The Age of Reason quotes

and I do this with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man communicates with itself.

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

I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of.

My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself.

Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society.

But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society.

When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word “revelation.”

Revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication if he pleases.

When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven, and brought to Muhammad by an angel, the account comes to near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second hand authority as the former.

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

When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to …

such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves. It is only reported by others that they said so.

It is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such evidence.

It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God.

The Mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything. The church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome was the place of both.

The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue

; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.

His historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.

The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told, exceeds everything that went before it.

The first part, that of the miraculous conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and therefore the tellers of this part of the story had this advantage, that though they might not be credited, they could not be detected.

But it appears that Thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself.

So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.

It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it.

… have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they conceived to be the infinite love of God to man, in making a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the story.

The more unnatural anything is, the more is it capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration.

But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes?

Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born⁠—a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing?

Is it we that light up the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on.

Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born—a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance?

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

Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide?

Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide?

Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator?

I know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it would be paying too great a compliment to their credulity to forbear it on that account. The times and the subject demand it to be done.

These books, beginning with Genesis and ending with

Revelations, (which, by the by, is a book of riddles that requires a revelation to explain it)

are, we are told, the word of God. It is, therefore, proper for us to know who told us so, that we may know what credit to give to the report.

For if I have done a thing, or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have done it, or seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it.

Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth of which man is himself the actor or the witness

; and consequently all the historical and anecdotal part of the Bible, which is almost the whole of it, is not within the meaning and compass of the word revelation, and, therefore, is not the word of God.

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God.

It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.

We scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but what deserves either our abhorrence or our contempt, till we come to the miscellaneous parts of the Bible.

because the possibility would nevertheless exist of my being imposed upon. But when I see throughout the greatest part of this book scarcely anything but a history of the grossest vices, and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales,

I cannot dishonour my Creator by calling it by his name.

… however, is much less equivocal, which is, that out of the matters contained in those books, together with the assistance of some old stories, the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears.

It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

The invention of a purgatory, and of the releasing of souls therefrom, by prayers, bought of the church with money; the selling of pardons, dispensations, and indulgences, are revenue laws, without bearing that name or carrying that appearance.

If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed.

Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself.

To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.

Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice.

It is indiscriminate revenge.

This single reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which another person might pay;

In the latter case, he consumes his life in grief, or the affectation of it.

His prayers are reproaches. His humility is ingratitude.

He calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name of vanities. He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the gift of reason;

His prayers are reproaches. His humility is ingratitude. He calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name of vanities.

He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the gift of reason

; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it “human reason,” as if man could give reason to himself.

He finds fault with everything. His selfishness is never satisfied; his ingratitude is never at an end. He takes on himself to direct the Almighty what to do, even in the government of the universe.

He prays dictatorially. When it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine.

He follows the same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the amount of all his prayers, but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does?

But some perhaps will say—Are we to have no word of God—no revelation? I answer yes. There is a Word of God; there is a revelation.

The word of God is the creation we behold

: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.

It is only in the creation that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be.

It is an ever existing original, which every man can read.

It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not;

It is only in the creation that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite.

The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be.

It is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed.

Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth.

Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful.

In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation.

The only idea man can affix to the name of God, is that of a first cause, the cause of all things.

And, incomprehensibly difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it, from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it. It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end;

it is only the application of them that is human. Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed.

Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.

For example: Every person who looks at an almanac sees an account when an eclipse will take place, and he sees also that it never fails to take place according to the account there given.

But the triangle, when drawn, is no other than the image of the principle: it is a delineation to the eye, and from thence to the mind, of a principle that would otherwise be imperceptible.

The triangle does not make the principle, any more than a candle taken into a room that was dark, makes the chairs and tables that before were invisible.

All the properties of a triangle exist independently of the figure, and existed before any triangle was drawn or thought of by man.

It is from the study of the true theology that all our knowledge of science is derived; and it is from that knowledge that all the arts have originated.

The Almighty lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the structure of the universe, has invited man to study and to imitation.

It is as if he had said to the inhabitants of this globe that we call ours, “I have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and I have rendered the starry heavens visible, to teach him science and the arts.

He can now provide for his own comfort, and learn from my munificence to all, to be kind to each other.”

Of what use is it, unless it be to teach man something, that his eye is endowed with the power of beholding, to an incomprehensible distance, an immensity of worlds revolving in the ocean of space?

Or of what use is it that this immensity of worlds is visible to man?

The difficulty of learning the dead languages does not arise from any superior abstruseness in the languages themselves, but in their being dead, and the pronunciation entirely lost. It would be the same thing with any other language when it becomes dead.

The best Greek linguist that now exists does not understand Greek so well as a Grecian plowman did, or a Grecian milkmaid

; and the same for the Latin, compared with a plowman or a milkmaid of the Romans; and with respect to pronunciation and idiom, not so well as the cows that she milked.

it navigates the little ocean of a bowl of water with a paper boat; or dams the stream of a gutter, and contrives something which it calls a “mill”; and it interests itself in the fate of its works with a care that resembles affection.

It afterwards goes to school, where its genius is killed by the barren study of a dead language, and the philosopher is lost in the linguist.

But the apology that is now made for continuing to teach the dead languages, could not be the cause at first of cutting down learning to the narrow and humble sphere of linguistry; the cause therefore must be sought for elsewhere.

As soon as I was able, I purchased a pair of globes, and attended the philosophical lectures of Martin and Ferguson, and became afterwards acquainted with Dr. Bevis, of the society called the Royal Society, then living in the Temple, and an excellent astronomer.

I had no disposition for what was called “politics.” It presented to my mind no other idea than is contained in the word “jockeyship.”

When, therefore, I turned my thoughts towards matters of government, I had to form a system for myself, that accorded with the moral and philosophic principles in which I had been educated.

those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking, and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord.

I have always made it a rule to treat those voluntary visitors with civility, taking care to examine, as well as I was able, if they were worth entertaining

; and it is from them I have acquired almost all the knowledge that I have.

and it is from them I have acquired almost all the knowledge that I have. As to the learning that any person gains from school education, it serves only, like a small capital, to put him in the way of beginning learning for himself afterwards.

Every person of learning is finally his own teacher

; the reason of which is, that principles, being of a distinct quality to circumstances, cannot be impressed upon the memory; their place of mental residence is the understanding, and they are never so lasting as when they begin by conception.

Though I reverence their philanthropy, I can not help smiling at the conceit, that if the taste of a Quaker could have been consulted at the creation, what a silent and drab-colored creation it would have been!

Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a bird been permitted to sing.

Quitting these reflections, I proceed to other matters.

But, in the midst of those reflections, what are we to think of the Christian system of faith that forms itself upon the idea of only one world, and that of no greater extent, as is before shown, than twenty-five thousand miles.

An extent which a man, walking at the rate of three miles an hour for twelve hours in the day, could he keep on in a circular direction, would walk entirely round in less than two years.

Alas! what is this to the mighty ocean of space, and the almighty power of the Creator!

The God in whom we believe is a God of moral truth, and not a God of mystery or obscurity.

Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.

Truth never envelops itself in mystery; and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped, is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself.

Religion, considered as a duty, is incumbent upon every living soul alike, and, therefore, must be on a level to the understanding and comprehension of all.

Man does not learn religion as he learns the secrets and mysteries of a trade.

He learns the theory of religion by reflection. It arises out of the action of his own mind upon the things which he sees, or upon what he may happen to hear or to read, and the practice joins itself thereto.

As “mystery” answered all general purposes, “miracle” followed as an occasional auxiliary. The former served to bewilder the mind, the latter to puzzle the senses.

The one was the lingo, the other the legerdemain.

But before going further into this subject, it will be proper to inquire what is to be understood by a miracle.

… what is called nature, that she must go out of that course to accomplish it, and we see an account given of such a miracle by the person who said he saw it, it raises a question in the mind very easily decided, which is—

Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie?

We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time;

and to the top of the highest pinnacle of the temple, and showing him and promising to him all the kingdoms of the world.

How happened it that he did not discover America? or is it only with kingdoms that his sooty highness has any interest.

I have too much respect for the moral character of Christ to believe that he told this whale of a miracle himself:

and if he happened to be directly wrong, it was only to suppose, as in the case of Jonah and Nineveh, that God had repented himself and changed his mind.

What a fool do fabulous systems make of man!

It has been shown, in a former part of this work, that the original meaning of the words “prophet” and “prophesying” has been changed, and that a prophet, in the sense of the word as now used, is a creature of modern invention;

Everything unintelligible was prophetical, and everything insignificant was typical.

A blunder would have served for a prophecy; and a dish-clout for a type.

If by a prophet we are to suppose a man to whom the Almighty communicated some event that would take place in future, either there were such men, or there were not.

… to repair as much as lay in their power the injustice I had sustained, invited me publicly and unanimously to return into the Convention, and which I accepted, to show I could bear an injury without permitting it to injure my principles or my disposition.

It is not because right principles have been violated, that they are to be abandoned.

I have seen, since I have been at liberty, several publications written, some in America, and some in England, as answers to the former part of The Age of Reason.

are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority?

It is not the antiquity of a tale that is an evidence of its truth; on the contrary, it is a symptom of its being fabulous

; for the more ancient any history pretends to be, the more it has the resemblance of a fable. The origin of every nation is buried in fabulous tradition, and that of the Jews is as much to be suspected as any other.

and on the other hand, it is impossible that Moses himself could say that “no man knoweth where the sepulchre is unto this day.”

To make Moses the speaker, would be an improvement on the play of a child that hides himself and cries “nobody can find me”; nobody can find Moses.

This writer has nowhere told us how he came by the speeches which he has put into the mouth of Moses to speak, and therefore we have a right to conclude that he either composed them himself, or wrote them from oral tradition.

and that this might not escape observation, they have noted it in the table of contents at the head of the chapter, though it is only a single verse of less than two lines.

O priests! priests! ye are willing to be compared to an ox, for the sake of tithes.

—Though it is impossible for us to know identically who the writer of Deuteronomy was, it is not difficult to discover him professionally, that he was some Jewish priest, who lived, as I shall show in the course of this work, at least three hundred …

The evidence I shall produce is contained in the book itself: I will not go out of the Bible for proof against the supposed authenticity of the Bible.

False testimony is always good against itself.

Joshua, according to Joshua 1, was the immediate successor of Moses; he was, moreover, a military man, which Moses was not; and he continued as chief of the people of Israel twenty-five years;

Having now shown that every book in the Bible, from Genesis to Judges, is without authenticity, I come to the book of Ruth, an idle, bungling story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about a strolling country-girl creeping slyly to bed to her cousin Boaz.

Pretty stuff indeed to be called the word of God. It is, however, one of the best books in the Bible, for it is free from murder and rapine.

I come next to the two books of Samuel, and to show that those books were not written by Samuel, nor till a great length of time after the death of Samuel; and that they are, like all the former books, anonymous, and without authority.

for by what kind of cutting and shuffling has it been that the first three verses in Ezra should be the last two verses in 2 Chronicles, or that the last two in 2 Chronicles should be the first three in Ezra?

Either the authors did not know their own works or the compilers did not know the authors.

Last Two Verses of 2 Chronicles First Three Verses of Ezra Ver. 22.

From what is transmitted to us of the character of Solomon, he was witty, ostentatious, dissolute, and at last melancholy. He lived fast, and died, tired of the world, at the age of fifty-eight years.

Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, are worse than none; and, however it may carry with it the appearance of heightened enjoyment, it defeats all the felicity of affection, by leaving it no point to fix upon; divided love is never happy.

This was the case with Solomon; and if he could not, with all his pretensions to wisdom, discover it beforehand, he merited, unpitied, the mortification he afterwards endured.

it teaches man to know and to admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable, and of divine origin.

Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will recollect, that his mind was ever young; his temper ever serene; science, that never grows grey, was always his mistress.

He was never without an object; for when we cease to have an object we become like an invalid in an hospital waiting for death.

Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will recollect, that his mind was ever young; his temper ever serene; science, that never grows grey, was always his mistress.

He was never without an object; for when we cease to have an object we become like an invalid in an hospital waiting for death.

Solomon’s Songs, amorous and foolish enough, but which wrinkled fanaticism has called divine.—The compilers of the Bible have placed these songs after the book of Ecclesiastes;

This is the more probable, because he says, or somebody for him, Ecclesiastes 2:8, “I got me men-singers, and women-singers” (most probably to sing those songs) “and musical instruments of all sorts;” and behold (Ver. 11), “all was vanity and vexation of spirit.”

The compilers however have done their work but by halves; for as they have given us the songs they should have given us the tunes, that we might sing them.

The books called the books of the Prophets fill up all the remaining part of the Bible; they are sixteen in number, beginning with Isaiah and ending with Malachi, of which I have given a list in the observations upon Chronicles.

As a moral, it preaches against the malevolent spirit of prediction; for as certainly as a man predicts ill, he becomes inclined to wish it.

The pride of having his judgment right hardens his heart, till at last he beholds with satisfaction, or sees with disappointment, the accomplishment or the failure of his predictions.

—This book ends with the same kind of strong and well-directed point against prophets, prophecies and indiscriminate judgements, as the chapter that Benjamin Franklin made for the Bible, about Abraham and the stranger, ends against the intolerant spirit of religious persecutions—Thus much for the book …

When a priest quotes any of those passages, he unriddles it agreeably to his own views, and imposes that explanation upon his congregation as the meaning of the writer.

The whore of Babylon has been the common whore of all the priests, and each has accused the other of keeping the strumpet; so well do they agree in their explanations.

There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones.

There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones.

Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.

I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie; and the priests, if they can, may replant them.

and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.

I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie; and the priests, if they can, may replant them.

They may, perhaps, stick them in the ground, but they will never make them grow.—I pass on to the books of the New Testament.

… within the same country, and nearly to the same spot, the discordance of time, place, and circumstance, which detects the fallacy of the books of the Old Testament, and proves them to be impositions, cannot be expected to be found here in the same abundance.

The New Testament compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act, in which there is not room for very numerous violations of the unities.

There are, however, some glaring contradictions, which, exclusive of the fallacy of the pretended prophecies, are sufficient to show the story of Jesus Christ to be false.

secondly, that the disagreement of the parts of a story proves the whole cannot be true.

The agreement does not prove truth, but the disagreement proves falsehood positively.

The history of Jesus Christ is contained in the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.—The first chapter of Matthew begins with giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ;

… that” are often tediously detailed, while this most important of all, had it been true, is passed off in a slovenly manner by a single dash of the pen, and that by one writer only, and not so much as hinted at by the rest.

It is an easy thing to tell a lie, but it is difficult to support the lie after it is told.

The writer of the book of Matthew should have told us who the saints were that came to life again, and went into the city, and what became of them afterwards, and who it was that saw them;

Can we suppose it is consistent with the wisdom of the Almighty to commit himself and his will to man upon such precarious means as these; or that it is consistent we should pin our faith upon such uncertainties?

We cannot make nor alter, nor even imitate, so much as one blade of grass that he has made, and yet we can make or alter words of God as easily as words of man.

About three hundred and fifty years after the time that Christ is said to have lived, several writings of the kind I am speaking of were scattered in the hands of divers individuals;

All this is nothing better than the jargon of a conjuror, who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune told.

Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.

Sometimes Paul affects to be a naturalist, and to prove his system of resurrection from the principles of vegetation. “Thou fool” says he, “that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die.”

and nothing can present to us a more strange idea than that of decreeing the word of God by vote. Those who rest their faith upon such authority put man in the place of God, and have no true foundation for future happiness.

Credulity, however, is not a crime, but it becomes criminal by resisting conviction.

It is strangling in the womb of the conscience the efforts it makes to ascertain truth. We should never force belief upon ourselves in anything.

Credulity, however, is not a crime, but it becomes criminal by resisting conviction. It is strangling in the womb of the conscience the efforts it makes to ascertain truth.

We should never force belief upon ourselves in anything.

I here close the subject on the Old Testament and the New. The evidence I have produced to prove them forgeries, is extracted from the books themselves, and acts, like a two-edge sword, either way.

But the belief of a God is a belief distinct from all other things, and ought not to be confounded with any. The notion of a Trinity of Gods has enfeebled the belief of one God.

A multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief; and in proportion as anything is divided, it is weakened.

Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form instead of fact; of notion instead of principle: morality is banished to make room for an imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its origin in a supposed debauchery;

neither does it answer the avarice of priests, but by incorporating themselves and their functions with it, and becoming, like the government, a party in the system.

It is this that forms the otherwise mysterious connection of church and state; the church human, and the state tyrannic.

Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of belief;

The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support.

The study of theology as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no conclusion.

Not anything can be studied as a science without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.

The principles we discover there are eternal, and of divine origin: they are the foundation of all the science that exists in the world, and must be the foundation of theology.

We can know God only through his works.

We cannot have a conception of any one attribute, but by following some principle that leads to it. We have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not the means of comprehending something of its immensity.

any employment he followed that had connection with the principles of the creation—as everything of agriculture, of science, and of the mechanical arts, has—would teach him more of God, and of the gratitude he owes to him, than any theological Christian sermon he now hears.

Great objects inspire great thoughts; great munificence excites great gratitude; but the grovelling tales and doctrines of the Bible and the Testament are fit only to excite contempt.

Though man cannot arrive, at least in this life, at the actual scene I have described, he can demonstrate it, because he has knowledge of the principles upon which the creation is constructed.

It is not Moses and the prophets, nor Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, that have done it.

The Almighty is the great mechanic of the creation, the first philosopher, and original teacher of all science.

Let us then learn to reverence our master, and not forget the labours of our ancestors.

This, in the first place, is an encouragement to sin, in a similar manner as when a prodigal young fellow is told his father will pay all his debts, he runs into debt the faster, and becomes the more extravagant.

Daddy, says he, pays all, and on he goes. Just so in the other case, Christ pays all, and on goes the sinner.

In the next place, the doctrine these men preach is not true. The New Testament rests itself for credibility and testimony on what are called prophecies in the Old Testament of the person called Jesus Christ;

But we make a thousand motions every day, and that as well waking as sleeping, that have no prior intention to direct them. Each member acts as if it had a will or mind of its own.

Man governs the whole when he pleases to govern, but in the interims the several parts, like little suburbs, govern themselves without consulting the sovereign.

But all these motions, whatever be the generating cause, are external and visible. But with respect to the brain, no ocular observation can be made upon it. All is mystery, all is darkness in that womb of thought.

… continual rest—whether it has a vibrating pulsative motion, or a heaving and falling motion, like matter in fermentation—whether different parts of the brain have different motions according to the faculty employed, be it the imagination, the judgment, or the memory, man knows nothing of it.

He knows not the cause of his own wit: his own brain conceals it from him.

Comparing invisible by visible things, as metaphysical can sometimes be compared by physical things, the operations of these distinct and several faculties have some resemblance to the mechanism of a watch. The mainspring, which puts all in motion, corresponds to the imagination;

and the more active the imagination is, the wilder the dream will be. The most inconsistent and the most impossible things will appear right, because that faculty whose province it is to keep order, is in a state of absence.

The master of the school is gone out, and the boys are in an uproar.

If the memory sleeps, we shall have no other knowledge of the dream than that we have dreamt, without knowing what it was about. In this case it is sensation, rather than recollection, that acts.

It counts only by circumstances; and if a succession of circumstances pass in a dream that would require a great length of time to accomplish them, it will appear to the dreamer that a length of time equal thereto has passed also.

As this is the state of the mind in dream, it may rationally be said that every person is mad once in every twenty-four hours; for were he to act in the day as he dreams in the night, he would be confined for a lunatic.

In a state of wakefulness, those three faculties being all active, and acting in unison, constitute the rational man.

Those who preached it and did not believe it, still believed the delusion necessary.

They were not bold enough to be honest, nor honest enough to be bold.

Every new religion, like a new play, requires a new apparatus of dress and machinery, to fit the new characters it creates. The story of Christ in the New Testament brings a new being upon the stage, which it calls the Holy Ghost;

Those who preached it and did not believe it, still believed the delusion necessary. They were not bold enough to be honest, nor honest enough to be bold.

Every new religion, like a new play, requires a new apparatus of dress and machinery, to fit the new characters it creates.

The story of Christ in the New Testament brings a new being upon the stage, which it calls the Holy Ghost;

We hear nothing of these winged gentlemen, till more than two thousand years, according to the Bible chronology, from the time they say the heavens, the earth, and all therein were made.

After this, they hop about as thick as birds in a grove.

The first we hear of pays his addresses to Hagar in the wilderness; then three of them visit Sarah; another wrestles a fall with Jacob: and these birds of passage, having found their way to earth and back, are continually coming and going.

And that he may keep his word, they make him set a trap in the Red Sea, in the dead of the night, for Pharaoh, his host, and his horses, and drown them as a rat-catcher would do so many rats. Great honor indeed!

The story of Jack the Giant-killer is better told.

They match him against the Egyptian magician to conjure with him; and after bad conjuring on both sides (for where there is no great contest, there is no great honor), they bring him off victorious. The three first essays are a dead match;

This is the descriptive God of the Old Testament; and as to the New, though the authors of it have varied the scene, they continued the vulgarity.

Is man ever to be the dupe of priestcraft, the slave of superstition? Is he never to have just ideas of his Creator?

It is better not to believe that there is a God, than to believe of him falsely.

Is man ever to be the dupe of priestcraft, the slave of superstition? Is he never to have just ideas of his Creator?

It is better not to believe that there is a God, than to believe of him falsely.

When we behold the mighty universe that surrounds us, and dart our contemplation into the eternity of space, filled with innumerable orbs, revolving in eternal harmony, how paltry must the tales of the Old and New Testaments, profanely called the word of God, appear to …

The stupendous wisdom and unerring order that reign and govern throughout this wondrous whole, and call us to reflection, put to shame the Bible!

The God of eternity and of all that is real is not the God of passing dreams and shadows of man’s imagination!

The God of truth is not the God of fable; the belief of a God begotten and a God crucified is a God blasphemed. It is making a profane use of reason.

The God of eternity and of all that is real is not the God of passing dreams and shadows of man’s imagination!

The God of truth is not the God of fable; the belief of a God begotten and a God crucified is a God blasphemed.

It is making a profane use of reason.

It is, therefore, nothing to me what Joseph dreamed of—whether of the fidelity or infidelity of his wife;

I pay no regard to my own dreams, and I should be weak indeed to put faith in the dreams of another.

The verses that follow those I have quoted are the words of the writer of the book of Matthew. “Now (says he) all this (that is, all this dreaming and pregnancy), was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord, saying,

The thing, therefore, to be a sign of success to Ahaz, must be something that would take place before the event of the battle then pending between him and the two kings could be known.

A thing to be a sign must precede the thing signified. The sign of rain must be before the rain.

It would have been mockery and insulting nonsense for Isaiah to have assured Ahaz, as a sign that these two kings should not prevail against him, that a child should be born seven hundred years after he was dead;

In the one case the supposed familiar spirit is a dexterous agent, that comes and goes, and does as he is bidden; in the other, he is a turbulent roaring monster, that tears and tortures the body into convulsions.

Reader, whoever thou art, put thy trust in thy Creator, make use of the reason he endowed thee with, and cast from thee all such fables.

The passage alluded to by Matthew, for as a quotation it is false, is in Isaiah 53:4, which is as follows:—

“All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy king cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.”

Poor ass! let it be some consolation amidst all thy sufferings, that if the heathen world erected a bear into a constellation, the Christian world has elevated thee into a prophecy.

This passage is in Zechariah 9:9, and is one of the whims of friend Zechariah to congratulate his countrymen, who were then returning from captivity in Babylon, and himself with them, to Jerusalem. It has no concern with any other subject.

It is strange that apostles, priests, and commentators never permit, or never suppose the Jews to be speaking of their own affairs. Everything in the Jewish books is perverted and distorted into meanings never intended by the writers.

Even the poor ass must not be a Jew-ass, but a Christian-ass.

I wonder they did not make an apostle of him, or a bishop, or at least make him speak and prophesy. He could have lifted up his voice as loud as any of them.

Everything in the Jewish books is perverted and distorted into meanings never intended by the writers. Even the poor ass must not be a Jew-ass, but a Christian-ass.

I wonder they did not make an apostle of him, or a bishop, or at least make him speak and prophesy. He could have lifted up his voice as loud as any of them.

Zechariah, in the first chapter of his book, indulges himself in several whims on the joy of getting back to Jerusalem.

and behind him were red horses, speckled, and white.”

He says nothing about green horses, nor blue horses, perhaps because it is difficult to distinguish green from blue by night, but a Christian can have no doubt they were there, because “faith is the evidence of things not seen.”

Zechariah then introduces an angel among his horses, but he does not tell us what color the angel was of, whether black or white; whether he came to buy horses, or only to look at them as curiosities, for certainly they were of that kind.

Now the bishop, in order to know if he has all this saving and wonder-working faith, should try those things upon himself.

He should take a good dose of arsenic, and, if he please, I will send him a rattlesnake from America!

As for myself, as I believe in God, and not at all in Jesus Christ, nor in the books called the Scriptures, the experiment does not concern me.

for he says in the last verse: “And there are many other things which Jesus did, the which if they should be written everyone I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.”

This is what in vulgar life is called a “thumper”⁠—that is, not only a lie, but a lie beyond the line of possibility; besides which, it is an absurdity, for if they should be written in the world, the world would contain them.

Here ends the examination of passages called prophecies.

They tell us that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.

It is very easy to say so; a great lie is as easily told as a little one.

But if he had done so, those would have been the only circumstances respecting him that would have differed from the common lot of man;

In writing upon this, as upon every other subject, I speak a language full and intelligible.

I deal not in hints and intimations.

I have several reasons for this. First, that I may be clearly understood. Secondly, that it may be seen I am in earnest; and, thirdly, because it is an affront to truth to treat falsehood with complaisance.

That which is revelation to me exists in something which no human mind can invent, no human hand can counterfeit or alter.

The word of God is the Creation we behold; and this word of God revealeth to man all that is necessary for him to know of his Creator.

Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of his creation.

Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful.

Do we want to contemplate his will, so far as it respects man? The goodness he shows to all is a lesson for our conduct to each other.

In fine, Do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, or any impostor invent; but the Scripture called the Creation.

In fine, Do we want to know what God is?

Search not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, or any impostor invent; but the Scripture called the Creation.

When, in the First Part of the Age of Reason, I called the Creation the true revelation of God to man, I did not know that any other person had expressed the same idea. But I lately met with the writings of Dr.

And at the 20:25, he makes God, in speaking of the children of Israel, to say, “Wherefore I gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live.” This, so far being the word of God, is horrid blasphemy against him.

Reader, put thy confidence in thy God, and put no trust in the Bible.

The same Old Testament, after telling us that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, makes the same almighty power and eternal wisdom employ itself in giving directions how a priest’s garments should be cut, and what sort of stuff they should …

… the Creator hath demonstrated to our senses in the creation of the universe, I will confine myself to say, that if we compare them with the divine and forcible sentiments of Cicero, the result will be, that the human mind has degenerated by believing them.

Man, in a state of grovelling superstition, from which he has not courage to rise, loses the energy of his mental powers.

I will not tire the reader with more observations on the Old Testament.

Now, observe, reader, how the promulgation of this pretended salvation by a knowledge of and a belief in Jesus Christ went on, compared with the work of creation.

In the first place, it took longer time to make a child than to make the world, for nine months were passed away and totally lost in a state of pregnancy

: which is more than forty times longer time than God employed in making the world, according to the Bible account. Secondly, several years of Christ’s life were lost in a state of human infancy: but the universe was in maturity the moment it existed.

The priests of the present day profess to believe it. They gain their living by it, and they exclaim against something they call infidelity. I will define what it is.

He that believes in the story of Christ is an infidel to God.

Here is nothing about believing in Christ—nothing about that phantom of the imagination called “faith.”

The works here spoken of are works of humanity and benevolence, or, in other words, an endeavor to make God’s creation happy.

Here is nothing about preaching and making long prayers, as if God must be dictated to by man: nor about building churches and meetings, nor hiring priests to pray and preach in them.

Here is nothing about preaching and making long prayers, as if God must be dictated to by man: nor about building churches and meetings, nor hiring priests to pray and preach in them.

Here is nothing about predestination, that lust which some men have for damning one another.

Here is nothing about baptism, whether by sprinkling or plunging; nor about any of those ceremonies for which the Christian church has been fighting, persecuting, and burning each other, ever since the Christian church began.

If it be asked, Why do not the priests preach the doctrine contained in this chapter? the answer is easy—they are not fond of practising it themselves. It does not answer for their trade.

They had rather get than give. Charity with them begins and ends at home.

Had it been said, Come, ye blessed;

I have said, in the first part of the Age of Reason, that “I hope for happiness after this life.”

This hope is comfortable to me, and I presume not to go beyond the comfortable idea of hope, with respect to a future state.

I consider myself in the hands of my Creator, that he will dispose of me after this life consistently with his justice and goodness.

I have said, in the first part of the Age of Reason, that “I hope for happiness after this life.” This hope is comfortable to me, and I presume not to go beyond the comfortable idea of hope, with respect to a future state.

I consider myself in the hands of my Creator, that he will dispose of me after this life consistently with his justice and goodness.

I leave all these matters to him as my Creator and friend, and I hold it to be presumption in man to make an article of faith as to what the Creator will do with us hereafter.

The whole world might be divided into two parts, numerically, but not as to moral character; and therefore the metaphor of dividing them, as sheep and goats can be divided, whose difference is marked by their external figure, is absurd.

All sheep are still sheep; all goats are still goats; it is their physical nature to be so.

But one part of the world are not all good alike, nor the other part all wicked alike. There are some exceedingly good; others exceedingly wicked. There is another description of men who cannot be ranked with either the one or the other.