All these fragments of crack-brained opiniatry and silly
solaces, played off, in the sweetness of song, by deceitful
poets, have, by you too credulous creatures, been shamefully
reformed and made over to your own God. MINUTIUS FELIX.
DOES not the New Testament speak very distinctly of two crucifixions,
viz., one as having taken place upon Mount Calvary, and another at,
or in a Garden? There is even a third mentioned, as having occurred
in Egypt, "where also our Lord was crucified," Rev. xi., 8; which is
a plain recognition of the astro-religion, and solar worship of the
Egyptian priests. The crucifixion upon Mount* Calvary was allegorical
of the sun's _passing over, or crossing_ the equator in March; of which
month the Ram, or Lamb of God, was the zodiacal emblem, God, the sun,
being in that sign at the spring equinox. This was also the origin of
the Pascal Lamb, and the _Passover_ of the Jews, which they borrowed of
their masters, the Egyptians.
* The word mount, as here used, is figurative of the sun's
being in the state of elevation in the horizon, at the
spring equinox.
This _crossing_ of the sun, while in the Ram of March, was likewise
metonymised into the phrase about "The Lamb that was slain from the
beginning of the world," that is, the Lamb that was figuratively crucified
at every vernal equinox, while the sun was in the sign Aries or the
Lamb. The Evangelist John, in describing God, declares that the hair of
his head _was like wool_; (O, John, you are too apt to tell tales ont of
school!) which setting aside the ludicrous simile, is a sublime symbol
of God, the sun, in the sign of the Bam, in March. Why is the second
crucifixion, as narrated by this tell-tale, John, said to have happened,
not upon a mount, but in or near a garden? Because this crucifixion has
allusion to the autumnal equinox, when the sun _crosses_ the line of
the equator, in September; and nothing can be a prettier, or more
appropriate emblem of that month than a fruit garden, or vineyard.
Why is the mother of Jesus said to be standing by, or near him, at the
garden crucifixion, as stated by John, though her presence is not at all
acknowledged by any of the other evangelists? His mother could no more
be near him at his Calvary crucifixion, than August can be near March;
but as she, as the sign Virgo, or the Virgin, is also the genius of
August, she was, of course, near, or standing "by the cross," when
her son Jesus Christ, that is, the sun, was crossified, or crossed the
equator in September, that month being next door neighbor to August.
The Christ, or Savior of the vernal equinox ascends into the Heaven of
summer, and saves, or recreates the organised existences of this globe,
by his genial and animative power; whereas the Christ of the autumnal
_Cross_ descends gradually to the winter solstice, and is said,
therefore, to descend into _Hell_, that is, to enter the signs and
constellations of winter, which, being antagonistic to those of summer,
are emblematical of evil. In the September crucifixion, Christ, as the
sun, is called "the Just One," because he is then in the zodiacal sign,
Libra, or the Balance.
The Egyptian deity, Bacchus, or the wine-producing god, being also a
personification of the sun, is the same as Christ, and of course, like
him, visited the "lowest regions" after being unjustly put to death.
These being only the Egyptian and Indian names for the same divinity, it
was quite in analogy to preserve a symbolical allusion to the vine and
blood of the grape, in the crucifixion of Christ. But it requires little
penetration to perceive that all we find there said about the "agony,"*
in the garden, and sweating "great drops of blood," has a very plain
allusion to the wine-press and the compression of the grapes;** and
here the secret meaning is as near the surface as it possibly can be in
allegory. The rich, sweet juice is at first expressed in "great drops,"
or copiously, and is called "the blood of the grape;" by a second
pressure, the thin lees, or "vinegar," is compressed, which they are
allegorically said to have given him to drink; and after this last
process the business is truly said to be "finished." After this manner,
and in every age and country of the world, down to the present day,
have the allegories invented by priests, and cunningly drawn from
the astronomical phaenomena of nature, passed for religion amongst the
unthinking million.*** If the cruel usage given to John Barleycorn, in
the process of turning him into beer, had been allegorised to us in our
present ignorance, and priest-nursed stupidity, it would have
answered equally as well as the fable of Christ and the "blood of the
wine-press."
* "An Agony literally is a wine-press."--Taylor.
** "And the wine-press was trodden without the city, and
blood came out of the wine-press" (Rey. xiv., 20).
*** The Crucifixion of Christ is so manifestly a new version
of that of Prometheus (another name of the sun), that in our
translations of that tragedy of AEschylus, the crucifixion of
the original is never, acknowledged; but he is always
fraudulently said to be bound. "The object of this impudent
fraud," says Mr. Higgins, "need not be pointed out."
The name of Chrishna, Christna, or Christ, was common to Egypt as
well as to India, in the remotest known antiquity. In the Sanscrit
Dictionary, the name of the Nile is Christna; which is further proof of
what Sir William Jones says about the exceedingly ancient intercourse
which subsisted between India and Egypt "before the time of Homer."
And although this pious author, and several other writers on eastern
affairs, seem carefully to have avoided saying a word about the
crucifixion of the Hindu Savior, and many Christians have exulted in the
similarity of the legends being entirely broken off by this pretended
discrepancy, yet the fact is incontrovertible, that not only was Christ,
or Christna, crucified in India, but in Egypt "also," as we have already
shown on Scripture authority. Mr. Higgins asserts that the Brahmin
"crucifixion was well known in the time of St. Jerome," who, like the
Evangelist John, _was rather apt to tell astronomical secrets_.
Mons. Guigniant says--"The death of Chrishna is variously related: one
averred tradition very remarkably represents him to have perished on a
fatal tree, or _cross_ where he was pinned, or nailed with an arrow."
Mr. Moor, in the "Hindu Pantheon," states, that many of the plates and
pictures of India, of undoubted antiquity, represent the god Christna,
with cicatrix, or scars in his hands and feet, the very points of the
nails by which he was suspended on that fatal tree. Plate 98, in the
"Hindu Pantheon," shows the figure of a man suspended on a cross; and it
appears, that when the Romish artists imitated this Indian crucifixion,
in their carvings and paintings, _they omitted the cross itself_; their
reason for this is very obvious. The figure appears hanging in the sky,
with arms distended, and the feet overlapping each other, so that one
nail might perforate both at once. Now it is not a little extraordinary,
_that some of the earlier Christian sects maintained, that Christ was
crucified in the sky_. Here is a direct demonstration, that the Brahmin
crucifixion is, wholly and radically, an astronomical allegory of
the equatorial _crossings_ of the sun at the Equinoxes; and that the
Christian fable is identically the same, but the scientific meaning is
lost, through the fraud of priestcraft, and the ignorance it fosters.
Mr. Moor further observes, that having some apprehension of giving
offence to the bigoted and prejudiced on these points, he showed the
plates and paintings above-mentioned to a friend, who suggested the
propriety of omitting plate 98.
"I very much suspect," says Mr. Higgins, in his Anacalypsis, "that it is
from some story, now unknown, _or kept out of sight_, relating to this
Avata, that the ancient heretics alluded to, obtained their tradition of
Jesus being crucified in the clouds." He says again, "That nothing
more is known respecting this Avata, I cannot help suspecting, may be
attributed to the same kind of feeling, which induced Mr. Moor's friend
to wish him to remove print 98 from his book. The innumerable pious
frauds of which Christian priests stand convicted, and the principle
of the expediency of fraud, admitted to have existed by Mosheim, are a
perfect justification of my suspicions respecting the concealment of
the history of this Avata. I repeat, I cannot help suspecting that it
is from this Avata," (_incarnation_) "of Chrishna, that the sect of
Christian heretics got their Christ crucified in the clouds."
In regard to the Buddhists of India, who claim an antiquity of fifteen
thousand years, Sir William Jones, though he appears to have been
horrified at the idea of following truth beyond the limits of bible
chronology, is constrained to assign the period of Buddha, or the ninth
incarnation of Vishnu, in the year 1400 before Christ, though according
to Volney and others, it was 600 years earlier. Christna and Buddha are
identical* in principle; both are incarnations of Vishnu, the second
person in the Hindu Trinity, and were born of virgin mothers, and each
was the son of a carpenter; both suffer death by crucifixion. Christna
raised the dead, by descending for that purpose to the _lowest regions_.
Both names signify Shepherd and Savior. The crucified Christna is
represented in the aforesaid plate 98, with rays of glory surrounding
the head, as is also the head of Buddha, which may be seen in the
museum of the India House. To the rational mind, this glory will appear
emblematical only of the sun himself in his radiant summer brightness,
because it is manifestly so of no other object in nature.
* The Negro, Mannon now in the British Museum, corroborates
the opinion, that the sciences were once in the hands of the
Blacks. Mr. Higgins says, that though both Buddha and
Chrishna of the India House museum, are black, the latter is
easily distinguishable from the former, because he is not a
Negro.
Mr. Higgins goes on to show "the idle pretensions that the Brahmins,
some way or other, have got copies of the apocryphal gospels, from
which they have taken the history of the birth, life, and adventures
of Chrishna. How wonderfully absurd," says he, "to suppose that all
the ancient emblems and idols of Christna, in the temples and caves
scattered over every part of India, _and absolutely identified with them
in point of antiquity,_ can have been copied from the gospels written
after the time of Jesus! How wonderfully absurd, that the Brahmins, and
people of this widely extended empire, should condescend to copy from
the real or cast-away spurious gospels of a sect, at that time almost
unknown in their own country; and many thousand miles distant from these
Brahmins!"
The deified Hercules, the personified power of the sun, was known in
very remote antiquity; yet according to Arrian, he was fifteen centuries
later than Bacchus, who was the same as the Hindu deity Siva. The
triplicate godhead of India, says Arrian, consisted of Brahma,
Chrishna, and Seeva, _three in one, and one in three_ viz., the Creator,
Preserver, or Savior, and the Destroyer.* Now, Arrian wrote in the
second century, in the time of the Emperor Adrian, when the New
Testament of the Christians was not yet got up; and as for their
Trinity, they did not fully imitate the Hindu in that triune point,
until about the close of the fourth century.
* According to a passage of Arrian, quoted in the Edinburgh
Review, Chrishna was worshipped in the time of Alexander, at
what still remains one of the most famous temples of India,
that of Mathura, on the Jumna, the Matura Deorum of Ptolemy.
All the garbled statements, and mean subterfuges that could be invented
by powerful priesthoods, in league with corrupt Rulers, have been
brought into play to oppose and stifle the above incontrovertible
facts. This unblushing effrontery is quite "in trade" with parties
whose interest it undoubtedly is that these things should be known
only amongst themselves, lest the "simple-minded" should be induced
to suspect that they had been most egregiously duped by men whose very
living depends upon deception. The wonderful resemblance,--the apparent
sameness or identity--of the Indian and Christian mythics, must have
shaken the well-settled faith of Sir William Jones; and so far, his love
of truth got the better of his piety; otherwise, he would no doubt
have been willing to suppress the alarming truth of the vastly higher
antiquity of the Hindu allegory.* Why did he conceal the crucifixion
part of the fable, _and the fact of its being represented as taking
place in the sky?_ It was in vain he expected that other writers on
India, many of whom were equally well-informed, would be as disingenuous
as himself.
The ancient hieroglyph of the cross itself is, beyond all contradiction,
of the most remote antiquity in the different countries of India; and
it is found on most of the Egyptian obelisks--all the three monograms of
Osiris, and those of Jupiter Ammon,--the staffs of Isis and Osiris, etc.
The pious and orthodox Mr. Skelton, in his "Appeal to common sense,"
confesses as follows:--"How it came to pass that the Egyptians,
Arabians, and Indians, _long before Christ came among us_, paid such
a remarkable veneration to the cross, is to me unknown; _but the fact
itself is known_." In Dr. Clarke's "Travels," there is an engraved copy
of a Phoenician medal, found in the ruins of Citium, and proved by him
to be Phoenician, on which are inscribed, not only the cross, but the
rosary or string of beads, attached to it, _together with the figure of
a Lamb_. The Rev. Mr. Maurice, in his "Indian Antiquities," informs
us that the two principal Pagodas of India, Benares and Mathura, are
erected in the form of _vast crosses_.
The famous crux ansata, says Mr. Higgins, is to be seen on all the
ancient buildings of Egypt; and is the mark alluded to by Ezekiel ix.,
4. It is as common in India as in Egypt and Europe. Mr. Moor, in his
"Oriental Fragments," tells us that, placed in a circle, it was an
emblem of eternity, having equally neither beginning nor end. The
signing of the cross** on the forehead of individuals, as a token of
security for life, is of great antiquity. Cain, it seems, wore this mark
of security.
* Mr. Barrow, the great astronomer, says that "The Hindu
religion spread over the whole earth; that Stonehenge is one
of the temples of Boodh; and that astronomy, astrology,
arithmetic, holy days, games, etc., may be referred to the
same original."
** St Jerome has observed that this mark, or letter, in the
true ancient Hebrew alphabet, _was a cross_. With the
exception of the sun himself the hieroglyph of the cross has
been more generally adored than any other object in nature.
Why? Because it is symbolic of two annual periods which
mainly affect the condition of man upon this globe--the two
equinoctial crossings by the sun.
Jablonski was of opinion that this figure, the _crux ansata_, was also
an emblem of generation,--"nihil aliud esse quam phallum," etc. However,
we have historical facts stating that the women of ancient Egypt wore
ornaments of a character or form so very unequivocal, as to leave no
doubt about the allusion. The proofs of the vast antiquity of the cross
might be carried much farther, acknowledged and confirmed as they are in
many instances even by divines themselves, who have deeply investigated
the subject, and could see no way to elude the unpalatable truth, that
the cross was an object of superlative sanctity and veneration amongst
the eastern nations, not only long anterior to the time of the Emperor
Tiberius, but in the most remote of the known ages of antiquity. Thus
this mystical figure was emblematical of at least four things, viz.,
eternity, generation, the _crossing_ of the equator by the sun at the
vernal and autumnal equinoxes, besides its allusion, in Egypt, to the
rising and falling of the Nile.
The Spaniards, in their murderous invasion of Mexico and Peru, were
astonished to find there the whole machinery of Christianity; but the
priests and the court of Spain smothered the fact as much as lay in
their power. The immaculate conception was in full force, by a _Virgin_
of Peru becoming pregnant by the _Sun_; the cross was the principal
emblem, and had been sacred from time immemorial: one of their Trinity
was crucified upon a mountain, _between two thieves_; and also in the
sky or heavens, where the serpent (not the boar, as in the case of
Adonis, see Lecture II.) is depriving him of the organs of generation.*
Here is an astro-fable, known positively to have existed in Syria,
and even among the Jews, long anterior to the present version of
Christianity; and, therefore, when the early Christians carried over
their religion to America, they must have been wicked enough to carry
over also the whole of the heathen mythoses of Africa and Asia. The
Spaniards had likewise the mortification to find the resurrection of the
crucified _Savior_, after three days; the ascension through the clouds,
and that his return was expected, to save the human race.
* The serpent being an adverse, or winter constellation, it
is almost needless to observe that this allegory points to
the sun's being deprived of his generative powers, while the
winter constellations are in the ascendant.
There is no accounting for these astronomical fables, being found in the
new world, and their indisputable identity with those of the old, but
in the one clear solution, of there being, in remote antiquity, one
universal solar mythos, or fabled history of the planetary system, in
which the sun, under a thousand different appellatives, as redeemer or
savior, and as the grand ruling principle of the whole, was the chief
object of adoration. This mythos is still prevalent, though abused for
the most atrocious purposes.
With respect to the color of gods in the most ancient times of Paganism,
there is ample proof remaining that it varied according to the color of
the people who cultivate the sciences for the time being. That men with
complexions perfectly black, such as the Hindus, the southern Arabians,
and the Ethiopians,* were formerly the depositaries of the sciences,
perhaps exclusively, is proved by monuments found throughout.
* In very ancient maps, Ethiopia extended east of the Red
Sea, to the banks of the Euphrates, including all southern
Arabia; and if the Ethiopians originally advanced from India
into Africa, and founded Egyptian Thebes, we may well
suppose that their empire reached to the Indus. This opinion
is corroborated by that of Sir William Jones, who says that
in very remote times, a nation of people who were blacks,
the seat of whose empire was in or near ancient Sidon, ruled
ever Egypt and all Asia. If this was the nation spoken of by
Sir William Drummond (on zodiacs), according to him, the
science of astronomy was at least as well known amongst
them, as it is in modern times.
Near the city of Benares, in India, are astronomical instruments cut
out of the solid rock of a mountain, and formerly used for making
observations; but these are so exceedingly ancient, that it is said,
_the Brahmins of the present day do not understand the use of them_.
India and Egypt. The knowledge of the great truths of astronomy seems to
have been as full and perfect in those times as it is now; and as that
science, in the hands of skilful god-makers, has supplied emblem gods
for the adoration of the ignorant, _in all religions whatever_, we
cannot wonder that these personifications of natural objects should take
the sable color of the priests who invented and deified them. The great
Sphinx, supposed to be one of the oldest as well as most wonderful of
these Egyptian monuments, _is a Nubian Black_.* At the time the new
version of Hindu superstition spread itself in western Asia and Europe,
under the name of Christianity, its machinery was kept out of sight
in the archives of the priests; and, as its derivation was known to
themselves alone, they did not then deem it indispensably necessary to
change the color of their eastern deities; but adopted both Chrishna and
his mother, in their sable Gentoo complexions; and, in after times,
it was found no easy matter to get them whitewashed. But as these
disagreeable facts will raise the angry bristles of the Christian
fanatic, it is necessary to support them by the most profoundly learned
authorities on the subject.
Mr. Higgins says:--"On the color of the gods of the ancients, and of the
identity of them all with the god Sol,** and with the Chrishna of India,
nothing more need be said." The reader has already seen the striking
marks of similarity in the history of Chrishna, and the stories related
of Jesus in the Romish and heretical books. He probably will not think
that their effect is destroyed, as Mr. Maurice flatters himself, by the
word Chrishna, in the Indian language, signifying black, and the
god being of that color, when he is informed of what Mr. Maurice was
probably ignorant, that in all Romish countries of Europe, in France,
Italy, Germany, etc., the god Christ, as well as his mother, are
described in their old pictures and statues to be black. The infant god
in the arms of his black mother, his eyes and drapery white, is himself
perfectly black.
* This accounts for the oracle at Dodona being, according to
Mr. Potter, a black dove.
** The complete identity of the ancient religions of the
Brahmins, the Magi and the Druids (solar adoration), "has
been satisfactorily established by Vallency, Wilford, Davis,
and Maurice." Pliny, alluding to the Druidical religion of
Britain, in his time, says:--"Britain at this day celebrates
the magic rites with so many similar ceremonies, that you
might suppose them to have been given them by the
Persians."--Nat. Hist.
If the reader doubts my word, he may go to the cathedral at Moulins;
to the famous chapel of the virgin at Loretto; to the church of the
Annunciata; to the church of St. Lazaro; or the church of St. Stephen at
Genoa; to St. Francisco, at Pisa; to the church at Brixen, in the Tyrol;
and to that at Padua; to the church of St. Theodore, at Munich; in the
two last of which the whiteness of the eyes and teeth, and the studied
redness of the lips are very observable; to the church and to the
cathedral of Augsburg, where are a black virgin and child as large as
life; to Rome, to the Borghese chapel Maria Maggiore; to the Pantheon;
to a small chapel of St. Peters, on the right hand side on entering
near the door, and in fact, to almost innumerable other churches, in the
countries professing the Romish religion.
"There is scarcely an old church in Italy where some remains of the
_black virgin and black child_ are not to be met with. Very often the
black figures have given way to white ones, and in these cases, the
black ones, as being held sacred, _were put into retired place" in the
churches_; they were not destroyed, but are yet to be found there. In
many instances, these images are painted all over, and look like bronze,
often with colored aprons or napkins round the loins and other parts.
No doubt, in many places, when the priests have new painted the images,
they have colored the eyes and teeth, in order that they might not shock
the feelings of devotees, _by a too sudden change from black to white_;
and in order, at the same time, that they might furnish a devout
pretence for their blackness, namely, that they are in imitation of
bronze; but the number left with white teeth, let out the secret: their
blackness is not to be questioned for a moment." Mr. Higgins concludes
from the knowledge of the foregoing facts, that, "the Romish Chrishna
is black in India, black in Europe, and black he must remain. But, after
all, what was he but their Jupiter, the second person of their Trinurti,
or trinity, the Logos of Parmenides and Plato, an incarnation or
emanation of the solar power" (Anacalypsis).
Of these Trinities it is not requisite to say much here, as ample proof
has been adduced in the course of these lectures to show that, from
Japan in the east to Egypt in the west, every country had, in the
remotest antiquity, a triad of gods for the vulgar, which, in the
mystical or hidden sense, had allusion to physical principles. But as we
have a partiality for the authority of theologians on these subjects, we
beg to quote that of the Rev. Mr. Maurice, who traces the principles of
_Tritheism_ among the most ancient nations of the earth, before as well
as in the times of the Greeks and Romans. He says that the Indian Temple
of Elephanta, "is of exquisite workmanship and of stupendous antiquity;
antiquity to which neither the page of history or human traditions can
ascend. That magnificent piece of sculpture so often alluded to in the
cavern of Elephanta, _decidedly establishes the solemn fact, that from
the remotest eras, the Indian nations have adored a triune Deity_. There
the traveller, with awe and astonishment, beholds, carved out of
the solid rock, in the most conspicuous part of the most ancient and
venerable temple of the world, a bust expanding in breadth near twenty
feet, and no less than eighteen feet in altitude, by which amazing
proportions, as well as by its gorgeous decorations, it is known to be
the image of the grand, presiding Deity of that hallowed retreat: he
beholds, I say, _a bust composed of three heads united to one body_,
adorned with the oldest symbols of Indian theology; and thus expressly
fabricated according to the unanimous confession of the sacred
sacerdotal tribe of India, to indicate the _Creator, the Preserver,
and the Destroyer, or Regentrator_, of mankind." Notwithstanding the
absolute conclusiveness of the evidence adduced by Mr. Maurice,
proving the infinitely higher antiquity of the Hindu Trinity, he still
recollects his obligation to support the Christian priesthood, and
argues that the Indians must have derived their notions of a triune
Deity from the Hebrews, though that people had no known existence in
the time he refers to, and their books (the Old Testament) if rightly
translated, do not, even by the slightest allusion, acknowledge anything
of the kind. By such subterfuges theology is not ashamed to deny the
clearest light.
The sacrament of Baptism, like all the other dogmas of Christianism, is
drawn from the ancient religious observances of India and Egypt; and is
also one of the sacred rites of solar worship, the mysteries of which
required that the neophyte should be pure in body as well as in mind. It
existed among the Pythagoreans and Druids. In an Arabic work, translated
by Mr. Hammer, it is stated that in ancient Egypt, when a child was
born, the mother took it to a priest of the temple, and laid it down
without speaking a word. The priest then came, with a golden cup full
of water in his hand, accompanied by six other priests. He then said
prayers, and sprinkled the water over the child. The dead were also
baptised, though by proxy. St. Paul establishes this point in his
first epistle to the Corinthians, chap. xv., 29; and he is so far from
condemning the custom, that he adduces it as an argument in proof of the
resurrection.
Mr. Higgins says: "John the Baptist was nothing but one of the followers
of _Mithra_, with whom the deserts of Syria and the Thebais of Eyypt
abounded, under the name of Essenes. He was a Nazarite; and it is
a striking circumstance that the fountain (Enon, or Enon), where he
baptised, _was sacred to the sun_." Even the name signifies the sun, or
Mithra. If this was the (Enon of Locris, in ancient Greece (we know of
no other), John must have taken wide excursions in his baptism. In the
New Testament allegories there are many coincidents which point out that
John (the Janus of the Latins) is the personified genius of January, the
zodiacal sign of which month is Aquarius with his pitcher, the water of
which is generally poured out plentifully. Aquarius being the mansion
of the sun in John's month, or January, his pitcher is figuratively
the fountain of OEnon, that was sacred to the sun, and where, as
the Evangelist tells us there was "much water." During this month and
February the "kingdom of heaven," or Christ (the sun), was said to be
coming, or at hand; but he was not considered as _come_ until after the
vernal equinox, in March, when, by entering the sign Aries, or the Ram,
he became the Lamb, at which time John exclaims--"Behold the Lamb of
God; he cometh after me, but is preferred before me." "I baptise with
water--he with the Holy Ghost." That is to say, March comes after
January, and the genial sun of spring and summer will always be
preferred to that of January. The wilderness in which John was said to
sojourn was metaphorical of the sterile and bleak face of nature during
that month. In Matthew it is said--"He shall baptise you with the Holy
Ghost and with fire."* The Holy Ghost was metaphoric of the salubrious
summer winds in May, as the fire was of the scorching heat of the
dog-days.
It has often been observed that the learned, or the initiated in
religious mysteries, had language peculiar to themselves, and unknown to
the rabble, whereby they concealed science under tropes and allegories;
so that, aided by the vivacity of the imagination, the most ordinary
phaenomena of nature were embodied as mystical existences, and there
was hardly anything spoken of without being personified. Philo Judaeus
informs us that, amongst the arts and mysteries which Moses learnt
from his masters the Egyptians, was that of philosophy by symbols,
hieroglyphics, and marks of animals. Clemens Alexandrinus states, that
"all who have treated of divine matters, the barbarous nations as well
as the Greeks, have hid the _principles of things_, and delivered down
the truth _enigmatically_, by _signs_, and _symbols_, and _allegories_,
and _metaphors_."** Similar confessions were made by all the learned
fathers of Christianism, many of whom allowed that their own religion
was veiled in exactly the same manner; and for this they might claim
even St. Paul as sufficient authority.
* The priests of ancient Egypt baptised with air as well as
with water and fire. This was done by one "whose fan is in
his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor." The use
of the fan was an artificial way of creating the Holy Wind,
or Ghost.
** Yet, upon a system which is thus admitted to be fabulous,
or false, Are founded doctrines which are said to be true.
But in the present day, amongst an ignorant and interested clergy,
although their superstition is directly derived from, and is only a
varied version of the solar adoration of Paganism, the "principles of
things" are lost and unknown, or if known to a very few of the
learned, the little lamp of truth is extinguished by the roguery of
self-interest, which will ever be sufficient to secure its suppression.
Thus, from ignorance or interest, or both together, the allegories
and metaphors of speech which we find in the Bible, are monstrously
inculcated and palmed upon simplicity as matters of fact and history.
Whilst committing these outrages upon the highest branches of science,
the theologians have absurdly attempted to blend the eternal religion
of Nature* with the evanescent revelations which man has, in successive
ages, invented to be the greatest curse of his brother.
* The "Religion of Nature" may be defined thus:--The
admiration, the love, and the veneration which we feel for
that incomprehensible power which produces the beauties and
bounties of the world. Beyond, this, all pretended
revelation is foul imposture.
Having, in this and the foregoing lectures, noticed most of the leading
dogmas of Christianity, and the Pagan astro-fables, from which they are
derived, that exposure alone renders it unnecessary to enter upon
the endless task of commenting on the unsightly mass of heterogeneous
doctrines, to which the ignorant abuse of these fables has given rise.
Where the foundation is fallacious, the superstructure cannot stand.
The overwhelming master-curse, springing out of these mythological
fictions, in past and present times, is their perversion from a
scientific purport, that was radically and wholly physical and
_sub_-natural, to a sense that is chimerically called spiritual and
_super_-natural. In thus fraudulently putting the latter of these words
in place of the former, (which we maintain is contrary to the original
meaning of the Bible itself,) does the whole science and essence of
priestcraft consist. By this departure from everything tangible--from
all that is to the human mind conceivable, the theologians have
cunningly decoyed their dupes into imaginary regions, peopled, as in the
old mythology, with existences of fabled creation, where phantasy takes
all the hues of the chamelion; and where the intangibility of their
whole apparatus eludes the grasp of reason, and secures their wild
assertions against demonstration. When the minds of men are thus lured
into the fictitious empire of theology, the good things of this world
are over with them, and fall to the share of the priests, who live in
luxury, while they preach to their deluded votaries the _unspeakable
blessings_ of poverty; and that through the _unsearchable mysteries of
God's love to man_, want and misery in this world are by far the best
preparatives for "their exceeding great reward," in _kingdom come_. This
is what is called "religious instruction," which, being interpreted,
signifies the diffusion of that abject ignorance which shuts out the
light of experience and reason--puts blind faith* in its place,
and thereby fits both mind and body for slavery. In this element of
ignorance, so congenial to the profession, from its being of their own
creation, the priesthoods of Europe, aided by the corruption of civil
rulers, have been allowed to embody themselves into vast and well
organised phalanxes, regularly trained to wage perpetual war against the
light of nature and common sense.
* The only true definition of religious faith, is an
implicit submission of the judgment--a belief in what we
neither see, hear, feel, taste, or smell.
The veracious translators of our "Word of God," have made
Paul, on most occasions, use the word _faith_, in place of
_truth_; for instance, in Rom. iv., 9, they make him affirm,
"For we say that _faith_ was reckoned to Abraham for
righteousness." Now, the true translation from the Greek
is,--"For we affirm that the truth became to Abraham
justice"
It is particularly observable in the esprit du corps of theologians,
that in order to epitomise and mould the mind of man into a total
subjection to their interest and power, and to establish the absolute
necessity of their mediatorial office, it is indispensable that he
should, through what they call original sin, be degraded below the scale
of his true position in the order of nature, in exact proportion to the
elevation above that scale, which they confer upon him on the score of
his soul's immortality. In this final destination which they assign
him, his fate must either be eternal blessedness, through their official
interference in his favor, in wiping off his imputed transgressions,
committed six thousand years before he was born, or everlasting
perdition and misery, should that intercession be wanting.*
* Though the commissioned attornies of the immaterial being
pretend a deep interest in having his edicts obeyed, yet
their real views and interests can only be served by the
multiplication of offences, which is their harvest. When
their sway was at its zenith, crime created the lucrative
season of repentance; and the posthumous terrors with which
they debase the minds of their dupes are the best of all
preparatives for their dominion; for when these horrors are
raised to a certain height, the fatal machinery for mental
subjugation is irresistible, and almost as perfect as it is
among the Brahmin priests of India. In England, the statute
of mortmain is a lasting attestation of the height to which
death-bed expiations and commutations were actually carried;
and it is not extravagant to affirm, that if no change in
public opinion had taken place, in regard to the selfish
intrigues and frauds of the clergy, "and no interposition on
the part of the legislature to put a stop to them, nearly
all the land in that kingdom would have become the property
of the church."
Between these two extremes of heaven and hell they keep him suspended,
themselves holding the haulyards rope in their own hands, ready to
pull him up to the one or lower him down to the other, according as
he believes, in and supports, or rejects and condemns their craft and
traffic. In the political and religious drama of enslaving the great
majority of the people, the above parts of the play are, of course, the
peculiar province of the priesthood, who to the fabled guilt of original
sin, have charged upon the gloomy minds of their wretched votaries, an
endless catalogue of sins, by thought, word, and deed; to every one of
which the punishment of eternal flames has been awarded. The kingly and
aristocratic part of this drama is to make laws to suit themselves and
their priesthood--to bind down reason, so as to prevent it rebelling
against the most shocking absurdities--compel it to acquiesce in the
imperative mandates of a vile superstition; and _demonstrate_, through
the powerful arguments of imprisonment and ruin, that all investigation
of the plot or proof of falsehood adduced against the actors, is
wickedness.*
* Every rancorous feeling and motive among religious
fanatics, conspire to create and provoke antipathy, and to
swell it to the utmost pitch of intensity against the
materialist, who holds them all in contempt. These are the
only feelings in which the deluded votaries of supernatural
revelations coincide, in directing their common enmity
against that philosophy which, they know, treats them with
derision. This enmity is inexorable and eternal, though
restrained, at present, from gratifying its natural
ferocity.
This species of delusion, which passes under the name of supernatural
revelation, upon which impostors in every age have founded their
schemes, is too gross and palpable in many of its dogmas, to maintain
a footing even among ignorant men, but for the protection of corrupt
governments, that seek aid in fraud. Its ministers have ever said
to civil rulers--"take us into partnership--give us riches and
honors--support our pretensions when we gull the millions, and in
return, with our adherence and connivance, you may safely carry
oppression to any lengths you please." Thus between a governing
aristocracy, (as in England) and their adopted hierarchy, there is an
inborn affinity and coincidence of views and interests, which not only
exclude, but are incurably opposed to the natural happiness of the mass
of mankind; and as for the means of compassing their ends, each wields
that sort of power which serves to uphold the other; and when united,
resistance is unavailing, unless it is backed by the unanimous will of
a nation. But this national unanimity in eradicating these collusive and
deep rooted frauds, is not to be expected, until natural humanity and
sound morality shall take place of supernaturalism, and "_religious
instruction_" make way for practical virtue and useful knowledge, in the
education of youth. Then, and not till then, will every individual be
able to perceive, that the man who contributes to the support of any
priesthood, subsidizes a standing army, for the perpetual subversion of
his dearest rights and liberties.
We shall now make a digression from the opening subjects of this
lecture, with the view of adducing additional facts which tend to prove,
that the chief moral and political evils which pervade Christendom,
sprang from laws and institutions derived from, or sanctioned by, the
books of Jewish theocracy, all of which have been uniformly calculated
to uphold the injustice of the idle few, against the industrious many.
Amongst these, the feudal curse of primogeniture, as "part and parcel of
the law," stands prominent in bad eminence. Yet this law, even among
the Jews, was not so outrageously cruel as it now is among many European
nations; for, with them, the first-born son, though consecrated to the
Hebrew god, was not, it seems, entitled to more than a double portion
of the inheritance. In regard to the entailing of land, for the most
iniquitous purpose of securing it against sale for the payment of just
debts, the Jews and their deity, barbarous as they were, would probably
have been ashamed of such rank injustice. In early ages, land was
considered merely as the means of subsistence; but in the darkest times
of ignorance and feudal oppression, it became the overbearing means
of obtaining political power, and was monopolised by the aristocratic
orders;* whilst their class-law of primogeniture, and its execrable
concomitant of entail upon land, were unrighteously resorted to, as the
only means of eternising the domineering sway of feudal tyranny, and
to perpetuate possession, in defiance of all the just debts which might
have been incurred by the possessor. The absurdity of these laws is no
less glaring than the injustice of their original object, "when they
presume that each successive generation of men have not an equal right
to the earth--that the property of the present generation should be
restrained and regulated to the fancy of those who lived many centuries
ago."
* At least nine-tenths of all the land in Great Britain and
Ireland, have got into the hands of the aristocracy, lay and
clerical, and almost wholly through the means of their
selfish legislation. But this is not the worst--they say to
the mass of the people: "You shall pay us whatever price we
please for the produce of these lands," and they enforce this
by corn-laws, and other food monopolies, which they have made
for their own advantage. These laws are "a curse equal to
the barrenness of the earth, and the inclemency of the
heavens."
The Roman jurisprudence adhered to the equality of nature, by an equal
division of property among the children, whether that consisted of land
or other goods, and the cruel prerogatives of primogeniture and entail
were unknown.
The universal degradation, poverty and misery, caused by these
aristocratic scourges of society, destitute as they are of a single
redeeming advantage to lessen the enormity of the evil, sufficiently
betray the nefarious views and selfish ends of the feudal legislators
by whom they were enacted. But these are best shown in the mischievous
effects which it is impossible for them not to produce, forming, as they
do, a source which diffuses fraternal jealousy, animosity, and hatred,
through a thousand channels over the land: and all to perpetuate the
insolent pride of family distinction, by arming an arrogant individual
with unjust power to lord it over the rest of the family, and that too
by means of the same wealth which ought to render the whole independent.
In these cases, when the younger brothers escape penury or beggary, it
is only by dint of doubling the injustice of these laws, by quartering
them, as so many locusts, upon the industry of the public, under shelter
of that mass of aristocratic corruption, whence issue our stall-fed
hierarchy, and the thousands of other privileged idlers, whose places
are created for the adherents and supporters of profligate governments.
Thus the younger sons and brothers are provided for whilst the poor
females, if not palmed upon the pension list, are hopelessly consigned
to the most abject dependence; their only inheritance being a perverted
education, by which they are moulded into mere creatures of unnatural
habits and customs, and of mental impressions that are utterly false in
everything.
These laws, thus infamously contrived for the exclusive benefit and
aggrandisement of the makers, in perpetuating the feudal line of
succession by entails upon immense tracts of land, again double the evil
in a national point of view, by preventing the creation of that wealth,
which never fails to arise from the proper division and subdivision of
over-grown estates, the parcelling out of which is sure to be followed
by a superior cultivation of the land. It is impossible to suppose that
the people generally, of any country, were ever so grossly and stupidly
ignorant, as to have a hand in forming such iniquitous institutions,
_and those who tolerate them are not worthy of better_.*
* Napoleon observed that, "The people of a nation were not
deserving of better laws than those they submitted to."
"Nature's social union;" or that universal harmony which is
chiefly disturbed by the wanton, unfeeling dominion of man,
and thus fallaciously sanctioned by the "science of God."
These are samples of the grievances which may be expected to spring up,
when aristocracies usurp and engross the legislation of countries; and
when the contaminating arts of theology are allied to these, it is then
that political evils of the first magnitude are engendered.
In the palmy days of our superstition, when a much denser cloud of
ignorance, than even the present, had totally eclipsed the intellectual
faculties of men, they were doomed through life by their tyrants, the
magicians of supernaturalism, to endure an aggregate of mental and
bodily misery far exceeding that of any other class of animals; and
this is still the case in exact proportion to the prevalence of that
delusion. But lest rebellious reason should induce people to be restive
under these earthly sufferings, a mode of remuneration which costs
these magicians nothing, was invented, not alone by the preternatural
elevation to everlasting inheritance in the celestial regions, after
death, but, in addition, all terrestrial animals were made over in
fee-simple, as the absolute property of man, nothing else being in
view when they were created, but the use and accommodation of the
heaven-bound favorite, to kill, eat, and destroy; or if such be his
interest or caprice, to hold them in that merciless state of oppression
which soon leads to a cruel and lingering death. This is the usual
way in which he shows his mighty superiority over them, as "inferior
animals." The arrogant assumption of this absurd dogma is not only
false in philosophy and analogy, but cruelly injurious in morals, and
destructive.
These pernicious hatchings of theology are wholly unsanctioned by
Nature, who, in her perfect impartiality towards every creature which
her purely physical process organises into life, makes an even balance
of all her grants and denials throughout the animated world: and though
it may appear to the cursory observer that she has, upon the whole,
favored some animals more than others, yet all these seeming advantages
are counterbalanced or neutralised by other mental or physical qualities
of an opposite or defective tendency which, in the most comprehensive
sense, reduce the lives of all, as regards the amount' of pleasurable
sensations through life, to nearly an equality.** On examining this
matter still more closely, we shall find that the greatest proportion of
evil or misery invariably falls to the share of those animals who depart
the farthest from the laws or conditions of their nature. Of this fatal
estrangement, man exhibits an instance that is almost solitary on this
globe; for all other creatures obey the conditions of their existence,
excepting such as have been compelled to deviate from them, in
consequence of being subjected to his usurped dominion. His right to
hold a horse or a dog in slavery, is precisely the same as that of
holding a negro in bondage; and as for his carnivorous habit of using
almost every animal as food, it is justified by his superstition alone,
and utterly condemned by his nature. His right to kill and eat a sheep
or a deer, is exactly the same in point of moral justice, as that of
a shark or a tiger, when they subdue and eat their prey; in which they
feel no compunctious visitations about including their pretended lord
and master, man, himself. In all these cases, the rule of right is alone
established by possession of the art or strength to conquer.
* Burns.
** Vide Eccles. iii., 19, 20,21.
Man's dominion over the other animals, is a pure usurpation: and though
he differs from them in the structure of his body, he is superior to
them only in some qualities, which have been greatly improved by the
recorded experience of his species, handed down to him through a course
of some thousands of years; and from which springs that combination
in society which renders him formidable to his "fellow worms." This is
proved beyond contradiction by comparing him, as the educated and armed
production of society, with what he is in the wild or natural state for
in the latter condition, he is so far from being "superior," that he
becomes the prey of animals much smaller than himself, which look upon
him as destined by nature for their subsistence, and use him as food
accordingly. These facts are so well borne out by experience, that they
will be denied only by that false pride which theology instils to answer
its own ends.
* Man, like every other animal, is born without the quality
called reason; and like them, must gain it as the fruit of
experience, by which all acquire it to a certain degree; and
in some of them it is much more perfect than it is in man;
but his excessive pride and love of dominion, blinds him
against this great truth. That which he is taught to call
reason in himself, must, forsooth, be only instinct, when
applied to the mental faculties of those he calls brutes.
Here the difference is in distinction of terms:--
"Reason and instinct, how can ye divide?
'Tis the fool's folly, and the churchman's pride."
But if the cunning and ingenuity consequent upon man's extra allowance
of brain has enabled him, by dint of combination in society, to subdue
many animals for his use, has he by this means, and what he calls
civilisation, really and truly improved his condition for the brief term
of life which nature has allotted him? Are not the evils generated by
education, in which hypocrisy and fraud are the chief ingredients--the
vices--the crimes--the immoral and distracting systems of religion,
which induce a general depravity of character, and the unnatural
and iniquitous laws emanating from such a corrupt state of society,
infinitely greater than the alleged advantages arising from this boasted
civilisation? If we take the aggregate of morality in man, as he is at
present produced and educated in the great manufactory of society, in
which Christian theology with its concomitant evils, are the principal
apparatus, we shall have difficulty in finding on the face of the earth,
a more vicious, treacherous, and cruel animal. This is always denied
in theory; but the conduct of every man recognises its woeful truth
practically. Let the man of observation and true candor of mind lay his
hand upon his heart, and honestly declare whether his fellow men, and in
instances, even those he calls his friends, are not the sole source
of all his inquietudes and miseries--whether this demi-god is not the
animal that he is obliged to be more incessantly on his guard against
than any other! This universal prevalence of vice and moral depravity
is primarily accounted for by the priest and superstitionist, by the
equally flagitious and absurd dogma about what they call original sin;
but the true cause is very far from lurking in anything innately vicious
in human nature, but on the contrary, is wholly engendered by their
own unearthly delusions--the contagion of supernaturalism, and its
distracting train of theological inventions. These are the fatal lures
which have estranged and drawn man to apostatise from the wholesome
principles of his nature--surrounded him with artificial circumstances
wholly adverse to these principles, and as degrading to his position as
an intelligent being, as they are inimical to his peace and happiness.
Whilst the elements of society shall continue to be thus contaminated,
life will be a gift scarce worth receiving and though the ingenuous
truth-loving mind may, on the approach of dissolution, feel dismayed at
the idea of ceasing to contemplate the beautiful of nature--the sun, the
green fields, the woods, the streams, and the mountains, in which alone
it finds prayers and sermons; yet no reluctance can be experienced
in quitting intercourse with fellow men, whose religion imposes the
necessity of shunning truth in almost anything, affords an example of
habitual deception,* and by placing the _unnatural_, in the chair of the
_natural_, turns man into a pitiful caricature of what he ought to be,
in the nobler destinies of humanity.
* The mask being indispensable in theology, it is not
wonderful that its votaries should appear everywhere in
disguise.