* To the shame of credulous and priest-degraded mankind, thepresent superstition of Europe hath been established, as itwere, in defiance of the light of Nature, reason, commonsense, and all experience; and what is still more strangeand revolting, by those very means and agencies which menought to hold most in contempt and detestation; viz., fraud,forgery, pretended miracles and prophecies, hypocrisy,avarice, tyranny, cruelty, massacres, and wars which havedeluged the earth with blood, and sacrificed hundreds ofmillions of human beings to its frenzied demon.
In no age of the world was morality ever found more pure and virtuous than amongst the Epicureans of old; and no ancient sect has been so much traduced and vilified by Christian priests of all denominations, who, in lauding the most revolting system that ever insulted the understanding of man,* have been utterly regardless of truth in their foul aspersions of Paganism; and have represented these amiable rationalists as reckless sensualists—profligate voluptuaries; which is just the reverse of their true characters. With them the preservation of health was the fundamental principle, since there can be no enjoyment of life without that pre-requisite; and the means they used to secure its permanence was the strict observance of temperance in everything, according to the dictates of Nature; all excess of any kind whatsoever was avoided as injurious, and the full and proper exercise of the body was enjoined as indispensable. Free from the restlessness of ambition, the utility of their maxims was evinced in their lives, and they were generally esteemed as the most exemplary and virtuous of all the ancients, and the most noted for the value of their moral actions. We may gather from the writings of Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, that they did more scrupulously observe the laws, piety, and fidelity among men, than any other sect whatsoever, not excepting even the Stoics themselves. Like the philanthropist, Owen, they held that a man was either good or bad according to education and custom. Being, above all others, strict observers of truth and honesty, they were often chosen to manage the inheritances of orphans, and it was common with them to rear and educate, at their own expense, the children of deceased friends; their known integrity frequently procured for them offers from the Roman consuls and emperors, to fill high places of employment and trust; but these offers were often declined, from the strong desire they had to lead private lives, free from care and anxiety. They had no desire for posthumous renown, and denied that there was any future state of existence for man, more than for any other animal; and teaching that mind or soul is wholly dependent on animal organisation*—the mere creature of the brain, without which it has no existence; and that the matter composing the bodies of men and other animals, is alone eternal, though subject to thousands of millions of different forms, modes, or states of being.
* Intelligence is the result of the animal organisation ofmatter, and cannot be separated from, or have existencewithout it. "Animated matter is not the result ofintelligence." Thought, mind, soul, or breath, call itwhich you will, is as much the offspring or effect oforganisation as music is of the instrument that produces it.One of the great luminaries of the church, even the Bishopof Llandaff, has given us his own creed respecting what iscalled soul, which savors of something more than merescepticism. Speaking of its supposed flight intoimmortality, after death, he says,—"This notion was,without doubt, the offspring of prejudice and ignorance; Imust own that my knowledge of the nature of the soul is muchthe same now that it was then" (in childhood). "I have readvolumes on the subject, but I have no scruple in saying thatI know nothing about it"—Anecdotes of his own life,written by himself.
But in modern times, under the triune mythology (or the three-god fable), society is in a great measure destitute of such pure morality, and sound philosophy; all being mixed up with the deleterious alloy of theology, and its ever-changing inventions in its own peculiar element of unproved existences. This supernaturalism is the only delusion that deserves the name of atheism, because it beguiles man to set at nought the immutable revelations of Nature; and its very essence being to prevent all correct views of that Power, the pretension to look beyond it nullifies or vitiates everything good on earth. Whilst mankind shall not only continue to be advocates for those impositions which destroy their own pleasure and happiness, but pay for their degradation by supporting a mischievous canker-worm priesthood, they deprive themselves of a fair trial to see what a state of affluence and ease they might attain by very moderate labor; and by repudiating all doctrines and dogmas founded on spiritualism, immaterialism, or any other nothingism, because they are words absolutely without meaning, as they represent nothing that has a real existence; and therefore, until some immaterial entity can be made palpable to the senses, they will remain downright contradictions in terms, though they have hitherto served as the principle machinery of theologie deception.* Contemning all such visionary mummeries, our divines of the present day are at no loss to find you a vast difference between a spiritual body, and a bodily spirit!
* The learned amongst the Fathers were materialists.Tertullian says, "Nihil incorporale nisi quod non est."Saint Hilary, in the fourth century, affirmed that, "thereis nothing but what is corporeal" Yet and attending to theprinciples of their own nature, together with the physicalrealities that surround them, and upon which alone dependsevery atom of their welfare and happiness, mankind will beable by perseverance to remove the overwhelming evils oftheir present condition; but in vain will they expect suchresults, while they continue mere automata, to be played atpleasure by superstition and despotism.
Amongst the many immoral corruptions which the present superstition of Europe has entailed on the laboring man, few have a worse tendency than the compulsory exaction of one seventh of his time, which its priests have procured to be dedicated to their purposes alone; whereby he is compelled either to be idle, or to swell their vain pageant train to that shrine of hypocrisy called church. The observance of Sunday is, like everything else in Christianism, borrowed from the heathens; and is merely a continuation of the Pagan festival that was held in the temples of the Sun, in adoration of that luminary, as the name attests beyond all contradiction; with this difference alone, that the Fathers, as if it were to make the thing more expensive and intolerable in their Scripture traffic, changed it into a weekly festival, substituting the triune machinery of the church for that of the temple. But as the present observance of this day throughout Christendom is nowhere enjoined in the New Testament, it was customary with Christians, even in the fourth century, to perform their usual work on that day; and, according to Mosheim, many of them held Thursdays and Fridays to be as sacred as Sunday. The entailing upon human industry this weekly curse of idleness was reserved for, and was worthy of, the Emperor Constantine, a man who had the guilt of seven family murders upon his head: and as the priests of Paganism refused to expiate those crimes (so Zosimus and others say), he abandoned their religion, and adopted that of Christianity, whose less scrupulous priests absolved him, and white-washed his crimes to the purity of snow. In return for this scouring, the imperial murderer felt himself prompted by gratitude to do all in his power to establish a new hierarchy, who could make themselves so subservient to the purposes of tyranny; so he began by paving the way for finally depriving the industrious man of one seventh of his time, which was to be appropriated in promoting the importance, the riches, and the power of his newly adopted priesthood.
But even this pious man of blood (who to the very last, kept two strings to his bow, but was rather more willing to pay his respects to Jupiter than to Jehovah), wedded as he was to that priesthood, which had so kindly effaced the stains of so many inhuman murders, durst not gratify them all at once, lest he should bring a famine upon the empire; and therefore by his edict issued on the subject, the observance of Sunday was compulsory only upon magistrates, and the inhabitants of cities generally; but in regard to the people in the country, and all agriculturists, he says:—"On the venerable day of the Sun, let those who are situated in the country, freely and at full liberty, attend to the business of agriculture." After the death of this emperor, the church which he had planted soon grew strong in wealth and power; and the consequent influence of the hierarchy enabled them, gradually to extend the forced respect for their own harvest-day, over both town and country.
This clerical usurpation is so far from being sanctioned by any authority, that the New Testament suffers no man to "judge another in respect to the Sabbath day, or of any holy days" (see Coloss, ii., 16). It asserts the right to esteem every day alike, "agreeably to the persuasions of a man's own mind" (Romans, xiv., 5). It binds no man "to the observance of days, and months, and times, and years" (Gal. iv., 10) Jesus did not enjoin respect for the Sabbath, but justified the contrary (Matt, xii., 5). There being no gospel authority requiring this waste of time for the benefit and gratification of priests alone, it was not until some time in the fourth century that they fully succeeded in palming upon industry this weekly inlet to every vice; nor was it legally enforced, we believe, until a considerable time after the Council of Nice, that foulest combination of fraud, knavery, and priestcraft that ever degraded the human race, Let us now attend a little to the glaring immoralities and crimes which are the inevitable effects of compulsory idleness on this day, that was originally the heathen festival of the glorious solar deity.
There are few exceptions to the general rule, that the industrious man is the virtuous. "By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," is the universal decree of Nature; and every violator of this law of health shall be unhappy in the precise ratio of its violation. Hence it follows that when men are compelled either to be idle vagrants, or give up their minds mechanically to a worship which appears to them at once useless and irrational, they cannot do otherwise than prefer the former; and being thus compelled to be idle, they are virtually forced to be vicious, which leads to the reverse of happiness. The profligacy and crime arising from this weekly idleness, is amply set forth in those scenes of drunkenness, debauchery, gaming, and quarrelling, which are of constant Sunday occurrence in our beer and gin palaces: but as the various poisons vended in these sinks of ruin pay high duties to government, and are, next to its oppressive ally, a rapacious priesthood, the surest means of keeping the multitude in poverty and ignorance, that virtuous and salutary legislation which would suppress or regulate them according to public health and good morals, is not to be expected from our present lawgivers, aristocratical and clerical, who feel a deep interest in the ignorance and debasement of the laboring classes. The orthodox Paley, who "could not afford to keep a conscience" alludes to such places of public resort, when he says, "the laboring classes" (being doomed to idleness) "consume their time in rude, if not criminal pleasures—in stupid sloth or brutish intemperance." He might have added, that vast numbers of young men who have ended their career by an ignominious death, have dated the commencement of their vicious courses from what the pampered harpies in black are pleased to call "sabbath breaking," or "profanation of the Lord's day." And who is to blame for all this? Verily none but that powerful phalanx of hypocritical delusionists, who pretend to be delegated from the immaterial, invisible "Persons," who rule the upper regions; and who, in confederacy with hereditary lawgivers on earth, have, amongst other conventional impositions, not only deprived the wealth producers of their right to spend the seventh part of their time in the way most suitable to their circumstances, but enforced idleness during that time, which, coupled with that lurid ignorance called religious instruction, most commonly leads to vice and debasement. With a dissimulation and effrontery that is matchless out of the sacerdotal order, they pretend an interest in the laboring man's ease and welfare; that he requires the seventh as a day of rest, which day should be dedicated to the "Lord" but as their Levitical authorities are derived from the rankest species of priestcraft that ever degraded man, they will no longer pass in the present age; for those must be mentally blind who do not see, that in all times, whatever was ostensibly dedicated as "God's share," was appropriated solely for the benefit of the priests. It is most true that the working man wants rest; but is not he the best judge when recreation or rest becomes necessary? The simple fact is, he never can have either peace or rest, or live under equitable and salutary laws, nor enjoy the fruits of his labor, whilst his mind is kept in darkness by the delusions of supernaturalism, and his industry preyed upon by its priests. To perpetuate the stultifying influence of this wizard power, whose nature it is to be adverse to the natural enlightenment of the bulk of mankind,* every corner of the country is assiduously studded with expensive temples, devoted to the exercise of its Sunday spells; but particularly for the nursing of popular ignorance. Against such an overwhelming antagonist, abetted by the government and riches of the country, all in deep array to frustrate his intellectual improvement, the laboring man has nothing to oppose but self-cultivation alone, which will lead him to the knowledge that it is better to think for himself than to be cheated; and that all the miseries he suffers are in reality rooted in unearthly chimeras—nonentities which, in all ages and religions, have been invented for similar purposes of deception and slavery. Until he so relieves himself from this bondage (no other power will do it for him), his condition must continue to be more abject and pitiable than that of the sturdy savage, who stalks in the pride of his mental and bodily independence; or even that of the beast of the field.
* Hobbes calls the pretended science of theology the kingdomof darkness. It is indeed a perpetual insult to humanreason, debasing and debauching the mind.
Thus it appears that amongst the Christians, the coercive observance of Sunday originated in a combination of the two crafts, kingly and clerical, as a potential auxiliary for the permanent inthralment of the human mind; for which it is indeed extremely well calculated, owing to its unceasing recurrence as the weekly stifler of reason, and the soporific of folly and ignorance; its frequency allows no breathing time for common-sense. If men will contemn the light of Nature and the evidence of their senses, to maintain a degrading superstition, let them not suffer their political rulers to form co-partnership alliance, offensive and defensive, with its priests. There can be no surer proof of the corruption of a government than its confederacy with the professors of any religion whatsoever. Mahommed was so sensible of the danger of priesthoods in political states, and of their corrupting all government, that he disapproved the allowance of any such institution, and wished every Moslem to keep a copy of the Koran, and be his own priest. But exactly as in the case of Christianism, his political and theological followers soon established "the accursed thing." The Quakers are too wise and too moral to allow this locust race to spring up amongst them.
In the leading dogmas invented by theologians, it seems essential that spiritual or divine justice should reverse the simplest rules of morality and virtue; and that Nature's immutable law of death should be held in terror as the greatest evil, though in reality it is merely a necessary and happy transition of organised matter into another form, throughout the animated creation; and as such, an absolute good.* The ancients did not represent death as Christians do, with meagre countenance, and a hideous structure of bones; but pleasant and composed, as the image of the profoundest sleep; and such it struck no terror. As the stronghold of priests, however, it has been clothed in every imaginary horror that fraud can conceive, to render their spells indispensable for death-bed or gallows repentance, where a belief in their conjurations expiates all the crimes that may have outraged society.
Amongst the Gentiles, Pliny spoke the fullest and plainest on this subject, thus: "After the interment of our bodies, there is a great diversity of opinions concerning the future state of our souls, or ghosts; but the most general is this, that they return to the same state in which they were before they were born. However, such is the folly and vanity of men, that they extend this existence even to future ages; and some crown it with immortality; others pretend a transfiguration, and others render unto the soul of the departed honor and worship, making a God of him that was not so much as a man; as if the manner of men's breathing differed from that of other living creatures; or as if there were not to be found in the world many animals that live much longer than man. Now these are surely but fantastical, foolish, and childish toys, devised by men who would fain live always; the like foolery is there in preserving the bodies. But what a folly of follies is it to think that Death should be the way to a second life! Certainly this foolish credulity, and easiness of belief, destroy the benefit of the best gift of Nature—death;" (which is as necessary, nay, even as natural to every animal as life itself.) "How much more easy, and greater security, were it, for each man to ground his reasons and resolutions upon an assurance, that he should be in no worse a condition than he was before he was born."—Nat. Hist.
* The fear of death, which Christian dogmas create, haseffects the most baleful and pernicious imaginable; and hascontributed more to stock the Bedlam of Christendom, thanany other cause whatever. All animals avoid and fear bodilypain, as the greatest evil—man alone fears death. Why?Because he alone has priests and a hell. Epicurus says:"Death, which some suppose to be the most terrible of evils,is nothing to us; seeing that while we are in being, deathis not present; and when it is present, then we are not"Hesiod, in alluding to those who, in the golden age (when itmay be presumed, there were neither priests, hells, norsupernaturals) died without superstitions fears, sung thus:—"They sunk to death, as opiate slumber stoleSoft o'er the sense, and whelm'd the willing soul."The Works and Days.
Among the Republican Romans, the deed that was accounted the most virtuous and heroic, was that of dying on the field of battle, in defence of liberty; and the next was the act of suicide, resorted to as the means of avoiding subjection or dishonor. And so indulgent was custom in this case, that those who were proscribed in after times, were commonly permitted to retire from life in any way they thought proper, to elude the disgrace of being public spectacles. This was humane, as far as it is possible to extend lenience under such a predicament; and as for the act itself, there was neither impiety nor the slightest odium attached to it, but the contrary. It is curious to observe that, amongst the host of evils introduced with, or generated by, the modern superstition of Europe, a total change of law and sentiment regarding this action has been effected by its priests, who, as they engrossed all learning when in the zenith of their sway, were enabled to brand everything as heinous wickedness that militated against, or seemed to evince contempt for, their avocations. And as the act of suicide affords no harvest for the priest—shuts the door against fees and confessions—punishes him in his purse, and overlooks the importance of his conjurations, it comprises every other offence; and, therefore, every ignominy and abuse is heaped upon the memories, and even the dead bodies of the self-victims, though their only crime was ridding themselves of those unbearable miseries, which are chiefly caused by theology, and the laws which it has occasioned.*
* The person who commits suicide, is no more criminallyguilty, and in all probability, much less insane than he whodies of fever,—they are exactly on a footing, both hadsupported life so long as it was supportable.
Though reason and science have now cooled the roasting-alive spirit down to the moderate temperature of modern times, yet the essential property of priestcraft to augment, and in no rational manner ever to alleviate, human suffering will never fail to show itself, wherever its views and interests are concerned. By laws and customs procured in its all-powerful days, the mental and bodily tortures of condemned criminals are most unmercifully prolonged between sentence and execution, and their situation rendered as horrid as possible. Under pretence of the soul-saving anxiety, the dreadful anguish of their minds is, by a cruel delay, increased in a ten-fold degree, whilst they are inexorably guarded lest they should anticipate their doom by relieving themselves, and give the priest the go-by, which they are told is the acme of sin and wickedness; but if they drag out their agonising misery quietly, and give him due opportunity to play off his incantations, and above all—believe, or pretend to believe in the efficacy of his dogmas, then a heavenly pardon is secured, even at the gallows. If, in the endeavor to avoid this catastrophe, the unhappy victim of the ignorance and crimes of society—overwhelmed as he is with misery and despair, is driven to seek relief in the quiet sleep of death, he is seized and accused by the "authorities" of a "felonious intention" to escape from the evils with which bad laws and abominable superstitions have surrounded him; and is, therefore, absurdly required to "find security" that he will not again attempt to elude his wretchedness, but will quietly linger out the remainder of life in hunger, rags and cold; all entailed upon him by existing society, every element of which is pregnant with corruption.
Thus the action which, amongst the Romans and others of the ancients, was deemed virtuous heroism, has, by the selfish inventions of modern theology, been condemned as a deadly crime, and even stigmatised as cowardice, than which nothing can be more false and contemptible. But in every attempt to depict, in their true colors and direful effects, the evils generated by that canker, there must ever be a want of words to convey adequate force of execration. Such diabolical mockeries of humanity may be authorised by modern godism, but they were not approved by that of antiquity.
In a state of society so vitiated by falsehood and crime (created by an abandonment of Nature) as to be almost wholly made up of moral evil, is it at all wonderful that a vast portion of mankind should pursue the most criminal courses to obtain a bare and wretched existence? Can we then imagine any lengths to which a hireling clergy would not go in their routine of deception to secure for life riches, honors, ease and luxury? The knowledge of this truth alone ought to be sufficient to rouse men from their sottish lethargy, for it requires nothing but inquiry to make it appear that error and falsehood reduced to a system forms the groundwork of that overwhelming scheme of delusion which procures the above blessings for all priesthoods, who are hired and prostituted to defend deceptions which enrich them and impoverish industry. Could you, without an aberration of mind, expect truth from men who, in order to secure all the good things the world affords, make you their victims by forcing false notions upon your weak and pliant understandings in childhood? Well may they cry out, "Train up a child in the way he should walk, and when he is old he will not depart from it."* This is a correct aphorism, and is equally true whether applied to good or bad training, for if the mind be as it were mortgaged, or sacrificed to the priest in childhood,**—
* The spirit of priestianity may be, and is, repressed byscience and philosophy; but it is utterly unchangeable. Thechildren educated by the Druids to recruit their own rankswere secluded in woods and caverns, and denied allintercourse with their parents till after they had attainedfourteen years of age. By this mental monopoly it wasevidently meant that the esprit du corps, its secret waysand interests, should be so indelibly fixed upon the mind asto be ever afterwards proof against every natural affection.** The more outrageous against Nature and reason the falsenotions instilled in childhood are the more difficult itseems to be to eradicate them. "It was said of an Arab, whowas a man of sense, an arithmetician, a chemist, and, whatis still more strange, a skilful astronomer, that nothingcould induce him to give up the belief that Mahommed puthalf of the moon in his sleeve. The reformers of England hadmore difficulty in giving up the 'Real Presence' in theSacrament, than in parting with any other dogma in Popery."The impossible and the absurd are indispensable pre-requisites with all religionists."Ere yet their minds, through tender age, can chooseWhat's for their good, or for their harm refuse.Before their natures, and their wills are strong,Justly to think, or judge of right and wrong;Or how th' affections with the body grow,The self-denying doom they undergo.In blooming youth and innocence betrayedTo cursed altars, thus are victims made."
Hardly one in ten thousand of such victims will escape mental slavery for life. Moreover, men dedicated to sacerdotal delusion, are bound by strong necessity to maintain their deceptions, or else give up not only their ease and luxury, but their very means of subsistence. Once enlisted in the cause, they must defend it; for should anyone of them, prompted by convictions from impartial research and rational experience, honestly avow opinions hostile to the national superstition, or decline to administer in the usual manner to your nursery-conceived prejudices and errors, would you not abandon him to obloquy and starvation? These things duly considered, you may ask yourselves whether you are not more likely to meet with truth from men who neither seek your money nor court your favor—who are actuated by no other motive or interest than that which the love of the principle of truth excites—who are unprostituted by hire—who, under the armour of reason, can resist and despise the venomous calumny which is cast upon every exposure of priestcraft; and who, having discharged a duty, feel it as a matter of indifference whether you shall be pleased or offended by the truth. You complain that the contemner of your religious opinions, at once tortures your feelings and arraigns your judgment; but has any judgment proceeding from your impartial investigation of that subject, ever had anything to do in the matter? Did you not fall heir to those absurd whims which you are pleased to call religious opinions, in right of your mother and other relations; and if these had happened to be followers of Mahommed, would not your blind zeal for the prophet of Mecca, have been as great as it now is for his alleged predecessor of Palestine?* Your answering this question in the negative would be the highest proof of folly and stupidity. Having sadly experienced for more than half a century the obstinate and angry nature of superstition, we are prepared to expect anything but your approbation when we repeat to you, that your faith has no other basis than traditional fables, legends, and allegories—that your attempt to prove their literal truth by prodigies and violations of Nature's laws, is far more inadmissible than the fables themselves; and that your understanding is so obscured by the pestilential fogs raised by these theological absurdities, that the rational truths of Nature can find no admittance.
The usual reply to such arguments and reasoning as the foregoing, is the hue and cry of infidel, atheist, etc.; but is it atheism to prefer the known to the unknown, and to consult experience and the evidence of our senses, in preference to dogmas drawn from books of unauthenticated legends, which are remarkable for nothing so much as the numerous libels they contain against the ruling power of the universe?** When the laws and institutions of a country become so corrupted by the usurpations of religion, and the political tyranny which it engenders, as are those of Great Britain,*** where the most grievous abuses in church and state are cherished and perpetuated to serve the ends of the aristocracy and the hierarchy, and where even the sciences are allowed to be seen only through the spectacles of superstition, are the men Atheists who seek a radical reform of them all?
* The minds of the great mass of mankind may be compared tothe glasses in a tavern, which bear about whatever may beput into them. If the tavern be in Turkey, the sensualpotations of Mahommed's heaven will fly about; if at Rome,the sparkling froth of Catholicism: if in any one of theProtestant countries of Europe, your features will bedistorted by the acetous draughts of Calvin.** By one Act of Henry VIII., it was high treason to havethe Bible in possession; by another it was permitted tonoblemen and gentlemen; and next, to countesses, ladies,etc.; and lastly to grown people, but not to apprentices andchildren. It was wise to allow the reading of such a book tothose alone who were interested in upholding it. Reason,philosophy and science will ultimately bring it intocontempt.*** All the ecclesiastical, and most of the other laws ofGreat Britain, are in opposition to everything that issalutary to man, or protective of his natural rights. To theformer class, every man of sound morality and virtue, oughtto make a point of denying jurisdiction and obedience. Allthe laws and usages, without exception, that have relationto the intercourse of the sexes, are so unnatural, cruel andabsurd, that they seem calculated to make them mutual snaresfor each other.
If there be indeed any such thing as apost mortemjudgment seat, to try the wicked and unrighteous for their immoralities and crimes, priests will have much to answer for at that tribunal, on the score of the complicated chain of calamities which their trade hath entailed on their brother man; for they alone
"Have dared to babble of a God of peace,Even while their hands were red with guiltless blood—Murdering the while—uprooting every germOf truth—exterminating—spoiling all—Making the earth a slaughter-house."
As sanctioning precedents for the commission of almost every crime may be conveniently found in the Jew books, in like manner they hold forth examples of the coarsest obscenities, though false translation has hidden many of them. Where shall we find vices so lewd and unnatural as those which were practised, and seem to have been of ordinary occurrence, amongst the chosen people? Would the law relating to asses and he-goats have been made if the unnatural crime which it was intended to prevent had not been in practice? See in Judges xix. the infamous doings of the men of Gibeah and Benjamin, the descendants of the chosen son of Jacob. Would any man of ordinary decency read to the females of his household passages so outrageously—nay, so matchlessly obscene, as those we frequently meet with in the Bible? For instance, Ezekiel iv., 12, and nearly the whole of the chapters xix. and xxiii. of the same book. See also Hosea i., 2 and 3, and chapter iii. to the end. The Song of Solomon is evidently the lascivious* effusion of some devoted debauchee; yet such is the transcendent impudence of our priests, that these superlatively lecherous imaginings have been, by forged headings, called "Christ's love** to the church." The instances above cited are trivial when compared with the number which might be adduced, of obscenities altogether unequalled in any other book; and we would ask any Bible advocate, "Whether any young woman who should be detected in reading a book (not labelled The Holy Bible) which contained a fiftieth part of the foul and rank immodesties that pervade this 'Will of God,' would not lose her good reputation for ever?"
* In chapter v., 4, it is very significantly said, "mybeloved put his finger, etc.;" but to damp this plainlylibidinous expression, the inspired translators foisted in"of the door". No forgery can be more barefaced. The wordsare "Dilectus meus demittebat mânum suam a for ami ne, cumvisceribus meis frementibus in me." There is no mentionwhatever of a door.—Lucian Redivivus.** If they would call them typical of the Duke of York'slove for Mrs. Clarke, they would be much nearer the truth.*** At a trial in London, for the imaginary crime ofblasphemy, the judge very ingenuously acknowledged therevolting obscenities of the Jew books, by ordering thewomen and boys to leave the court while the defendant, in anable defence, was reading the Bible.
But these obscenities are of little ethical importance, compared with the mass of moral evil which in all ages of Christianity has arisen from, and been justified by precedents drawn from the conduct of those men called "Bible worthies," though they appear decidedly to have been the very worst characters portrayed even in that book. This is not surprising, when we know that the Jewish god was an abstract personification of the will and interests of the robber-in-chief, combined with the priesthood; and the interests of all priests being essentially different, or opposed to those of the industrious producers of wealth, the men who oppressed and plundered them, and stuck at no crime in serving the sacerdotal order, were of course the favorites of "the Lord." David afforded a full and prominent proof of this. Hickeringill, a learned Hebraist and clergyman of the English church, has let out the secret, that "David was a man after God's own heart," not in holiness, that is not meant, and would be unaccountable after his adultery, murders, his many other sins, and cursing his enemies to the lowest pit of hell; but, "after God's heart," is a Hebraism,* and in English signifies as much as, "a man for my turn" (or he is the man for my money), "he will kill and slay as the priest commands and directs."
* One of the most learned Hebraists of England, has declaredthat, no two translators would agree in rendering any verbfrom the Hebrew. Godfrey Higgins says:—"I am quite certainthat I shall be able to show—to prove—that every letter ofthe Hebrew has four, and probably five meanings." What anaccommodating language for the priests, when their interestsrequire an alteration in their "Word of God!"
Here we have an exceedingly important confession from a learned churchman! That a person so profligate, wicked, and cruel, as the whole life of David shows him to have been, should acquire the above title, has no doubt astonished many people; but the exposition shows clearly that the priests bestowed it upon him, for his pre-eminence in the commission of every crime that promoted their interest and power. Many others of these "worthies" appear to have been the peculiar favorites of Jehovah, from possessing similar qualities (saints in subsequent times were always made out of the same sort of material), whilst with the good and virtuous few he was generally at enmity. This appears in contrasting the bloody and revengeful character of priest Samuel, with that of the plain, honest, and brave soldier, Saul; that of the cunning and deceitful Jacob, with his generous and amiable brother Esau. Amongst the numerous atrocious murders of David, do we not find that of Mephibosheth, the lame son, or brother of his peculiar friend and generous protector, Jonathan? The wholesale murders ordered by Moses, Joshua, David, and some others, are, if true, the most horrid imaginable. Blood was the order of the day among the Jews, so it flowed on all occasions. Exod. xiii., 2, shows that by their laws the first-born children were dedicated as sacrifices to the Jewish Moloch, as well as the first-born of other animals; but it is probable that the horror which this shocking barbarity excited in surrounding countries, at last induced the priests to accept of a lamb, or other victim that was equally good to eat, in redemption of the devoted child. The poor donkey, being rather a tough morsel for "the Lord" and his priests, was to be put to death, if not redeemed by something more tender and savory; mark the malignity of the priests! That the Jews offered such human sacrifices, is proved in Solomon's having built a temple to Moloch, which he would not have done with the intention of observing any other rites than those of the Ammonitish god. The Jew books have also furnished Christianity with examples of private assassination, which are nowhere else matched in cool atrocity: to give two instances only, see the base cowardly treachery by which those of Sisera, and of Eglon, king of Moab, were perpetrated.
We cannot conclude this lecture without making the important observation, that, while the instruction of youth continues to be founded upon these Jew books, which hold forth such barbarous and vicious men as patterns of humanity, virtue, and sound morality, no material improvement can ever be made in the moral condition of society. These books are imposed upon the mind as the one thing needful in education, because they divert from the study of the useful and salutary truths of Nature (the knowledge of which is the bane of the priest), which stand in direct opposition to the fabulous absurdities of Jewish theology;* and, therefore, our hireling priests, who dread nothing so much as the development of these truths, use their utmost energies in suppressing all such investigation; whilst they instil such reveries only as promote ignorance, and keep the mind in childhood through life. When the fogs of religious stupidity have thus mentally moulded the audience, the pulpit becomes a fountain of the most unqualified nonsense, which is safely showered down in torrents without any danger of detection, on the part of "the long-ear'd rout," who, being taught to spurn the evidence of their senses, when put in competition with faith, are prepared to swallow the grossest impossibilities:—
"For zeal, fanatic zeal, once wedded fastTo some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last."* The caricatures (they do not deserve a better name) whichthe Jews followed by the Christians have drawn of theSupreme Power, are extremely disgusting to rational piety;they make their deity command theft and murder: he avowedlybreaks his promise (Numb, xiv., 34). He grieves and repentsof his past conduct (Gen. vi., 6). He prompts his prophetsto lying (1 Kings xxii., 22).The theology of the present day, says D'Holbach, is asubtile venom, calculated, through the importance attachedto it, to infect everyone. By dint of metaphysics, moderntheologians have become systematically absurd and wicked, inteaching the odious ideas they entertain of the deity.
The imagination of the bewildered bigot fears a mysterious phantom which acts on none of his senses; and he fears nothing so much as to have nothing to fear. If his religion was clear to human intellect, it would have no attractions for his ignorance; there must be obscurity, incredible prodigies, fables, sorceries, and terrors, to keep his perverted brain in perpetual dread and agitation. By such chimerical apparatus, the priest can reduce the mental faculties of man almost to annihilation, and hence it is that the great herd of human beings have hitherto been mere congregated masses of variously compounded folly, knavery, and credulity; where ignorance is prized and cherished as the sole medium through which clerical and secular oppressors can ride over the necks of the multitude;* while the spider's web of superstition confines their intellects as it were within the bounds of a nutshell. In this way are the whole nations of human beings educated under traditional and legendary lies and fables; yet so firmly does the false impressions instilled in childhood rivet them upon the mind, that myriads have died for them, as the highest service to their "God!"This is a species of devotion which the theologues most willingly perform by deputy.
* "In every age, and in every country of the world, thereligions that have been invented by impostors and priests,and sanctioned by rulers, have been put forth with no otherintention than that of deceiving the people; whilst thedistinguishing characteristic of all religious professorshas been to profess one thing and mean another."
Under such abject and debasing circumstances have the intellectual powers of the bulk of mankind been crushed and smothered throughout Europe by the juggle of church and state collusion, until about the middle of last century, when a ray of mental light burst forth from a constellation of exalted minds, headed by that most enlightened of philosophers, Voltaire, who shook to its very foundation the whole fabric of Christian priestcraft. In the present century, that light, guarded by the true emancipating Savior of the human race, the printing press,* is now becoming more widely diffused and clear, through the erudite minds of a Brougham, an Owen, a Hume, and many other advocates of education; but still the truths of Nature are so obscured by the dense fogs of priest-fostered ignorance, that no efficient political relief need be expected for Christendom, until the people reform themselves by abandoning the evils which cause their physical and mental intoxication; these are inebriating liquors, and grovelling superstition.
* Though the art of printing, so as to multiply the copiesof a document to any extent, was known in Europe in the year1444, yet the control and fear of priestly vengeance,prevented its being extensively useful for two centuriesafterwards. This art, nevertheless, had been known andpractised from time immemorial by the priests of Buddha,throughout the immense empire of Thibet, though confined bythem exclusively to the purposes which promoted theinterests of their religion. Oh, how rejoiced the priests ofChristianity would be at this day, were it in their power toestablish a similar monopoly of the printing press!—SeeHiggins' Anacalypsis.
When our present ultra-Reformers, who call themselves Chartists, prate of church-going, and offering up prayers and religious hymns, previous to their vain consultations, our political rulers pass the wink to their clerical confederates, conveying as much as to say, this is all very well; for while these men continue under the thumb of any sect of theologians, or suffer their minds to be deluded and debauched by any scheme of supematuralism whatsoever, real knowledge and sound judgment must be strangers to their meetings; whilst the animosities of sectarism must ever prevent unanimity, without which they never can be formidable to the powers that be, however corrupt. When the education of mankind shall be so salutary as to teach them what they are in reality, the reform necessarily springing from it would quickly dissipate ignorance, conquer superstition and its priests; and, in place of pretending to look beyond Nature, whose surface alone man is hardly capable of perceiving, he would, through the evidence of his senses, follow that unerring power as the only polestar of his happiness. For the great majority of human beings thus to reform themselves, "they have but to will it;" if they will not, they deserve to continue what they ever have been—degraded outcasts and aliens from their nature.