine

of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such

impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible

prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and

have credit among us.

Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men,

women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody

persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious wars, that since

that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but

from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous

belief that God has spoken to man? The lies of the Bible have been

the cause of the one, and the lies of the Testament [of] the other.

Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by the

sword; but of what period of time do they speak? It was impossible

that twelve men could begin with the sword: they had not the power;

but no sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently

powerful to employ the sword than they did so, and the stake and

faggot too; and Mahomet could not do it sooner. By the same spirit

that Peter cut off the ear of the high priest's servant (if the story

be true) he would cut off his head, and the head of his master, had

he been able. Besides this, Christianity grounds itself originally

upon the [Hebrew] Bible, and the Bible was established altogether by

the sword, and that in the worst use of it -- not to terrify, but to

extirpate. The Jews made no converts: they butchered all. The Bible

is the sire of the [New] Testament, and both are called the word of

God. The Christians read both books; the ministers preach from both

books; and this thing called Cliristianity is made up of both. It is

then false to say that Christianity was not established by the sword.

The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the only

reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists than

Christians. They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and they

call the scriptures a dead letter. [This is an interesting and

correct testimony as to the beliefs of the earlier Quakers, one of

whom was Paine's father. -- Editor.] Had they called them by a worse

name, they had been nearer the truth.

It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the

Creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial

miseries, and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among

mankind, to expel all ideas of a revealed religion as a dangerous

heresy, and an impious fraud. What is it that we have learned from

this pretended thing called revealed religion? Nothing that is useful

to man, and every thing that is dishonourable to his Maker. What is

it the Bible teaches us? -- repine, cruelty, and murder. What is it

the Testament teaches us? -- to believe that the Almighty committed

debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this

debauchery is called faith.

As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly

scattered in those books, they make no part of this pretended thing,

revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and

the bonds by which society is held together, and without which it

cannot exist; and are nearly the same in all religions, and in all

societies. The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and

where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous. The

doctrine of not retaliating injuries is much better expressed in

Proverbs, which is a collection as well from the Gentilcs as the

Jews, than it is in the Testament. It is there said, (Xxv. 2 I) "If

thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty,

give him water to drink:" [According to what is called Christ's

sermon on the mount, in the book of Matthew, where, among some other

[and] good things, a great deal of this feigned morality is

introduced, it is there expressly said, that the doctrine of

forbearance, or of not retaliating injuries, was not any part of the

doctrine of the Jews; but as this doctrine is found in "Proverbs," it

must, according to that statement, have been copied from the

Gentiles, from whom Christ had learned it. Those men whom Jewish and

Christian idolators have abusively called heathen, had much better

and clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be found in the

Old Testament, so far as it is Jewish, or in the New. The answer of

Solon on the question, "Which is the most perfect popular govemment,"

has never been exceeded by any man since his time, as containing a

maxim of political morality, "That," says he, "where the least injury

done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the

whole constitution." Solon lived about 500 years before Christ. --

Author.] but when it is said, as in the Testament, "If a man smite

thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also," it is

assassinating the dignity of forbearance, and sinking man into a

spaniel.

Loving, of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has

besides no meaning. It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he

does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political

sense, for there is no end to retaliation; each retaliates on the

other, and calls it justice: but to love in proportion to the injury,

if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for a crime.

Besides, the word enemies is too vague and general to be used in a

moral maxim, which ought always to be clear and defined, like a

proverb. If a man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice,

as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that

man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and

it is incumbent upon us, and it contributes also to our own

tranquillity, that we put the best construction upon a thing that it

will bear. But even this erroneous motive in him makes no motive for

love on the other part; and to say that we can love voluntarily, and

without a motive, is morally and physically impossible.

Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first

place, are impossible to be performed, and if they could be would be

productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime. The

maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange

doctrine of loving enemies; for no man expects to be loved himself

for his crime or for his enmity.

Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies, are in

general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so

doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that

hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches. For my own

part, I disown the doctrine, and consider it as a feigned or fabulous

morality; yet the man does not exist that can say I have persecuted

him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the American

Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that I have, in any case,

returned evil for evil. But it is not incumbent on man to reward a

bad action with a good one, or to return good for evil; and wherever

it is done, it is a voluntary act, and not a duty. It is also absurd

to suppose that such doctrine can make any part of a revealed

religion. We imitate the moral character of the Creator by forbearing

with each other, for he forbears with all; but this doctrine would

imply that he loved man, not in proportion as he was good, but as he

was bad.

If we consider the nature of our condition here, we must see there is

no occasion for such a thing as revealed religion. What is it we want

to know? Does not the creation, the universe we behold, preach to us

the existence of an Almighty power, that governs and regulates the

whole? And is not the evidence that this creation holds out to our

senses infinitely stronger than any thing we can read in a book, that

any imposter might make and call the word of God? As for morality,

the knowledge of it exists in every man's conscience.

Here we are. The existence of an Almighty power is sufficiently

demonstrated to us, though we cannot conceive, as it is impossible we

should, the nature and manner of its existence. We cannot conceive

how we came here ourselves, and yet we know for a fact that we are

here. We must know also, that the power that called us into being,

can if he please, and when he pleases, call us to account for the

manner in which we have lived here; and therefore without seeking any

other motive for the belief, it is rational to believe that he will,

for we know beforehand that he can. The probability or even

possibility of the thing is all that we ought to know; for if we knew

it as a fact, we should be the mere slaves of terror; our belief

would have no merit, and our best actions no virtue.

Deism then teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived, all

that is necessary or proper to be known. The creation is the Bible of

the deist. He there reads, in the hand-writing of the Creator

himself, the certainty of his existence, and the immutability of his

power; and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries. The

probability that we may be called to account hereafter, will, to

reflecting minds, have the influence of belief; for it is not our

belief or disbelief that can make or unmake the fact. As this is the

state we are in, and which it is proper we should be in, as free

agents, it is the fool only, and not the philosopher, nor even the

prudent man, that will live as if there were no God.

But the belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the

strange fable of the Christian creed, and with the wild adventures

related in the Bible, and the obscurity and obscene nonsense of the

Testament, that the mind of man is bewildered as in a fog. Viewing

all these things in a confused mass, he confounds fact with fable;

and as he cannot believe all, he feels a disposition to reject all.

But the belief of a God is a belief distinct from all other things,

and ought not to be confounded with any. The notion of a Trinity of

Gods has enfeebled the belief of one God. A multiplication of beliefs

acts as a division of belief; and in proportion as anything is

divided, it is weakened.

Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form instead of fact; of

notion instead of principle: morality is banished to make room for an

imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its origin in a

supposed debauchery; a man is preached instead of a God; an execution

is an object for gratitude; the preachers daub themselves with the

blood, like a troop of assassins, and pretend to admire the

brilliancy it gives them; they preach a humdrum sermon on the merits

of the execution; then praise Jesus Christ for being executed, and

condemn the Jews for doing it.

A man, by hearing all this nonsense lumped and preached together,

confounds the God of the Creation with the imagined God of the

Christians, and lives as if there were none.

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none

more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more

repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this

thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to

convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart

torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of

power, it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth,

the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in

general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.

The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it

every evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple deism. It

must have been the first and will probably be the last that man

believes. But pure and simple deism does not answer the purpose of

despotic governments. They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine

but by mixing it with human inventions, and making their own

authority a part; neither does it answer the avarice of priests, but

by incorporating themselves and their functions with it, and

becoming, like the government, a party in the system. It is this that

forms the otherwise mysterious connection of church and state; the

church human, and the state tyrannic.

Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the

belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of

belief; he would stand in awe of God, and of himself, and would not

do the thing that could not be concealed from either. To give this

belief the full opportunity of force, it is necessary that it acts

alone. This is deism.

But when, according to the Christian Trinitarian scheme, one part of

God is represented by a dying man, and another part, called the Holy

Ghost, by a flying pigeon, it is impossible that belief can attach

itself to such wild conceits. [The book called the book of Matthew,

says, (iii. 16,) that the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of a

dove. It might as well have said a goose; the creatures are equally

harmless, and the one is as much a nonsensical lie as the other.

Acts, ii. 2, 3, says, that it descended in a mighty rushing wind, in

the shape of cloven tongues: perhaps it was cloven feet. Such absurd

stuff is fit only for tales of witches and wizards. -- Author.]

It has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the other

invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the

Creator, as it is of government to hold him in ignorance of his

rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other,

and are calculated for mutual support. The study of theology as it

stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded

on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities;

it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no

conclusion. Not any thing can be studied as a science without our

being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and

as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the

study of nothing.

Instead then of studying theology, as is now done, out of the Bible

and Testament, the meanings of which books are always controverted,

and the authenticity of which is disproved, it is necessary that we

refer to the Bible of the creation. The principles we discover there

are eternal, and of divine origin: they are the foundation of all the

science that exists in the world, and must be the foundation of

theology.

We can know God only through his works. We cannot have a conception

of any one attribute, but by following some principle that leads to

it. We have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not the

means of comprehending something of its immensity. We can have no

idea of his wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which it

acts. The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the

Creator of man is the Creator of science, and it is through that

medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face.

Could a man be placed in a situation, and endowed with power of

vision to behold at one view, and to contemplate deliberately, the

structure of the universe, to mark the movements of the several

planets, the cause of their varying appearances, the unerring order

in which they revolve, even to the remotest comet, their connection

and dependence on each other, and to know the system of laws

established by the Creator, that governs and regulates the whole; he

would then conceive, far beyond what any church theology can teach

him, the power, the wisdom, the vastness, the munificence of the

Creator. He would then see that all the knowledge man has of science,

and that all the mechanical arts by which he renders his situation

comfortable here, are derived from that source: his mind, exalted by

the scene, and convinced by the fact, would increase in gratitude as

it increased in knowledge: his religion or his worship would become

united with his improvement as a man: any employment he followed that

had connection with the principles of the creation, -- as everything

of agriculture, of science, and of the mechanical arts, has, -- would

teach him more of God, and of the gratitude he owes to him, than any

theological Christian sermon he now hears. Great objects inspire

great thoughts; great munificence excites great gratitude; but the

grovelling tales and doctrines of the Bible and the Testament are fit

only to excite contempt.

Though man cannot arrive, at least in this life, at the actual scene

I have described, he can demonstrate it, because he has knowledge of

the principles upon which the creation is constructed. We know that

the greatest works can be represented in model, and that the

universe can be represented by the same means. The same principles by

which we measure an inch or an acre of ground will measure to

millions in extent. A circle of an inch diameter has the same

geometrical properties as a circle that would circumscribe the

universe. The same properties of a triangle that will demonstrate

upon paper the course of a ship, will do it on the ocean; and, when

applied to what are called the heavenly bodies, will ascertain to a

minute the time of an eclipse, though those bodies are millions of

miles distant from us. This knowledge is of divine origin; and it is

from the Bible of the creation that man has learned it, and not from

the stupid Bible of the church, that teaches man nothing. [The

Bible-makers have undertaken to give us, in the first chapter of

Genesis, an account of the creation; and in doing this they have

demonstrated nothing but their ignorance. They make there to have

been three days and three nights, evenings and mornings, before there

was any sun; when it is the presence or absence of the sun that is

the cause of day and night -- and what is called his rising and

setting that of morning and evening. Besides, it is a puerile and

pitiful idea, to suppose the Almighty to say, "Let there be light."

It is the imperative manner of speaking that a conjuror uses when he

says to his cups and balls, Presto, be gone -- and most probably has

been taken from it, as Moses and his rod is a conjuror and his wand.

Longinus calls this expression the sublime; and by the same rule the

conjurer is sublime too; for the manner of speaking is expressively

and grammatically the same. When authors and critics talk of the

sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous. The

sublime of the critics, like some parts of Edmund Burke's sublime and

beautiful, is like a windmill just visible in a fog, which

imagination might distort into a flying mountain, or an archangel,

or a flock of wild geese. -- Author.]

All the knowledge man has of science and of machinery, by the aid of

which his existence is rendered comfortable upon earth, and without

which he would be scarcely distinguishable in appearance and

condition from a common animal, comes from the great machine and

structure of the universe. The constant and unwearied observations of

our ancestors upon the movements and revolutions of the heavenly

bodies, in what are supposed to have been the early ages of the

world, have brought this knowledge upon earth. It is not Moses and

the prophets, nor Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, that have done it.

The Almighty is the great mechanic of the creation, the first

philosopher, and original teacher of all science. Let us then learn

to reverence our master, and not forget the labours of our ancestors.

Had we, at this day, no knowledge of machinery, and were it possible

that man could have a view, as I have before described, of the

structure and machinery of the universe, he would soon conceive the

idea of constructing some at least of the mechanical works we now

have; and the idea so conceived would progressively advance in

practice. Or could a model of the universe, such as is called an

orrery, be presented before him and put in motion, his mind would

arrive at the same idea. Such an object and such a subject would,

whilst it improved him in knowledge useful to himself as a man and a

member of society, as well as entertaining, afford far better matter

for impressing him with a knowledge of, and a belief in the Creator,

and of the reverence and gratitude that man owes to him, than the

stupid texts of the Bible and the Testament, from which, be the

talents of the preacher; what they may, only stupid sermons can be

preached. If man must preach, let him preach something that is

edifying, and from the texts that are known to be true.

The Bible of the creation is inexhaustible in texts. Every part of

science, whether connected with the geometry of the universe, with

the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties of

inanimate matter, is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy --

for gratitude, as for human improvement. It will perhaps be said,

that if such a revolution in the system of religion takes place,

every preacher ought to be a philosopher. Most certainly, and every

house of devotion a school of science.

It has been by wandering from the immutable laws of science, and the

light of reason, and setting up an invented thing called "revealed

religion," that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have been

formed of the Almighty. The Jews have made him the assassin of the

human species, to make room for the religion of the Jews. The

Christians have made him the murderer of himself, and the founder of

a new religion to supersede and expel the Jewish religion. And to

find pretence and admission for these things, they must have supposed

his power or his wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable; and the

changeableness of the will is the imperfection of the judgement. The

philosopher knows that the laws of the Creator have never changed,

with respect either to the principles of science, or the properties

of matter. Why then is it to be supposed they have changed with

respect to man?

I here close the subject. I have shown in all the foregoing parts of

this work that the Bible and Testament are impositions and forgeries;

and I leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it to be

refuted, if any one can do it; and I leave the ideas that are

suggested in the conclusion of the work to rest on the mind of the

reader; certain as I am that when opinions are free, either in

matters of govemment or religion, truth will finally and powerfully

prevail.

-- End of Part II

End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol. IV

by Thomas Paine