Let those weak minds that live in doubt and fear,
To juggling priests--fair Nature's foes, repair;
These soul-savers,--truth's blackest enemies,
I ne'er consult, and heartily despise.
Its foul leagues with tyranny, persecutions, cruelty;
society poisoned by its all-pervading influence; what is
good in gospel morals borrowed from the ancients; its
usurpation of one-seventh of man's time, and one-tenth of
the proceeds of his industry; other evils which it occasions
generally.
In extending our view of the immoral, degrading, and malign effects of
the Christian superstition, it is but just and fair to observe, that
all other systems of religion which have successively plagued the world,
founded on the pretensions of impostors to supernatural revelations,
have also been destructive of human welfare, though in a degree much
less subversive of natural rights. The scanty remains of ancient history
and science, which Christian and Mahommedan priests and tyrants have
suffered to reach us, show clearly that in all ages and countries, the
ignorance of the bulk of mankind hath constantly rendered them the
dupes of some sort of priests, by whom that ignorance has been uniformly
cherished and promoted, as the most congenial soil for the growth of
church and state corruptions. There never has been, and there never can
be, any very bad government without the confederate aid of that master
evil,* the imaginary science of theology (for all is illusion that
is said to be beyond the physical powers of Nature** the poetical
personification of which is called "Nature's God"); and a wicked and
tyrannical government, whether kingly or aristocratic, can no more do
without a sympathetic priesthood, than the latter can do without their
devil; hence it follows that all state authority has been pernicious in
the exact ratio of its connexion with these priesthoods. This may partly
be proved by the superiority of the government of the United States,
(where the alloy of ecclesiastical union is strictly guarded against)
over that of any European nation, not excepting England, where both
houses of Parliament are sadly tainted, and one of them almost governed
by the wizard influence of the church; yet, owing to the decayed, and
rapidly decaying, power of this incubus, these dominions enjoy more
liberty than Spain,*** which for many centuries has had no other
executive rule than the most oppressive and irksome superstition that
ever degraded and enslaved the human race; and whose sons are at this
moment pouring out their blood in the endeavor to pull out the teeth,
and curtail the claws, if they cannot kill, the monster.
* Plato states that religious pretences have always formed
one of the most powerful frauds of political despotism; and
Aristotle calls the profession of religion not only the
surest auxiliary of tyrants, but an enslaving tyranny in
itself.
** Divines say that Nature is wholly inexplicable without a
god; that is, to explain what they know very little of, they
have recourse to a cause which they know not at all.
*** For many centuries past, the finest countries in Europe,
via., Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, have been nothing but
theological beargardens, and so they are to this day.
The history of all religions, we repeat, is but a catalogue of follies,
knavery, cruelty, and crime; the whole forming a continued libel upon
mankind, and proving their ignorance and unbounded credulity; the
tyrant, confederate with the priest, assists him to impose upon you his
creed, on the strength of which he demands your faith, on the strength
of which he "_demands your money_"--not at the point of the bayonet, in
the first instance, but if you refuse to _deliver_, he calls in the aid
of his political partner, whom he has ever taught you "to obey in all
things;" so that, between the priest and "the powers that be,"
your money is extorted, though not by a highwayman. The iniquity of
compelling a man to support an idle and rapacious order of theologians,
whom he wishes to have nothing to do with, is an act of injustice too
shameful to be committed by any wise and good government.
Since we can distinctly trace priestcraft so far back as the times
of Hesiod and Homer, to talk of its origin would be as futile and
unprofitable, as it would be to speak of the first evil amongst men; if
the two are not necessarily coeval, certainly the cup of the latter
was not full until the former filled up the measure. And, as "things
naturally bad make strong themselves by ill," tyrannical governments
have been enabled, through collusion with this baleful pest, to carry
their oppressions to the highest pitch of profligacy and wickedness; and
for a quiet submission to the degradation and miseries thus occasioned
in real life, the dupes are promised a blissful remuneration, in an
imaginary _post mortem life_, created for this express purpose. But
every endeavor to open the eyes of the deceived, or to remove the evils
arising from this mischievous confederacy, is threatened with a life of
everlasting burning after death.*
* "The object of the first legislators was to govern the
people; and the easiest method to effect it was through the
priesthood, to terrify their minds, and prevent the exercise
of reason. They led them through winding by-paths, lest they
might perceive the designs of their guides; they forced them
to fix their eyes in the air lest they should look at their
feet; they amused them on the way with idle stories; in a
word, they treated them as nurses do children."
By thus playing upon the unlimited credulity of man, in a state of
ignorance, through the delusive medium of supernatural existences, he is
trained from childhood to submit to mental and bodily oppressions, which
manhood would make him shake off, and spurn with indignation, were it
not for these paralyzing deceptions, which, while they degrade, form the
principal tower of strength against him in the hands of his oppressors.
His belief in the traditionary tales of the Jewish compilation, is
anxiously instilled into his mind in childhood, as the word of the
Supreme Power of the Universe; and this false impression subsequently
becomes so rooted and strong, that he neither can nor dares to see the
immoral and destructive tendency of these tales; and, that from them
have been drawn precedents to justify the most atrocious and murderous
invasions of peaceful countries. From these mischievous legends have
also been drawn, as a common fountain of evil, all those conflicting
doctrines, dogmas, and creeds, which the militant priests of Christendom
have made convertible at will, and turned into a channel overflowing
with the good things of a world which they affect to despise. This
is the polluted source from which has sprung what is falsely called
civilisation, which has created around man an unnatural atmosphere,
wherein vice and dissimulation are the chief ingredients, rendering
civilised man in many respects, the vilest of animals; and more
contemptible, because less virtuous, than the uncorrupted child of
Nature.
These pernicious dogmas and creeds did not begin to show their deadly
effects nationally, until the imperial apostate Constantine gave
patronage and strength to one of the belligerent sects; and by
interposing his authority, prevented, for a short time, their cutting
each other's throats; but as for attempting to assimilate their wild and
discordant schemes, he might as well have commanded the winds to blow
continually from one point; for as the heterogeneous mass of theological
machinery arose out of the fabulous or allegorical legends of various
countries, a system drawn from such chaotic materials, must be always
at war in its parts; hence the fierce and virulent animosities--the
remorseless and exterminating devastations, which these maniacal notions
and creeds engendered all over Europe. Such of the contending sects who,
from their number or their violence, were considered most suitable
for the purposes of political tyranny, were taken into league with
successive governments, which gave them the power of exercising over
all their opponents, the utmost cruelty and oppression. From these
times till about the close of the sixteenth century, when the science of
Nature began to check the mischievous demon of theology, we repeat that
millions upon millions of men, women and children were tortured and
murdered in religious persecutions* and wars; whilst a sum not less than
L400,000,000,000 in money, besides other property, was wrung from the
laboring man, not to instruct him in a particle of useful knowledge, but
to keep him in that state of abject ignorance which alone fits him for
slavery.
* All religions pretending to revelation, are necessarily of
the persecuting kind; and it is these alone that show an
extraordinary zeal for-dissemination in other countries:
but the religion of Nature being perfectly tolerant, leaves
its own propagation to self-evidence.
All this has been done to maintain various denominations of aristocratic
tyranny, combined with rapacious priests, in whose minds were seated the
deepest hypocrisy and the blackest vices--who carried humanity on
their lips, and robbery and murder in their hearts. The victims of
Christianity far exceed in number the whole that have fallen by all the
other idolatrous superstitions which at any time have plagued the world;
and most truly did it announce that it "came not to send peace on earth,
but a sword;" a sword that never has, and never will find a scabbard,
until the whole baseless fabric of delusion shall sink into merited
oblivion; we would say a thousand times over--look at Spain--look at
Ireland--look at any country in Europe before the 17th century, and you
will see the priests reeking with gore. And if you are not utterly
lost in ignorance and prejudice, you will see the effects of corrupt
governments striving to force favored superstitions upon the dupes of
other religions. No intellectual blindness but that which will not see,
could prevent your seeing palpably, that all religion, except that of
Nature, is the accursed thing which occasions and perpetuates the deadly
feuds between man and man; and creates those insane animosities which
embitter and poison all the natural sweets of this fair world. Such
fatal results must be inevitable whilst man has the credulous folly to
maintain in idleness and luxury, myriads of his own species whom his
labor educates, as it were, for the express purpose of deceiving him.
These are the professors of the pretended science of supernaturals,
_alias_, nonentities, or at all events of unproved existences, of which
the most illiterate hind knows just as much as the proudest hierarch.
The _principle_ of priestcraft being unchangeable, the countries where
this freshly modified superstition first gained a footing had been kept
in deep ignorance by the old mythology,* so that the hierarchy of the
new were safe in going any lengths in multiplying absurdities; for
nothing can ever be monstrous enough to shake the credulity of the
vulgar populace;** so prodigies of all dimensions grew common, and
every cunning impostor, who found himself able to deceive others, had
inspirations from heaven--turned priest, and dealt in supematurals;
knowing well that where mental imbecility has been successfully fostered
by the craft, it is sheer silliness to be scrupulous about the means of
deception, however monstrous.***
"Be joggled mob! you are the tools
That priests do work with, called fools."
* One universal mythos, or fable wearing the garb of
history, has been the basis of all religions, ancient and
modern. This mythos is rooted in, and has secret allusion to
the zodiac and the solar system, in which the sun and the
rest of the "Host of Heaven" were turned into imaginary
personages, under peculiar nomenclatures in each country;
and fanciful narratives concerning them, were invented by
the astronomising priests, in order to stultify and subject
the minds of the ignorant populace. This deception continues
to the present day, for the solar mythos was the true
Christianity. When the French, under Napoleon, possessed
Italy, they examined the chair of St. Peter, and found upon
it the signs of the zodiac.
** Nothing, says the Cardinal de Retz, convinces fools so
much as that which they cannot comprehend.--Lucian
Redivivus.
*** As the ignorance of nations grows darker, priests of all
religions see their way the more clearly.
In regard to the theogony upon which these conjurors founded their
various systems, it appears never to have been of the slightest
importance whether it consisted of one, two, three, or thirty thousand
divinities; though it must be confessed that the triune mythology of
Christianity has answered, better than any other, the aristocratic
purpose of general ignorance and oppression. Like their predecessors,
its priests have governed solely in the names of their gods, whom on
all occasions they cause to speak whatever is fitting and agreeable to
sacerdotal interests and power; and all this passes as the commands of
God, which, they declare, must take precedence of all civil affairs.
From this usurpation is formed the almost insurmountable barrier against
human liberty, "the _imperium in imperio_," or the visionary empire of
supernaturalism within, and either confederate with, or independent of,
the secular empire. All belief in anything supernatural is a pitiable
and deplorable hallucination of mind, everything pretending to be such
being the offspring of sheer imposture; and until the age of reason
and science shall have succeeded those ages of delusion and ignorance
through which the world has hitherto rolled, the paramount power upon
its surface will be priestcraft.
This craft is twin sister to witchcraft; and the former cherished and
supported the latter as long as her head could be kept above water; but
when the sun of science (the mortal foe of these two crafts) began to
beam upon the imaginary hag, she sank to rise no more;* and men are now
astonished at the credit she had gained in the world, and still more at
the brutal ignorance which allowed her to shed so much innocent blood.**
* Science having thus as it were suffocated the weird hag of
witchcraft, a most useful auxiliary is gone of that religion
which, more than all others, has been
"Blood-nursed, and watered by the widow's tears."
** The Stat. 1 James 1st, c. 12, enacts, "That all persons
invoking any evil spirit, or consulting, covenanting with,
entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil
spirit, etc., etc., etc., shall be guilty of felony, without
benefit of clergy, and suffer death." Oh the height, the
profound depth of the "wisdom of our ancestors!"
It is computed that about 30,000 miserable victims were tortured and
burnt for this supposed offence; yet, if this blood be compared with the
quantity shed by the still surviving sister, it would appear but as a
drop in the ocean. But the same sun of science, in exact ratio as it is
now dispelling the mists of ignorance and superstition which the mother,
theology, has raised, is hastening the remaining twin's downfall.
Witchcraft was one of the thousand dismal evils arising from the belief
in preternatural existences, but quite conducive to the views in trade
of all church mystagogues, who never failed to sanction and abet the
horrid executions of the poor defenceless culprits. The priests drew
their justifying precedent from that book in which the vindication
of every crime may be found: in Exod. xxii., 18, the inhuman order
is given, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Here we have a
point-blank justification of all those atrocious immolations which
disgraced humanity for so many centuries, and laid the foundation of
detestable laws, in the countries of America. At Salem, where so
many murders were committed for the fanciful crime of witchcraft, the
accusations originated in the house of a priest were chiefly carried
on by priests, who blew the terrible flame of fanaticism against
the helpless accused, whose lives were acknowledged to be moral and
blameless. Nineteen of these innocent victims were executed,* one was
pressed to death because he would not plead to the indictment, and eight
more were condemned. This hideous business ended by a declaration of
the priests that, in the whole the devil got just nothing; but God got
praises, Christ got subjects, the holy spirit got temples, the church
got addition, and the souls of men got everlasting benefits! With
similar views, and in such a laudable spirit, John Wesley exclaimed,
"_While I live I will bear the most public testimony I can to the
reality of witchcraft_." At a torturing and burning which took place at
Irvine in 1613, in the affair of Margaret Barclay and others, there were
present the Earl of Eglinton, the ministers of Ayr, Kilmarnock, Dairy,
and Irvine, when three innocent people were sacrificed.** these wretched
* It is said that several of these victims were persuaded by
the priests to believe, and even to confess that they had
been guilty of this imaginary crime. This affords a
melancholy proof that, in a state of ignorance, the
credulity of man is absolutely boundless.
** See Scott's "Demonology," and Murphy's "Essay."
What! Were not these holy ministers prompted by their superior learning
and humanity, to endeavor to save people? Quite the contrary, they
appear to have been there rather to countenance and approve, if not to
enjoy, the shocking spectacle. Such as these were the heavenly teachers,
who, for more than a thousand years, asserted, preached, and practised,
_that the rack was the fittest engine of conviction_, and the stake
the most effectual cure for unbelief.* As conservators and upholders of
every invention in the delusive machinery of supernaturalism, upon which
their trade wholly depends, anything in the shape of human interference
in favor of the victims, or any compunctious feelings for the
barbarities which these men of peace and love sanctioned, were
altogether out of the question on such occasions. No animal has ever
been more cruel and remorseless than priests of all religions have been,
in supporting those delusions which support them, _whenever they had
the power._*** The Jew books being now nullified as authorities for
the existence of witchcraft, what sustains their validity in all other
matters?
* What terrific outrages does superstitious ignorance
perpetrate. Thousands have been burnt for witchcraft.
Millions have been murdered for being what bad government
and Christianity have made them. And hundreds of millions
are threatened with eternal tortures for having beliefs
which it is impossible for them not to have.
** Belief or disbelief (being the work of the judgment, and
not of the will) is involuntary; and there is neither merit
nor demerit in either. You believe only that which seems to
you to be true, and, in spite of your hypocrisy, I defy you
to believe more. What does the Atheist less? And that which
appears to you to be a lie, you necessarily reject, and what
does the Atheist more.
*** Superstition is to be feared only when the authority of
iniquitous laws rallies round her standard, for then her
cruel and sanguinary nature is gratified.
Such has been Jewish and Christian immorality and wickedness, in
punishing the guiltless for the fanciful crime of witchcraft; and in
other respects we may find in these books innumerable instances of
sanctioned cruelty and injustice, both in example and precept:--take
the following malevolent sentiment, said to have been uttered by the
all-ruling power of the universe; "let his children be fatherless; let
them be vagabonds continually, and beg; let them also seek their bread
out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he
hath; and let the stranger spoil his labor, let there be none to extend
mercy to him, neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children;
let his posterity be cut off," etc., etc. Again, in Exod. xxiii., 3.
"_Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his own cause_."
These are specimens of Bible morality! He alone is the blasphemer who
attributes such vicious and malevolent orders to the supreme power.
The Christian, in their presumptuous and unwarrantable assertions,
assume that the science of ethics is comparatively of modern date, and
that the personage called Jesus Christ was the first who taught
that pure morality and virtue constituted the summum bonum of human
happiness; and that all morality owes its existence to their gospels;
and that all ethical goodness to be found out of Christendom, is
entirely attributable to their Scriptures. But nothing can be farther
from the truth than this evangelical detraction, with its inexorable
disregard to facts. Fortunately for the calumniated cause of Paganism,
we have data, chronological and historical, to show that the science of
ethics was not only perfectly known to the ancients, but that the few
really good things which are to be found in the New Testament, were
borrowed from what is called "the divine philosophy of the ancients;"
or the moral maxims of Pythagoras, Thales, Solon, Bias, Pittacus, Chilo,
Cleobulus, Periander, and many others, who lived full 500 years before
the Christian era. This is so demonstrably true, that the sayings of
these men are in some instances copied into the New Testament almost
word for word; but for the maxims of that book which are either bad
or questionable (and these are not a few), there is no authority to be
found in the ancients cited.
The compilers of the above book have also drawn literally from the moral
maxims of Confucius,* who, according to some writers, has been held in
great esteem in China for about 4,000 years, but all agree that he lived
at least 550 before our era.
* As names in eastern languages are expressive of some
attribute or quality adherent to the possessor; so Confucius
signifies a speaker of wisdom.
His 24th moral is the most precious standard maxim in ethics: "Do to
another what you would he should do to you, and do not unto another what
you would should not be done unto you." To impress this indelibly upon
the mind, as the concentrated essence of morality, he adds, "_thou
needest this law alone, it is the foundation and principle of all the
rest_." In his 53rd moral, he says, "Acknowledge thy benefits by return
of other benefits, but never revenge injuries." This is a noble maxim
when compared with that abject and slavish one of the "new will of God,"
which enjoins the holding up of the cheek to receive a second blow. The
disciples of Confucius are yet numerous, though many thousands of years
have elapsed since he lived. He instructed as well by example as by
his precepts; and it would be well if his morals were taught in all
the schools of Christendom, instead of dogmas and creeds which are
unintelligible, inasmuch as they relate to things which have no proven
existence, The German writer Boll, very justly observes that, "if
Christianity be got rid of, which seems likely, men must labor not to
let such absurd ideas get into the new religion of morals, which will
be established on the ruins of superstition." He was alluding to the
eternal tortures of those priestly indispensables called souls, and
other unsightly dogmas.
* To the shame of credulous and priest-degraded mankind, the
present superstition of Europe hath been established, as it
were, in defiance of the light of Nature, reason, common
sense, and all experience; and what is still more strange
and revolting, by those very means and agencies which men
ought to hold most in contempt and detestation; viz., fraud,
forgery, pretended miracles and prophecies, hypocrisy,
avarice, tyranny, cruelty, massacres, and wars which have
deluged the earth with blood, and sacrificed hundreds of
millions of human beings to its frenzied demon.
In no age of the world was morality ever found more pure and virtuous
than amongst the Epicureans of old; and no ancient sect has been so much
traduced and vilified by Christian priests of all denominations, who, in
lauding the most revolting system that ever insulted the understanding
of man,* have been utterly regardless of truth in their foul aspersions
of Paganism; and have represented these amiable rationalists as reckless
sensualists--profligate voluptuaries; which is just the reverse of
their true characters. With them the preservation of health was the
fundamental principle, since there can be no enjoyment of life without
that pre-requisite; and the means they used to secure its permanence
was the strict observance of temperance in everything, according to the
dictates of Nature; all excess of any kind whatsoever was avoided as
injurious, and the full and proper exercise of the body was enjoined as
indispensable. Free from the restlessness of ambition, the utility
of their maxims was evinced in their lives, and they were generally
esteemed as the most exemplary and virtuous of all the ancients, and the
most noted for the value of their moral actions. We may gather from
the writings of Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, that they did more
scrupulously observe the laws, piety, and fidelity among men, than any
other sect whatsoever, not excepting even the Stoics themselves. Like
the philanthropist, Owen, they held that a man was either good or bad
according to education and custom. Being, above all others, strict
observers of truth and honesty, they were often chosen to manage
the inheritances of orphans, and it was common with them to rear and
educate, at their own expense, the children of deceased friends; their
known integrity frequently procured for them offers from the Roman
consuls and emperors, to fill high places of employment and trust; but
these offers were often declined, from the strong desire they had to
lead private lives, free from care and anxiety. They had no desire
for posthumous renown, and denied that there was any future state of
existence for man, more than for any other animal; and teaching that
mind or soul is wholly dependent on animal organisation*--the mere
creature of the brain, without which it has no existence; and that the
matter composing the bodies of men and other animals, is alone eternal,
though subject to thousands of millions of different forms, modes, or
states of being.
* Intelligence is the result of the animal organisation of
matter, and cannot be separated from, or have existence
without it. "Animated matter is not the result of
intelligence." Thought, mind, soul, or breath, call it
which you will, is as much the offspring or effect of
organisation as music is of the instrument that produces it.
One of the great luminaries of the church, even the Bishop
of Llandaff, has given us his own creed respecting what is
called soul, which savors of something more than mere
scepticism. Speaking of its supposed flight into
immortality, after death, he says,--"This notion was,
without doubt, the offspring of prejudice and ignorance; I
must own that my knowledge of the nature of the soul is much
the same now that it was then" (in childhood). "I have read
volumes on the subject, but I have no scruple in saying that
I know nothing about it"--Anecdotes of his own life,
written by himself.
But in modern times, under the triune mythology (or the three-god
fable), society is in a great measure destitute of such pure morality,
and sound philosophy; all being mixed up with the deleterious alloy of
theology, and its ever-changing inventions in its own peculiar element
of unproved existences. This supernaturalism is the only delusion that
deserves the name of atheism, because it beguiles man to set at nought
the immutable revelations of Nature; and its very essence being to
prevent all correct views of that Power, the pretension to look beyond
it nullifies or vitiates everything good on earth. Whilst mankind shall
not only continue to be advocates for those impositions which destroy
their own pleasure and happiness, but pay for their degradation by
supporting a mischievous canker-worm priesthood, they deprive themselves
of a fair trial to see what a state of affluence and ease they might
attain by very moderate labor; and by repudiating all doctrines and
dogmas founded on spiritualism, immaterialism, or any other nothingism,
because they are words absolutely without meaning, as they represent
nothing that has a real existence; and therefore, until some immaterial
entity can be made palpable to the senses, they will remain downright
contradictions in terms, though they have hitherto served as the
principle machinery of theologie deception.* Contemning all such
visionary mummeries, our divines of the present day are at no loss
to find you a vast difference between a spiritual body, and a bodily
spirit!
* The learned amongst the Fathers were materialists.
Tertullian says, "Nihil incorporale nisi quod non est."
Saint Hilary, in the fourth century, affirmed that, "there
is nothing but what is corporeal" Yet and attending to the
principles of their own nature, together with the physical
realities that surround them, and upon which alone depends
every atom of their welfare and happiness, mankind will be
able by perseverance to remove the overwhelming evils of
their present condition; but in vain will they expect such
results, while they continue mere automata, to be played at
pleasure by superstition and despotism.
Amongst the many immoral corruptions which the present superstition of
Europe has entailed on the laboring man, few have a worse tendency than
the compulsory exaction of one seventh of his time, which its priests
have procured to be dedicated to their purposes alone; whereby he is
compelled either to be idle, or to swell their vain pageant train to
that shrine of hypocrisy called church. The observance of Sunday is,
like everything else in Christianism, borrowed from the heathens; and is
merely a continuation of the Pagan festival that was held in the temples
of the Sun, in adoration of that luminary, as the name attests beyond
all contradiction; with this difference alone, that the Fathers, as
if it were to make the thing more expensive and intolerable in their
Scripture traffic, changed it into a weekly festival, substituting
the triune machinery of the church for that of the temple. But as
the present observance of this day throughout Christendom is nowhere
enjoined in the New Testament, it was customary with Christians, even
in the fourth century, to perform their usual work on that day; and,
according to Mosheim, many of them held Thursdays and Fridays to be as
sacred as Sunday. The entailing upon human industry this weekly curse of
idleness was reserved for, and was worthy of, the Emperor Constantine, a
man who had the guilt of seven family murders upon his head: and as
the priests of Paganism refused to expiate those crimes (so Zosimus
and others say), he abandoned their religion, and adopted that
of Christianity, whose less scrupulous priests absolved him, and
white-washed his crimes to the purity of snow. In return for this
scouring, the imperial murderer felt himself prompted by gratitude to do
all in his power to establish a new hierarchy, who could make themselves
so subservient to the purposes of tyranny; so he began by paving the way
for finally depriving the industrious man of one seventh of his time,
which was to be appropriated in promoting the importance, the riches,
and the power of his newly adopted priesthood.
But even this pious man of blood (who to the very last, kept two strings
to his bow, but was rather more willing to pay his respects to Jupiter
than to Jehovah), wedded as he was to that priesthood, which had so
kindly effaced the stains of so many inhuman murders, durst not gratify
them all at once, lest he should bring a famine upon the empire; and
therefore by his edict issued on the subject, the observance of Sunday
was compulsory only upon magistrates, and the inhabitants of cities
generally; but in regard to the people in the country, and all
agriculturists, he says:--"_On the venerable day of the Sun, let those
who are situated in the country, freely and at full liberty, attend
to the business of agriculture_." After the death of this emperor, the
church which he had planted soon grew strong in wealth and power; and
the consequent influence of the hierarchy enabled them, gradually to
extend the forced respect for their own harvest-day, over both town and
country.
This clerical usurpation is so far from being sanctioned by any
authority, that the New Testament suffers no man to "judge another in
respect to the Sabbath day, or of any holy days" (see Coloss, ii.,
16). It asserts the right to esteem every day alike, "agreeably to the
persuasions of a man's own mind" (Romans, xiv., 5). It binds no man "to
the observance of days, and months, and times, and years" (Gal. iv., 10)
Jesus did not enjoin respect for the Sabbath, but justified the contrary
(Matt, xii., 5). There being no gospel authority requiring this waste
of time for the benefit and gratification of priests alone, it was
not until some time in the fourth century that they fully succeeded
in palming upon industry this weekly inlet to every vice; nor was
it legally enforced, we believe, until a considerable time after
the Council of Nice, that foulest combination of fraud, knavery, and
priestcraft that ever degraded the human race, Let us now attend a
little to the glaring immoralities and crimes which are the inevitable
effects of compulsory idleness on this day, that was originally the
heathen festival of the glorious solar deity.
There are few exceptions to the general rule, that the industrious man
is the virtuous. "By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," is
the universal decree of Nature; and every violator of this law of health
shall be unhappy in the precise ratio of its violation. Hence it follows
that when men are compelled either to be idle vagrants, or give up their
minds mechanically to a worship which appears to them at once useless
and irrational, they cannot do otherwise than prefer the former;
and being thus compelled to be idle, they are virtually forced to be
vicious, which leads to the reverse of happiness. The profligacy and
crime arising from this weekly idleness, is amply set forth in those
scenes of drunkenness, debauchery, gaming, and quarrelling, which are
of constant Sunday occurrence in our beer and gin palaces: but as
the various poisons vended in these sinks of ruin pay high duties
to government, and are, next to its oppressive ally, a rapacious
priesthood, the surest means of keeping the multitude in poverty and
ignorance, that virtuous and salutary legislation which would suppress
or regulate them according to public health and good morals, is not to
be expected from our present lawgivers, aristocratical and clerical,
who feel a deep interest in the ignorance and debasement of the
laboring classes. The orthodox Paley, who "_could not afford to keep a
conscience_" alludes to such places of public resort, when he says,
"the laboring classes" (being doomed to idleness) "consume their time
in rude, if not criminal pleasures--in stupid sloth or brutish
intemperance." He might have added, that vast numbers of young men
who have ended their career by an ignominious death, have dated the
commencement of their vicious courses from what the pampered harpies
in black are pleased to call "sabbath breaking," or "profanation of
the Lord's day." And who is to blame for all this? Verily none but
that powerful phalanx of hypocritical delusionists, who pretend to be
delegated from the immaterial, invisible "Persons," who rule the upper
regions; and who, in confederacy with hereditary lawgivers on earth,
have, amongst other conventional impositions, not only deprived the
wealth producers of their right to spend the seventh part of their time
in the way most suitable to their circumstances, but enforced idleness
during that time, which, coupled with that lurid ignorance called
religious instruction, most commonly leads to vice and debasement. With
a dissimulation and effrontery that is matchless out of the sacerdotal
order, they pretend an interest in the laboring man's ease and welfare;
that he requires the seventh as a day of rest, which day should be
dedicated to the "Lord" but as their Levitical authorities are derived
from the rankest species of priestcraft that ever degraded man, they
will no longer pass in the present age; for those must be mentally blind
who do not see, that in all times, whatever was ostensibly dedicated as
"God's share," was appropriated solely for the benefit of the priests.
It is most true that the working man wants rest; but is not he the best
judge when recreation or rest becomes necessary? The simple fact is,
he never can have either peace or rest, or live under equitable and
salutary laws, nor enjoy the fruits of his labor, whilst his mind is
kept in darkness by the delusions of supernaturalism, and his industry
preyed upon by its priests. To perpetuate the stultifying influence
of this wizard power, whose nature it is to be adverse to the natural
enlightenment of the bulk of mankind,* every corner of the country is
assiduously studded with expensive temples, devoted to the exercise
of its Sunday spells; but particularly for the nursing of popular
ignorance. Against such an overwhelming antagonist, abetted by the
government and riches of the country, all in deep array to frustrate
his intellectual improvement, the laboring man has nothing to oppose but
self-cultivation alone, which will lead him to the knowledge that it
is better to think for himself than to be cheated; and that all
the miseries he suffers are in reality rooted in unearthly
chimeras--nonentities which, in all ages and religions, have been
invented for similar purposes of deception and slavery. Until he so
relieves himself from this bondage (no other power will do it for him),
his condition must continue to be more abject and pitiable than that
of the sturdy savage, who stalks in the pride of his mental and bodily
independence; or even that of the beast of the field.
* Hobbes calls the pretended science of theology the kingdom
of darkness. It is indeed a perpetual insult to human
reason, debasing and debauching the mind.
Thus it appears that amongst the Christians, the coercive observance
of Sunday originated in a combination of the two crafts, kingly and
clerical, as a potential auxiliary for the permanent inthralment of the
human mind; for which it is indeed extremely well calculated, owing
to its unceasing recurrence as the weekly stifler of reason, and the
soporific of folly and ignorance; its frequency allows no breathing
time for common-sense. If men will contemn the light of Nature and the
evidence of their senses, to maintain a degrading superstition, let
them not suffer their political rulers to form co-partnership alliance,
offensive and defensive, with its priests. There can be no surer
proof of the corruption of a government than its confederacy with the
professors of any religion whatsoever. Mahommed was so sensible of the
danger of priesthoods in political states, and of their corrupting all
government, that he disapproved the allowance of any such institution,
and wished every Moslem to keep a copy of the Koran, and be his own
priest. But exactly as in the case of Christianism, his political and
theological followers soon established "the accursed thing." The Quakers
are too wise and too moral to allow this locust race to spring up
amongst them.
In the leading dogmas invented by theologians, it seems essential
that spiritual or divine justice should reverse the simplest rules of
morality and virtue; and that Nature's immutable law of death should be
held in terror as the greatest evil, though in reality it is merely a
necessary and happy transition of organised matter into another form,
throughout the animated creation; and as such, an absolute good.*
The ancients did not represent death as Christians do, with meagre
countenance, and a hideous structure of bones; but pleasant and
composed, as the image of the profoundest sleep; and such it struck no
terror. As the stronghold of priests, however, it has been clothed in
every imaginary horror that fraud can conceive, to render their spells
indispensable for death-bed or gallows repentance, where a belief
in their conjurations expiates all the crimes that may have outraged
society.
Amongst the Gentiles, Pliny spoke the fullest and plainest on this
subject, thus: "After the interment of our bodies, there is a great
diversity of opinions concerning the future state of our souls, or
ghosts; but the most general is this, that they return to the same state
in which they were before they were born. However, such is the folly and
vanity of men, that they extend this existence even to future ages; and
some crown it with immortality; others pretend a transfiguration, and
others render unto the soul of the departed honor and worship, making
a God of him that was not so much as a man; as if the manner of men's
breathing differed from that of other living creatures; or as if there
were not to be found in the world many animals that live much longer
than man. Now these are surely but fantastical, foolish, and childish
toys, devised by men who would fain live always; the like foolery is
there in preserving the bodies. But what a folly of follies is it to
think that Death should be the way to a second life! Certainly this
foolish credulity, and easiness of belief, destroy the benefit of
the best gift of Nature--death;" (which is as necessary, nay, even
as natural to every animal as life itself.) "How much more easy, and
greater security, were it, for each man to ground his reasons and
resolutions upon an assurance, that he should be in no worse a condition
than he was before he was born."--Nat. Hist.
* The fear of death, which Christian dogmas create, has
effects the most baleful and pernicious imaginable; and has
contributed more to stock the Bedlam of Christendom, than
any other cause whatever. All animals avoid and fear bodily
pain, as the greatest evil--man alone fears death. Why?
Because he alone has priests and a hell. Epicurus says:
"Death, which some suppose to be the most terrible of evils,
is nothing to us; seeing that while we are in being, death
is not present; and when it is present, then we are not"
Hesiod, in alluding to those who, in the golden age (when it
may be presumed, there were neither priests, hells, nor
supernaturals) died without superstitions fears, sung thus:--
"They sunk to death, as opiate slumber stole
Soft o'er the sense, and whelm'd the willing soul."
_The Works and Days._
Among the Republican Romans, the deed that was accounted the most
virtuous and heroic, was that of dying on the field of battle, in
defence of liberty; and the next was the act of suicide, resorted to
as the means of avoiding subjection or dishonor. And so indulgent was
custom in this case, that those who were proscribed in after times, were
commonly permitted to retire from life in any way they thought proper,
to elude the disgrace of being public spectacles. This was humane, as
far as it is possible to extend lenience under such a predicament; and
as for the act itself, there was neither impiety nor the slightest odium
attached to it, but the contrary. It is curious to observe that,
amongst the host of evils introduced with, or generated by, the modern
superstition of Europe, a total change of law and sentiment regarding
this action has been effected by its priests, who, as they engrossed
all learning when in the zenith of their sway, were enabled to brand
everything as heinous wickedness that militated against, or seemed to
evince contempt for, their avocations. And as the act of suicide
affords no harvest for the priest--shuts the door against fees and
confessions--punishes him in his purse, and overlooks the importance
of his conjurations, it comprises every other offence; and, therefore,
every ignominy and abuse is heaped upon the memories, and even the
dead bodies of the self-victims, though their only crime was ridding
themselves of those unbearable miseries, which are chiefly caused by
theology, and the laws which it has occasioned.*
* The person who commits suicide, is no more criminally
guilty, and in all probability, much less insane than he who
dies of fever,--they are exactly on a footing, both had
supported life so long as it was supportable.
Though reason and science have now cooled the roasting-alive spirit down
to the moderate temperature of modern times, yet the essential property
of priestcraft to augment, and in no rational manner ever to alleviate,
human suffering will never fail to show itself, wherever its views
and interests are concerned. By laws and customs procured in its
all-powerful days, the mental and bodily tortures of condemned criminals
are most unmercifully prolonged between sentence and execution, and
their situation rendered as horrid as possible. Under pretence of the
soul-saving anxiety, the dreadful anguish of their minds is, by a
cruel delay, increased in a ten-fold degree, whilst they are inexorably
guarded lest they should anticipate their doom by relieving themselves,
and give the priest the go-by, which they are told is the acme of sin
and wickedness; but if they drag out their agonising misery quietly,
and give him due opportunity to play off his incantations, and above
all--believe, or pretend to believe in the efficacy of his dogmas, then
a heavenly pardon is secured, even at the gallows. If, in the endeavor
to avoid this catastrophe, the unhappy victim of the ignorance and
crimes of society--overwhelmed as he is with misery and despair, is
driven to seek relief in the quiet sleep of death, he is seized and
accused by the "authorities" of a "_felonious intention_" to escape
from the evils with which bad laws and abominable superstitions
have surrounded him; and is, therefore, absurdly required to "_find
security_" that he will not again attempt to elude his wretchedness, but
will quietly linger out the remainder of life in hunger, rags and cold;
all entailed upon him by existing society, every element of which is
pregnant with corruption.
Thus the action which, amongst the Romans and others of the ancients,
was deemed virtuous heroism, has, by the selfish inventions of modern
theology, been condemned as a deadly crime, and even stigmatised as
cowardice, than which nothing can be more false and contemptible. But in
every attempt to depict, in their true colors and direful effects, the
evils generated by that canker, there must ever be a want of words
to convey adequate force of execration. Such diabolical mockeries of
humanity may be authorised by modern godism, but they were not approved
by that of antiquity.
In a state of society so vitiated by falsehood and crime (created by an
abandonment of Nature) as to be almost wholly made up of moral evil,
is it at all wonderful that a vast portion of mankind should pursue the
most criminal courses to obtain a bare and wretched existence? Can we
then imagine any lengths to which a hireling clergy would not go in
their routine of deception to secure for life riches, honors, ease and
luxury? The knowledge of this truth alone ought to be sufficient to
rouse men from their sottish lethargy, for it requires nothing but
inquiry to make it appear that error and falsehood reduced to a system
forms the groundwork of that overwhelming scheme of delusion which
procures the above blessings for all priesthoods, who are hired and
prostituted to defend deceptions which enrich them and impoverish
industry. Could you, without an aberration of mind, expect truth from
men who, in order to secure all the good things the world affords, make
you their victims by forcing false notions upon your weak and pliant
understandings in childhood? Well may they cry out, "Train up a child in
the way he should walk, and when he is old he will not depart from it."*
This is a correct aphorism, and is equally true whether applied to good
or bad training, for if the mind be as it were mortgaged, or sacrificed
to the priest in childhood,**--
* The spirit of priestianity may be, and is, repressed by
science and philosophy; but it is utterly unchangeable. The
children educated by the Druids to recruit their own ranks
were secluded in woods and caverns, and denied all
intercourse with their parents till after they had attained
fourteen years of age. By this mental monopoly it was
evidently meant that the esprit du corps, its secret ways
and interests, should be so indelibly fixed upon the mind as
to be ever afterwards proof against every natural affection.
** The more outrageous against Nature and reason the false
notions instilled in childhood are the more difficult it
seems to be to eradicate them. "It was said of an Arab, who
was a man of sense, an arithmetician, a chemist, and, what
is still more strange, a skilful astronomer, that nothing
could induce him to give up the belief that Mahommed put
half of the moon in his sleeve. The reformers of England had
more difficulty in giving up the 'Real Presence' in the
Sacrament, than in parting with any other dogma in Popery."
The impossible and the absurd are indispensable pre-
requisites with all religionists.
"Ere yet their minds, through tender age, can choose
What's for their good, or for their harm refuse.
Before their natures, and their wills are strong,
Justly to think, or judge of right and wrong;
Or how th' affections with the body grow,
The self-denying doom they undergo.
In blooming youth and innocence betrayed
To cursed altars, thus are victims made."
Hardly one in ten thousand of such victims will escape mental slavery
for life. Moreover, men dedicated to sacerdotal delusion, are bound by
strong necessity to maintain their deceptions, or else give up not
only their ease and luxury, but their very means of subsistence. Once
enlisted in the cause, they must defend it; for should anyone of them,
prompted by convictions from impartial research and rational experience,
honestly avow opinions hostile to the national superstition, or decline
to administer in the usual manner to your nursery-conceived prejudices
and errors, would you not abandon him to obloquy and starvation? These
things duly considered, you may ask yourselves whether you are not more
likely to meet with truth from men who neither seek your money nor court
your favor--who are actuated by no other motive or interest than that
which the love of the principle of truth excites--who are unprostituted
by hire--who, under the armour of reason, can resist and despise the
venomous calumny which is cast upon every exposure of priestcraft;
and who, having discharged a duty, feel it as a matter of indifference
whether you shall be pleased or offended by the truth. You complain that
the contemner of your religious opinions, at once tortures your feelings
and arraigns your judgment; but has any judgment proceeding from your
impartial investigation of that subject, ever had anything to do in
the matter? Did you not fall heir to those absurd whims which you are
pleased to call religious opinions, in right of your mother and other
relations; and if these had happened to be followers of Mahommed, would
not your blind zeal for the prophet of Mecca, have been as great as it
now is for his alleged predecessor of Palestine?* Your answering
this question in the negative would be the highest proof of folly and
stupidity. Having sadly experienced for more than half a century the
obstinate and angry nature of superstition, we are prepared to expect
anything but your approbation when we repeat to you, that your faith has
no other basis than traditional fables, legends, and allegories--that
your attempt to prove their literal truth by prodigies and violations of
Nature's laws, is far more inadmissible than the fables themselves; and
that your understanding is so obscured by the pestilential fogs raised
by these theological absurdities, that the rational truths of Nature can
find no admittance.
The usual reply to such arguments and reasoning as the foregoing, is the
hue and cry of infidel, atheist, etc.; but is it atheism to prefer the
known to the unknown, and to consult experience and the evidence of
our senses, in preference to dogmas drawn from books of unauthenticated
legends, which are remarkable for nothing so much as the numerous libels
they contain against the ruling power of the universe?** When the laws
and institutions of a country become so corrupted by the usurpations of
religion, and the political tyranny which it engenders, as are those of
Great Britain,*** where the most grievous abuses in church and state are
cherished and perpetuated to serve the ends of the aristocracy and
the hierarchy, and where even the sciences are allowed to be seen only
through the spectacles of superstition, are the men Atheists who seek a
radical reform of them all?
* The minds of the great mass of mankind may be compared to
the glasses in a tavern, which bear about whatever may be
put into them. If the tavern be in Turkey, the sensual
potations of Mahommed's heaven will fly about; if at Rome,
the sparkling froth of Catholicism: if in any one of the
Protestant countries of Europe, your features will be
distorted by the acetous draughts of Calvin.
** By one Act of Henry VIII., it was high treason to have
the Bible in possession; by another it was permitted to
noblemen and gentlemen; and next, to countesses, ladies,
etc.; and lastly to grown people, but not to apprentices and
children. It was wise to allow the reading of such a book to
those alone who were interested in upholding it. Reason,
philosophy and science will ultimately bring it into
contempt.
*** All the ecclesiastical, and most of the other laws of
Great Britain, are in opposition to everything that is
salutary to man, or protective of his natural rights. To the
former class, every man of sound morality and virtue, ought
to make a point of denying jurisdiction and obedience. All
the laws and usages, without exception, that have relation
to the intercourse of the sexes, are so unnatural, cruel and
absurd, that they seem calculated to make them mutual snares
for each other.
If there be indeed any such thing as a _post mortem_ judgment seat,
to try the wicked and unrighteous for their immoralities and crimes,
priests will have much to answer for at that tribunal, on the score of
the complicated chain of calamities which their trade hath entailed on
their brother man; for they alone
"Have dared to babble of a God of peace,
Even while their hands were red with guiltless blood--
Murdering the while--uprooting every germ
Of truth--exterminating--spoiling all--
Making the earth a slaughter-house."
As sanctioning precedents for the commission of almost every crime may
be conveniently found in the Jew books, in like manner they hold forth
examples of the coarsest obscenities, though false translation has
hidden many of them. Where shall we find vices so lewd and unnatural
as those which were practised, and seem to have been of ordinary
occurrence, amongst the chosen people? Would the law relating to asses
and he-goats have been made if the unnatural crime which it was intended
to prevent had not been in practice? See in Judges xix. the infamous
doings of the men of Gibeah and Benjamin, the descendants of the chosen
son of Jacob. Would any man of ordinary decency read to the females of
his household passages so outrageously--nay, so matchlessly obscene, as
those we frequently meet with in the Bible? For instance, Ezekiel iv.,
12, and nearly the whole of the chapters xix. and xxiii. of the same
book. See also Hosea i., 2 and 3, and chapter iii. to the end. The
Song of Solomon is evidently the lascivious* effusion of some devoted
debauchee; yet such is the transcendent impudence of our priests, that
these superlatively lecherous imaginings have been, by forged headings,
called "Christ's love** to the church." The instances above cited
are trivial when compared with the number which might be adduced, of
obscenities altogether unequalled in any other book; and we would ask
any Bible advocate, "Whether any young woman who should be detected in
reading a book (not labelled The Holy Bible) which contained a fiftieth
part of the foul and rank immodesties that pervade this 'Will of God,'
would not lose her good reputation for ever?"
* In chapter v., 4, it is very significantly said, "my
beloved put his finger, etc.;" but to damp this plainly
libidinous expression, the inspired translators foisted in
"of the door". No forgery can be more barefaced. The words
are "Dilectus meus demittebat manum suam a for ami ne, cum
visceribus meis frementibus in me." There is no mention
whatever of a door.--Lucian Redivivus.
** If they would call them typical of the Duke of York's
love for Mrs. Clarke, they would be much nearer the truth.
*** At a trial in London, for the imaginary crime of
blasphemy, the judge very ingenuously acknowledged the
revolting obscenities of the Jew books, by ordering the
women and boys to leave the court while the defendant, in an
able defence, was reading the Bible.
But these obscenities are of little ethical importance, compared with
the mass of moral evil which in all ages of Christianity has arisen
from, and been justified by precedents drawn from the conduct of those
men called "Bible worthies," though they appear decidedly to have been
the very worst characters portrayed even in that book. This is
not surprising, when we know that the Jewish god was an abstract
personification of the will and interests of the robber-in-chief,
combined with the priesthood; and the interests of all priests being
essentially different, or opposed to those of the industrious producers
of wealth, the men who oppressed and plundered them, and stuck at no
crime in serving the sacerdotal order, were of course the favorites
of "the Lord." David afforded a full and prominent proof of this.
Hickeringill, a learned Hebraist and clergyman of the English church,
has let out the secret, that "David was a man after God's own heart,"
not in holiness, that is not meant, and would be unaccountable after his
adultery, murders, his many other sins, and cursing his enemies to the
lowest pit of hell; but, "after God's heart," is a Hebraism,* and in
English signifies as much as, "_a man for my turn_" (or he is the
man for my money), "_he will kill and slay as the priest commands and
directs_."
* One of the most learned Hebraists of England, has declared
that, no two translators would agree in rendering any verb
from the Hebrew. Godfrey Higgins says:--"I am quite certain
that I shall be able to show--to prove--that every letter of
the Hebrew has four, and probably five meanings." What an
accommodating language for the priests, when their interests
require an alteration in their "Word of God!"
Here we have an exceedingly important confession from a learned
churchman! That a person so profligate, wicked, and cruel, as the whole
life of David shows him to have been, should acquire the above title,
has no doubt astonished many people; but the exposition shows clearly
that the priests bestowed it upon him, for his pre-eminence in the
commission of every crime that promoted their interest and power. Many
others of these "worthies" appear to have been the peculiar favorites of
Jehovah, from possessing similar qualities (saints in subsequent times
were always made out of the same sort of material), whilst with the good
and virtuous few he was generally at enmity. This appears in contrasting
the bloody and revengeful character of priest Samuel, with that of
the plain, honest, and brave soldier, Saul; that of the cunning and
deceitful Jacob, with his generous and amiable brother Esau. Amongst
the numerous atrocious murders of David, do we not find that of
Mephibosheth, the lame son, or brother of his peculiar friend and
generous protector, Jonathan? The wholesale murders ordered by
Moses, Joshua, David, and some others, are, if true, the most horrid
imaginable. Blood was the order of the day among the Jews, so it
flowed on all occasions. Exod. xiii., 2, shows that by their laws the
first-born children were dedicated as sacrifices to the Jewish Moloch,
as well as the first-born of other animals; but it is probable that the
horror which this shocking barbarity excited in surrounding countries,
at last induced the priests to accept of a lamb, or other victim that
was equally good to eat, in redemption of the devoted child. The poor
donkey, being rather a tough morsel for "the Lord" and his priests, was
to be put to death, if not redeemed by something more tender and savory;
mark the malignity of the priests! That the Jews offered such human
sacrifices, is proved in Solomon's having built a temple to Moloch,
which he would not have done with the intention of observing any
other rites than those of the Ammonitish god. The Jew books have also
furnished Christianity with examples of private assassination, which are
nowhere else matched in cool atrocity: to give two instances only, see
the base cowardly treachery by which those of Sisera, and of Eglon, king
of Moab, were perpetrated.
We cannot conclude this lecture without making the important
observation, that, while the instruction of youth continues to be
founded upon these Jew books, which hold forth such barbarous and
vicious men as patterns of humanity, virtue, and sound morality, no
material improvement can ever be made in the moral condition of society.
These books are imposed upon the mind as the one thing needful in
education, because they divert from the study of the useful and salutary
truths of Nature (the knowledge of which is the bane of the priest),
which stand in direct opposition to the fabulous absurdities of Jewish
theology;* and, therefore, our hireling priests, who dread nothing so
much as the development of these truths, use their utmost energies in
suppressing all such investigation; whilst they instil such reveries
only as promote ignorance, and keep the mind in childhood through life.
When the fogs of religious stupidity have thus mentally moulded
the audience, the pulpit becomes a fountain of the most unqualified
nonsense, which is safely showered down in torrents without any danger
of detection, on the part of "the long-ear'd rout," who, being taught to
spurn the evidence of their senses, when put in competition with faith,
are prepared to swallow the grossest impossibilities:--
"For zeal, fanatic zeal, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last."
* The caricatures (they do not deserve a better name) which
the Jews followed by the Christians have drawn of the
Supreme Power, are extremely disgusting to rational piety;
they make their deity command theft and murder: he avowedly
breaks his promise (Numb, xiv., 34). He grieves and repents
of his past conduct (Gen. vi., 6). He prompts his prophets
to lying (1 Kings xxii., 22).
The theology of the present day, says D'Holbach, is a
subtile venom, calculated, through the importance attached
to it, to infect everyone. By dint of metaphysics, modern
theologians have become systematically absurd and wicked, in
teaching the odious ideas they entertain of the deity.
The imagination of the bewildered bigot fears a mysterious phantom which
acts on none of his senses; and he fears nothing so much as to have
nothing to fear. If his religion was clear to human intellect, it
would have no attractions for his ignorance; there must be obscurity,
incredible prodigies, fables, sorceries, and terrors, to keep his
perverted brain in perpetual dread and agitation. By such chimerical
apparatus, the priest can reduce the mental faculties of man almost to
annihilation, and hence it is that the great herd of human beings have
hitherto been mere congregated masses of variously compounded folly,
knavery, and credulity; where ignorance is prized and cherished as the
sole medium through which clerical and secular oppressors can ride over
the necks of the multitude;* while the spider's web of superstition
confines their intellects as it were within the bounds of a nutshell.
In this way are the whole nations of human beings educated under
traditional and legendary lies and fables; yet so firmly does the
false impressions instilled in childhood rivet them upon the mind, that
myriads have died for them, as the highest service to their "God!" _This
is a species of devotion which the theologues most willingly perform by
deputy_.
* "In every age, and in every country of the world, the
religions that have been invented by impostors and priests,
and sanctioned by rulers, have been put forth with no other
intention than that of deceiving the people; whilst the
distinguishing characteristic of all religious professors
has been to profess one thing and mean another."
Under such abject and debasing circumstances have the intellectual
powers of the bulk of mankind been crushed and smothered throughout
Europe by the juggle of church and state collusion, until about the
middle of last century, when a ray of mental light burst forth from
a constellation of exalted minds, headed by that most enlightened of
philosophers, Voltaire, who shook to its very foundation the whole
fabric of Christian priestcraft. In the present century, that light,
guarded by the true emancipating Savior of the human race, the printing
press,* is now becoming more widely diffused and clear, through the
erudite minds of a Brougham, an Owen, a Hume, and many other advocates
of education; but still the truths of Nature are so obscured by the
dense fogs of priest-fostered ignorance, that no efficient political
relief need be expected for Christendom, until the people reform
themselves by abandoning the evils which cause their physical and
mental intoxication; these are inebriating liquors, and grovelling
superstition.
* Though the art of printing, so as to multiply the copies
of a document to any extent, was known in Europe in the year
1444, yet the control and fear of priestly vengeance,
prevented its being extensively useful for two centuries
afterwards. This art, nevertheless, had been known and
practised from time immemorial by the priests of Buddha,
throughout the immense empire of Thibet, though confined by
them exclusively to the purposes which promoted the
interests of their religion. Oh, how rejoiced the priests of
Christianity would be at this day, were it in their power to
establish a similar monopoly of the printing press!--See
Higgins' Anacalypsis.
When our present ultra-Reformers, who call themselves Chartists, prate
of church-going, and offering up prayers and religious hymns, previous
to their vain consultations, our political rulers pass the wink to their
clerical confederates, conveying as much as to say, this is all very
well; for while these men continue under the thumb of any sect of
theologians, or suffer their minds to be deluded and debauched by any
scheme of supematuralism whatsoever, real knowledge and sound judgment
must be strangers to their meetings; whilst the animosities of sectarism
must ever prevent unanimity, without which they never can be formidable
to the powers that be, however corrupt. When the education of mankind
shall be so salutary as to teach them what they are in reality, the
reform necessarily springing from it would quickly dissipate ignorance,
conquer superstition and its priests; and, in place of pretending
to look beyond Nature, whose surface alone man is hardly capable of
perceiving, he would, through the evidence of his senses, follow that
unerring power as the only polestar of his happiness. For the great
majority of human beings thus to reform themselves, "they have but to
will it;" if they will not, they deserve to continue what they ever have
been--degraded outcasts and aliens from their nature.
Thus with strong speech I tore the veil that hid
NATURE, and TRUTH, and LIBERTY.--Shelley.