THE AGE OF REASON
Part First
Thomas Paine (1794)
TO MY
FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE
I PUT the
following work under your protection. It contains my opinions upon Religion. You
will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the
Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be
to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his
present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing
it.
The most
formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason. I have never used any
other, and I trust I never shall.
Your affectionate
friend and fellow-citizen,
THOMAS
PAINE
PART FIRST
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
I believe in one
God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
I believe in 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 in 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 any thing more
destructive to morality than this?
Soon after I had
published the pamphlet Common Sense, in
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 show certain books, which they call
revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God was given
by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that
their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word
of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches
accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them
all.
As it is necessary
to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the
subject, offer some other 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
[* It is, however,
necessary to except the declaration which says that God visits the sins of the
fathers upon the children; it is contrary to every principle of moral
justice.]
When I am told
that the Koran was written in Heaven and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the
account comes too near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second-hand
authority as the former. 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 choose to rest my belief upon such
evidence.
It is, however,
not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the story of Jesus
Christ being the son of God. He was born when the heathen mythology had still
some fashion and 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 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.
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 practised 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 any thing else; not a line of
what is called the New Testament is of his own writing. The history of him is
altogether the work of other people; and as to the account given of his
resurrection and ascension, it was the necessary counterpart to the story of his
birth. His historians having brought him into the world in a 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 every thing 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
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 that affair is the Jews. They are regularly descended from the people
who lived in the times this resurrection and ascension is said to have happened,
and they say, it is not true. It has long appeared to me a strange inconsistency
to cite the Jews as a proof of the truth of the story. It is just the same as if
a man were to say, I will prove the truth of what I have told you by producing
the people who say it is false.
That such a person
as Jesus Christ existed, and that he was crucified, which was the mode of
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 priesthood. 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 apprehensions 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.
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 afterward under Mount Etna, and that
every time the Giant turns himself
It is here easy to
see that the circumstance of the mountain, that of its being a volcano,
suggested the idea of the fable; and that the fable is made to fit and wind
itself up with that circumstance.
The Christian
Mythologists tell us that their Satan made war against the Almighty, who
defeated him, and confined him afterward, 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 way surprised to hear a snake talk;
and the issue of this tete-a-tete is that he persuades her to eat an apple,
and the eating of that apple damns all mankind.
After giving Satan
this triumph over the whole 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 giving
him a triumph over the whole creation damned all mankind by the eating of an
apple, these Christian Mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together.
They represent this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both
God and Man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on purpose to be
sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing had eaten an
apple.
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 afterward 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
it is capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration.
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 their 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 object freely
investigated. I therefore pass on to an examination of the books called the Old
and New Testament.
These books,
beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation (which, by the by, 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 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 Gut 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 called themselves by the general name of the Church, and this
is all we know of the matter.
As we have no
other external evidence or 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 himself
is the actor or the witness; and consequently all the historical and anecdotal
parts 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
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 Lord spake unto Moses,
saying.
Why it has been
called the Mosaic account of the Creation, I am at a loss to conceive. Moses, I
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 choose to contradict the tradition. The account,
however, is harmless; and this is more than can be said of 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
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 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 economical than those of the American
Franklin.
All the remaining
parts of the Bible, generally known by the name of the Prophets, are the works
of the Jewish poets and itinerant preachers, who mixed poetry,* anecdote, and
devotion together and those works still retain the air and style of poetry,
though in translation.
[* 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 these books, called the
Prophets, appertains altogether to poetry. It is fictitious, and oft en
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 these books is poetical measure. The instance I
shall produce is from Isaiah:
Hear, O ye
heavens, and give ear, O earth!
'Tis 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 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.
There is not,
throughout the whole book called the Bible, any word that describes to us what
we call a poet, nor any word that describes what we
call poetry. The case is, that the word prophet, to which latter times have
affixed a new idea, was the Bible word for poet, and the word prophesying 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 afterward, that Saul prophesied badly; that is, he performed his part
badly; for it is said, that an evil spirit from God* came upon Saul, and he
prophesied.
[* As those 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 from God. I keep to my text I keep to the meaning of
the word prophesy.]
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 latter times have affixed to it. The manner in which
it is here used strips it of all religious meaning, and shows that a man might
then be a prophet, or he might prophesy, as he may now be a poet or a musician,
without any regard to the morality or immorality of his character. The word was
originally a term of science, promiscuously applied to poetry and to music, and
not restricted to any subject upon which poetry and music might be
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.
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 therefore 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 labored 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 honor
with the name of the word of God; and therefore the word of God cannot exist in
any written or human language.
The continually
progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of a
universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which
translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together
with the possibility of willful alteration, are of themselves evidences that the
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 that are
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 greater 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 dishonor my Creator by calling it by his
name.
Thus much for the
Bible; I now go on to the book called the New Testament. The 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 these men became acquainted with
him. They make mention of him at the age of twelve years, sitting, they say,
among the Jewish doctors, asking and answering them questions. As this was
several years before their acquaintance with him began, it is most probable they
had this anecdote from his parents. From this time there is no account of him
for about sixteen years. Where he lived, or how he employed
himself during this interval, is not known. Most probably he was working
at his father's trade, which was that of a carpenter. It does not appear that he
had any school education, and the probability is, that he could not write, for
his parents were extremely poor, as appears from their not being able to pay for
a bed when he was born.
It is somewhat
curious that the three persons whose names are the most
universally recorded, were of very obscure parentage. Moses was a foundling;
Jesus Christ was born in a stable; and Mahomet was a mule driver. The first and
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 not
otherwise betray him than by giving information where he was, and pointing him
out to the officers that went to arrest him; and the reason for employing and
paying Judas to do this could arise only from the cause 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 eat of the apple, was
not, that thou shall surely be crucified, but thou shalt surely die the
sentence of death, and not the manner of dying. Crucifixion, therefore, or any
other particular manner of dying, made no part of the sentence that Adam was to
suffer, and consequently, even upon their own tactics, it could make no part of
the sentence that Christ was to suffer in the room of Adam. A fever would have
done as well as a cross, if there was any occasion for either.
The 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 beads 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 person who saw them done, nor to the relating or
recording of any discourse or conversation by those who beard 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 revenue, in pretended imitation of a
person whose life was humility and poverty.
The invention of
purgatory, and of the releasing of souls therefrom by prayers bought of the 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 paroxysm of the crucifixion
and the theory deduced therefrom, which was that one person could stand in
the place of another, and could perform meritorious service 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 or 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 had 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 could tell us, as
she has done, that she could and did work miracles.
Since, then no
external evidence can, at this long distance of time, be produced to prove
whether the Church fabricated the doctrines called redemption or not (for such
evidence, whether for or against, would be subject to the same suspicion of
being fabricated), the case can only be referred to the internal evidence which
the thing carries within 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 bas for its base 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
redemption, 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 as 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 outlaw, as an outcast, 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 endeavored 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 government 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.
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
to the other, is consistent only with the ignorance of those who knew nothing of
the extent of the world, and who believed, as those world-saviours believed, and continued
to believe for several centuries (and that in contradiction to the discoveries
of philosophers and the experience of navigators), that the earth was flat like
a trencher, and that 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 to another, not only without losing a
great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense; and besides
all this, the art of printing was wholly 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 ends, 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 may 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.
The only idea man
can affix to the name of God is that of a first cause, the cause of all things.
And incomprehensible and difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first
cause is, he arrives at the 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
The spacious
firmament on high,
With all the blue
ethereal sky,
And spangled
heavens, a shining frame,
Their great original proclaim.
The unwearied sun,
from day to day,
Does his Creator's
power display;
And publishes to
every land
The work of an Almighty hand.
Soon as the
evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up
the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the
list'ning
earth
Repeats the story
of her birth;
While 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, or 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 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 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 subjects 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.
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 Manism 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 in 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 invention; 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 almanac sees an account when an eclipse will take place,
and he sees also that it never fails to take place according to the account
there given. This shows that man is acquainted with the laws by which the
heavenly bodies move. But it would be something worse than ignorance, were any
Church on earth to say that those laws are a human invention. It would also be
ignorance, or something worse, to say that the scientific principles by the aid
of which man is enabled to calculate and foreknow when an eclipse will take
place, are a human invention. Man cannot invent a thing that is eternal and
immutable; and the scientific principles he employs for this purpose must be,
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
anything else relating to the motion of the heavenly bodies, are contained
chiefly in that part of science which 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 rule
and compass, it is called geometry; when applied to the construction of plans or
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 is
unknown.
It may be said
that man can make or draw a triangle, and therefore a triangle is a 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 these 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, cannot act 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 a 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 steelyard,
for the sake of explanation) forms, when in motion, a triangle. The line it
descends from (one point of that line being in the fulcrum), the line it
descends to, and the cord of the arc which the end of the lever describes in the
air, are the three sides of a triangle. The other arm of the lever describes
also a triangle; and the 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. That principle is as unalterable as in the former case, 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 out knowledge of science is derived, and it
is from that knowledge that all the arts have originated.
The Almighty
Lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the structure of the
universe, has invited man to study and to imitation. It is as if He had said to
the inhabitants of this globe, that we call ours, I have made an earth for man
to dwell upon, and I have rendered the starry heavens visible, to teach him
science and the arts. He can now provide for his own comfort, AND LEARN FROM MY
MUNIFICENCE TO ALL, TO BE KIND TO EACH OTHER.
Of what use is it,
unless it be to teach man something, that his eye is
endowed with the power of beholding to an incomprehensible distance, an
immensity of worlds revolving in the ocean of space? Or of what use is it that
this immensity of worlds is visible to man? What has man to do with the
Pleiades, with Orion, with Sirius, with the star he calls the North Star, with
the moving orbs he has named Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury, if no
uses are to follow from their being visible? A less power of vision would have
been sufficient for man, if the immensity he now possesses were given only to
waste itself, as it were, on an immense desert of space glittering with
shows.
It is only by
contemplating what he calls the starry heavens, as the book and school of
science, that he discovers any use in their being visible to him, or any
advantage resulting from his immensity of vision. But when he contemplates the
subject in this light he sees an additional motive for saying,
that nothing was made in vain; for in vain would be this power of vision
if it taught man nothing.
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 for the people of
other nations who spoke a different language that some among them should learn
the Greek language, in order that the learning the Greeks had, might be made
known in those nations, by translating the Greek books of science and philosophy
into the mother tongue of each nation.
The study,
therefore, of the Greek language (and in the same manner for the Latin) was no
other than the drudgery business of a linguist; and the language thus obtained,
was no other than the means, as it were the tools, employed to obtain the
learning the Greeks had. It made no part of the learning itself, and was so
distinct from it, as to make it exceedingly probable that the persons who had
studied Greek sufficiently to translate those works, such, for instance, as
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 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 milkmaid of the Romans; it would therefore be
advantageous to the state of learning to abolish the study of the dead
languages, and to make learning consist, as it originally did, in scientific
knowledge.
The apology that
is sometimes made for 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 that is altogether erroneous. The human mind
has a natural disposition to scientific knowledge, and to the things connected
with it. The first and favorite amusement of a child, even before it begins to
play, is that of imitating the works of man. It builds houses with cards or
sticks; it navigates the little ocean of a bowl of water with a paper boat, or
dams the stream of a gutter and contrives something which it calls a mill; and
it interests itself in the fate of its works with a care that resembles
affection. It afterwards goes to school, where its genius is killed by the
barren study of a dead language, and the 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 unite with it; both of which, in this case, are
not difficult to be discovered.
Putting then
aside, as a 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 ambiguous 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
hath given to man, but to the knowledge that man gains of the power and wisdom
of God, by the aid of the sciences and by studying the structure of the universe
that God has made.
The setters-up,
therefore, and the advocates of the Christian system of faith could not but
foresee that the continually progressive knowledge that man would gain, by the
aid of science, of the 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 those discoveries, he was sentenced to renounce them, or the opinions
resulting from them, as a damnable heresy. And, prior to that time, Vigilius was condemned to be
burned for asserting the antipodes, or in other words that the earth was a
globe, and habitable in every part where there was land; yet the truth of this
is now too well known even to be told.
If the belief of
errors not morally bad did no mischief, it would make no part of the moral duty
of man to oppose and remove them. There was no moral ill in believing the earth
was flat like a trencher, any more than there was moral virtue in believing that
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
partisans 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 the flames.
Later times have
laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals; but, however unwilling the
partisans 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.*
[* 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 government in favor of his three sons and one daughter, Jupiter,
Pluto, Neptune, and Juno; after this, thousands of other Gods and demi-gods were imaginarily
created, and the calendar of gods increased as fast as the calendar of saints
and the calendars of courts have increased since.]
All the corruptions that have taken place in theology and in
religion, have been produced by admitting of what man calls revealed
religion. The Mythologists pretended to more revealed religion than the
Christians do. They had their oracles and their priests, who were supposed to
receive and deliver the word of God verbally, on almost all
occasions.
Since, then, all
corruptions, 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 that everything else, called the word of God, is fable and
imposition.
It is owing to
this long interregnum of science, and to no other cause, that we have now to
look through a vast chasm of many hundred years to the respectable characters we
call the ancients. Had the progression of knowledge gone on proportionably with that 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 anything 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 has
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.
Having thus shown
from the internal evidence of things the cause that produced a change in the
state of learning, and the motive for substituting the study of the dead
languages in the place of the sciences, I proceed, in addition to 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 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 subject of all the Latin books used in the
school.
[* The same
school, Thetford In Norfolk that the present Counsellor Mingay went to and under the same
master.]
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
I had no
disposition for what is called politics. It presented to my mind no other idea
than as contained in the word Jockeyship. When therefore I turned my thoughts
toward matter of government, I had to form a system for myself that accorded
with the moral and philosophic principles in which I have 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 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 was 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.
Any person who has
made observations on the state and progress of the human mind, by observing his
own, cannot but have observed that there are two distinct classes of what are
called thoughts those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act
of thinking, and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord. I have
always made it a rule to treat those voluntary visitors with civility, taking
care to examine, as well as I was able, if they were worth entertaining, and it
is from them I have acquired almost all the knowledge that I have. As to the
learning that any person gains from school education, it serves only, like a
small capital, to put him in a way of beginning learning for himself afterward. Every person of learning is finally his
own teacher, the reason of which is that principles, being 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 in 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 that kind of thoughts that had anything 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 at 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 anything
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 endeavoring to imitate him in
everything 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 cannot help smiling at the conceit, that if the taste of a
Quaker could have been consulted at the creation, what a silent and drab-colored
creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gayeties, nor
a bird been permitted to sing.
Quitting these
reflections, I proceed to other matters. After I had made myself master of the
use of the globes and of the orrery,* and conceived an idea of the infinity of
space, and the eternal divisibility of matter, and obtained at least a general
knowledge of what is called natural philosophy, I began to compare, or, as I
have before said, to confront the eternal evidence those things afford with the
Christian system of faith.
[* As this book
may fall into the hands of persons who do not know what an orrery is, it is for their
information I add this note, as the name gives no idea of the uses of 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 centre 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.]
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 cannot be held together in the same mind, and he who thinks that he
believes both, has thought but little of either. Though the belief of a
plurality of worlds was familiar to the ancients, it 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 ball, is only twenty-five thousand and
twenty English miles, reckoning sixty-nine miles and a half to an equatorial
degree, and may be sailed round in the space of about three
years.*
[* 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.]
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 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 is 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 surrounds it filled and, as it
were, crowded with life, down from the largest animals that we know of to the
smallest insects the naked eye can behold, and from thence to others still
smaller, and totally invisible without the assistance of the microscope. Every
tree, every plant, every leaf, serves not only as a habitation but as a world to
some numerous race, till animal existence 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 who already know, but for those who do not) to show what the
system of the universe is.
That part of the
universe that is called the solar system (meaning the system of worlds to which
our earth belongs, and of which Sol, or in English language, the Sun, is the
centre) consists, besides the Sun, of six distinct orbs, or planets, or worlds,
besides the secondary called the satellites or moons, of which our earth has one
that attends her in her annual revolution around the Sun, in like manner as the
other satellites or moons attend the planets or worlds to which they severally
belong, as may be seen by the assistance of the telescope.
The Sun is the
centre, round which those six worlds or planets revolve at different distances
therefrom, and in circles
concentrate to each other. Each world keeps constantly in nearly the same track
round the Sun, and continues, at the same time, turning round itself in nearly
an upright position, as a top turns round itself when it is spinning on the
ground, and leans a little sideways.
It is this leaning
of the earth (23.5 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 around 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 seasons 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.*
[* Those who
supposed that the sun went round the earth every 24 hours made the same mistake
in idea that a cook would do in fact, that should make the fire go round the
meat, instead of the meat turning round itself toward the fire.]
The names that the
ancients gave to those six worlds, and which are still called by the same names,
are Mercury, Venus, this world that we call ours, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
They appear larger to the eye than the stars, being many million miles nearer to
our earth than any of the stars are. The planet Venus is that which is called
the evening star, and sometimes the morning star, as she happens to set after or
rise before the Sun, which in either case is never more than three
hours.
The Sun, as before
said, being the centre, the planet or world nearest the Sun is Mercury; his
distance from the Sun is thirty-four million miles, and he moves round in a
circle always at that distance from the Sun, as a top may be supposed to spin
round in the track in which a horse goes in a mill. The second world is Venus;
she is fifty-seven million miles distant from the Sun, and 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 straight line of the whole diameter of the orbit or circle, in
which Saturn moves round the Sun, which being double his distance from the Sun,
is fifteen hundred and twenty-six million miles and its circular extent is
nearly five thousand million, and its globular contents is almost three thousand
five hundred million times three thousand five hundred million square
miles.*
[* If it should be asked, how can man know these things? 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 around the sun will come in a straight 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.]
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 centre of our
system. The probability, therefore, is, that each of
these 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 the globe of earth and water is left unoccupied.
Having thus
endeavored to convey, in a familiar and easy manner, some idea of the structure
of the universe, I return to explain what I before alluded to, namely, the great
benefits arising to man in 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.
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 to us the idea 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.