Chapter VI: Part 6

These pernicious hatchings of theology are wholly unsanctioned by Nature, who, in her perfect impartiality towards every creature which her purely physical process organises into life, makes an even balance of all her grants and denials throughout the animated world: and though it may appear to the cursory observer that she has, upon the whole, favored some animals more than others, yet all these seeming advantages are counterbalanced or neutralised by other mental or physical qualities of an opposite or defective tendency which, in the most comprehensive sense, reduce the lives of all, as regards the amount' of pleasurable sensations through life, to nearly an equality.** On examining this matter still more closely, we shall find that the greatest proportion of evil or misery invariably falls to the share of those animals who depart the farthest from the laws or conditions of their nature. Of this fatal estrangement, man exhibits an instance that is almost solitary on this globe; for all other creatures obey the conditions of their existence, excepting such as have been compelled to deviate from them, in consequence of being subjected to his usurped dominion. His right to hold a horse or a dog in slavery, is precisely the same as that of holding a negro in bondage; and as for his carnivorous habit of using almost every animal as food, it is justified by his superstition alone, and utterly condemned by his nature. His right to kill and eat a sheep or a deer, is exactly the same in point of moral justice, as that of a shark or a tiger, when they subdue and eat their prey; in which they feel no compunctious visitations about including their pretended lord and master, man, himself. In all these cases, the rule of right is alone established by possession of the art or strength to conquer.

* Burns.

** Vide Eccles. iii., 19, 20,21.

Man's dominion over the other animals, is a pure usurpation: and though he differs from them in the structure of his body, he is superior to them only in some qualities, which have been greatly improved by the recorded experience of his species, handed down to him through a course of some thousands of years; and from which springs that combination in society which renders him formidable to his "fellow worms." This is proved beyond contradiction by comparing him, as the educated and armed production of society, with what he is in the wild or natural state for in the latter condition, he is so far from being "superior," that he becomes the prey of animals much smaller than himself, which look upon him as destined by nature for their subsistence, and use him as food accordingly. These facts are so well borne out by experience, that they will be denied only by that false pride which theology instils to answer its own ends.

* Man, like every other animal, is born without the quality
called reason; and like them, must gain it as the fruit of
experience, by which all acquire it to a certain degree; and
in some of them it is much more perfect than it is in man;
but his excessive pride and love of dominion, blinds him
against this great truth. That which he is taught to call
reason in himself, must, forsooth, be only instinct, when
applied to the mental faculties of those he calls brutes.
Here the difference is in distinction of terms:--

"Reason and instinct, how can ye divide?
'Tis the fool's folly, and the churchman's pride."

But if the cunning and ingenuity consequent upon man's extra allowance of brain has enabled him, by dint of combination in society, to subdue many animals for his use, has he by this means, and what he calls civilisation, really and truly improved his condition for the brief term of life which nature has allotted him? Are not the evils generated by education, in which hypocrisy and fraud are the chief ingredients--the vices--the crimes--the immoral and distracting systems of religion, which induce a general depravity of character, and the unnatural and iniquitous laws emanating from such a corrupt state of society, infinitely greater than the alleged advantages arising from this boasted civilisation? If we take the aggregate of morality in man, as he is at present produced and educated in the great manufactory of society, in which Christian theology with its concomitant evils, are the principal apparatus, we shall have difficulty in finding on the face of the earth, a more vicious, treacherous, and cruel animal. This is always denied in theory; but the conduct of every man recognises its woeful truth practically. Let the man of observation and true candor of mind lay his hand upon his heart, and honestly declare whether his fellow men, and in instances, even those he calls his friends, are not the sole source of all his inquietudes and miseries--whether this demi-god is not the animal that he is obliged to be more incessantly on his guard against than any other! This universal prevalence of vice and moral depravity is primarily accounted for by the priest and superstitionist, by the equally flagitious and absurd dogma about what they call original sin; but the true cause is very far from lurking in anything innately vicious in human nature, but on the contrary, is wholly engendered by their own unearthly delusions--the contagion of supernaturalism, and its distracting train of theological inventions. These are the fatal lures which have estranged and drawn man to apostatise from the wholesome principles of his nature--surrounded him with artificial circumstances wholly adverse to these principles, and as degrading to his position as an intelligent being, as they are inimical to his peace and happiness.

Whilst the elements of society shall continue to be thus contaminated, life will be a gift scarce worth receiving and though the ingenuous truth-loving mind may, on the approach of dissolution, feel dismayed at the idea of ceasing to contemplate the beautiful of nature--the sun, the green fields, the woods, the streams, and the mountains, in which alone it finds prayers and sermons; yet no reluctance can be experienced in quitting intercourse with fellow men, whose religion imposes the necessity of shunning truth in almost anything, affords an example of habitual deception,* and by placing the _unnatural_, in the chair of the _natural_, turns man into a pitiful caricature of what he ought to be, in the nobler destinies of humanity.

* The mask being indispensable in theology, it is not
wonderful that its votaries should appear everywhere in
disguise.

END OF LECTURE FOURTH.

LECTURE FIFTH. ON THE EARLY EFFECTS OF THE CHRISTIAN SUPERSTITION

"Tis only thou,
Accursed superstition, cans't accord
Thy aids to tyranny, for which alone
She guards thee with the penalty of "Laws".
Endows thee, pampers thee ; and seems to bend
(Mocking herself) in reverence to thy nod.
For this imperial rapine shares with thee
Her gaudy spoil."

In a former lecture, when speaking of the compilation of the New Testament, we promised to show that the first idea of forming that book was drawn from a Pagan prototype; and therefore we resume the subject, in order also to adduce farther proof that the very vitals of our religion originated in heathen polytheism.

Here, it is of the highest importance to draw particular attention to the sacred and mysterious testament of the Athenians, on which they believed the salvation not only of their city, but of all Greece depended. There is now so little said about this famous testament, that it has nearly passed into oblivion; but this is easily accounted for, as the fabricators of the Christian New Testament would, as usual in such cases, do all in their power to suppress the remembrance of a volume which suggested the scheme of their own book of mysteries, in the formation of which St. Paul was not only the principal contributor, but, in point of fact, the real founder of our religion.* We ought not, therefore, to pass without distinct notice, the remarkable deference and respect which he pretended to have for this book of imposture, when wishing to recommend himself to any Grecian state.

* The famous Longinus mentions Paul of Tarsus, whom "he
considered to be the first setter-forth of an unproved
doctrine."

This Testament had a profound influence over those states, which, as well as the Athenians, were kept in reverential awe by its divine authority; and Paul having acquired a knowledge of this in his vagrancies,* shows his dexterity by availing himself of it in his 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians iii., 6, wherein he says, "God hath made us able ministers of the (New) Testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit" Now, we defy all our divines and commentators put together, to show that the present New Testament of the Christians was _then_ in existence, that is to say, before the end of the first century, and it is on all hands agreed by church chronologists, that Paul wrote before that period; and, therefore, in writing the above epistle, it was not possible that he could be speaking in reference to any other book than that which the Greeks called "_the unspeakably holy Testament_." How was it possible for him to speak of a book which we can prove was not compiled into its present form until centuries had elapsed after his time--viz., until the councils of Nice and Laodicea? That this book existed not in all the first century we have the authority of the most learned and orthodox God-well,** who, in his dissertation upon Irenaeus, confesses as follows:--"We have at this day certain most authentic ecclesiastical writers of the times, as Clemens, Romanus, Barnabas, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, who wrote in the same order in which I have named them, and after all the writers of the New Testament. But in Hermas you will not find one passage, or any mention of the New Testament, nor in all the rest is any one of the evangelists named." What! our four evangelists entirely unknown to all the five apostolic fathers! Could this have been possible if these gospels had been written when these "authentic" writers lived?

* When Tonstal, Bishop of Durham, burnt the New Testament,
declaring it to be doctrinam peregrinam, he probably meant
that it was-only the doctrine of Paul the rambler.--Vide
Tyndale.

** Dodwell says that it "was not until the reign of Trajan
or Adrian that a collection of the books of the New
Testament was publicly made, the priests having previous to
that time concealed them in the archives, of their
churches." It was then that they made anything that suited
them the "word of God."

Having shown the absurdity of supposing that Paul could speak of a Testament that did not exist in his time, we repeat, that from his vagrant habits he had, in all probability, come to the knowledge that the sacred Testament of the Athenians was, like all priestly writings of the East, figurative, mystical, and would bear either the literal or metaphorical meaning, according to the views of those who used it for the purpose of deception; so he tells the Corinthians of his being aware that "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." He knew also that this book of superlative authority was carefully concealed from the vulgar eye; and, therefore, he has not the presumption to say he had seen it, as that would have given offence; but merely professes to be an humble minister of its spirit, of which he might have learned something, as aforesaid; and forming his texts on the common rumor respecting it, he comments upon them in such a manner as to please his followers in those states, professing a profound awe and reverence towards the spotless sanctity of the original.

Christian bigots! We well know the angry, fiery glance with which you receive truths shocking to your prejudices; but it is time you should be told in plain terms, that this divine Testament upon which Paul comments with so much respect and veneration, and of the spirit whereof he declares himself an able minister, was no other than the FAMOUS ATHENIAN TESTAMENT, the archetype of the sibyline books of the Romans, and which was older than the time of Solon. After the abolition of the Athenian superstition, this testament was found to be a legitimate child of theology, being filled with the grossest impostures. Paul tells us that he had the happy knack of being "all things to all men;" but his pretended veneration for this sacred volume of the Greeks, was a masterly stroke of policy, and extremely well calculated to secure his good reception amongst them. The word new, as we find it in the conundrums of Paul, and prefixed to the modern Testament, is easily accounted for by any person who is at all acquainted with the shameless falsifications and interpolations of those who fabricated our religion. Thus did the famous Athenian Testament become not only the prototype of the sibyline* books, but that of the new will of the Jewish deity also; whereof the writings attributed to this Paul formed a large portion, at that subsequent period when the approved collection was _voted to be the "Word of God_."

* The sibyline verses of the Romans are known to have
existed as far back as the time of Tarquinius Priscus, 717
years b.c.; they are quoted by the fathers from Tertullian,
in the second, to the Christian writer, Lactantius, in the
fourth century. They relate the whole story of Christ's
incarnation, miracles, death, and resurrection, in almost
the same words as the gospels.

In regard to this miscellany, the Manicheans say that it was formed from scraps of legends and traditions which the itinerant fathers happened to pick up in their journeyings in the eastern countries, in search of "gospel truth." "Thus some parts would be, as we find them, Indian, some Persian, some Egyptian, etc., etc., all jumbled together, and forming, after undergoing the required fittings and alterations, the mass which we now possess. Thus from India came the murder of the Innocents; from all quarters of the heathen world came the Trinity, the crucifixion of Christ, the Lord Sol, and Iao, born at the winter solstice, and triumphing over the powers of hell, or cold and darkness, and rising into light or glory, as the Regenerator and Savior, at the vernal equinox: from the Egyptian--perhaps the Eleusinian mysteries, came the worship of the virgin and child; and from all the countries of the east, the miraculous conception."

On a careful examination of the quirks and quibbles of St. Paul, it plainly appears that he had some smattering of the Pagan mysteries; and just as it suited his interest for the time being, or the degree of knowledge in his auditors, he used the exoteric or esoteric doctrines; the former was adapted for street-preaching, and bamboozling the long-eared multitude; and the latter was used only when he was addressing the initiated few, some of whom were, in all probability, playing the same game as himself.* He designates these mysteries as being "_shadows of heavenly things_;" and "_patterns of things in the heavens_" (Hebrews viii., 5, and ix., 23), meaning, unquestionably, astronomical truths concealed from the million, under the veil of allegory; for that word is used by him, and he frequently makes use of the term veil. St. Barnabas, in his Gospel, denies the truth of Paul's exoteric doctrine, declaring that no person called Christ did actually and _bona fide_ die upon the cross: hence the quarrel between the two; and from this cause was Barnabas' Gospel rejected. In further proof that there were two doctrines in use, the ostensible and the hidden, Jesus is made to say, Matthew xiii., 11, "To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven." This compliment could be addressed to none but such as were initiated in the symbolical worship of the sun, and other celestial bodies; whilst to the rabble multitude the secret was concealed under metaphor or parable, in order that, "hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand; and seeing, ye shall see and not perceive." (Acts xxviii., 26.) Paul, in his epistle to the Ephesians (iii., 4), boasts of a knowledge in the mystery of Christ, which he says in the 5th verse, "was not in other ages made known to the sons of men." Now, this could not possibly allude to Jesus of the New Testament, with whom, as some of the fathers have assumed, Paul was contemporary; and therefore, in speaking of "other ages" it inevitably follows that he was alluding to a Gentile divinity, a Christ ** whose name had belonged to the heathen mysteries, in "ages" long prior to the reputed time of Jesus. In the 16th chapter of the Romans, Paul again lets out the secret in the 25th and 26th verses, where he speaks of "his gospel," and the preaching of Jesus Christ, "according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began." What mystery of Christ can he mean, that was thus _kept secret since the world began?_ He assuredly alludes to the esoteric doctrines of the Egyptian priests of Osiris; the Eleusinian mysteries; the Bacchanal orgies; and to all the ancient mythoses in which the sun, under many different names, was the secret object of adoration in all the countries of the east, as the glorious _savior_ who annually _redeems_ the world from the reign of cold and darkness; and of whose mysterious worship Paul had gained some knowledge.

* He makes a plain confession of having two gospels, in his
Epistle to the Galatians, ii., 2. The "cloven tongues" so
much spoken of, designated those who were capable of holding
forth the exoteric, or esotoric doctrine, as occasion might
require. Paul's tongue appears to have been cloven into more
than two parts.

** Did not Cicero, when he travelled in Greece, find
inscriptions on monuments to many Christs?

In the reign of Adrian, the Egyptian priests of the idol Priapus, were called the bishops of Christ. Priapus was a symbol of the generative power of the sun. Socrates and Sozomen say, that when the temple of this god was destroyed, the monogram of Christ was found beneath the foundation.

"We speak wisdom," says he, "to them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world." Certainly not; for his secret doctrine was the celestial theosophy, or astronomy in disguise; but as these mysteries were known only to the initiated few, they were wisdom to them alone. But when these truth-conveying allegories were spoken to the uninitiated rabble, they were received in the exoteric, or literal sense, which Paul elsewhere calls "foolishness;" yet nothing is so common in the present day as that same foolishness. None but minds who not only choose, but are determined to be deceived, can resist the obvious meaning conveyed in his Epistle to the Philippians, iii., 20. "For our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the _Savior_, the Lord Jesus Christ." That is, the return of the Lord the Sun to the zodiacal signs of spring and summer, when he alone is truly the savior.* That even the fable of the flood is an astronomical allegory, is proven in 1st Peter iii., where the writer, speaking of the ark, wherein the "eight souls were saved by water," concludes the parables thus,--"_the like FIGURE hereunto even baptism doth now save us_."

* As the sun is the only true physical savior of everything
that has life upon this globe, so is a free printing press
the true moral and intellectual savior of the human race.

Thus it is an astronomical key that lays open the secret arcanum of all that Paul, or any other of the New Testament writers say about "Christ and heavenly things;" for these, when the veil of allegory is withdrawn, stand confessed in the Sun,* (the Mithras, or Mediator) moon, stars, the elements and seasons, the deification of which formed the occult astro-theology which was the basis of all the religions of the east; and from which Christianism is only a distorted emanation.

* Neither Origen nor Tertullian attempts to prove the
existence of Jesus Christ on historical documents, and to
establish his birth and death on unquestionable authority.

From the works of Plutarch, which are now lost, Eusebius quoted a fragment in which that wise Grecian says: "It clearly results from the verses of Orpheus, and the sacred books of the Egyptians and Phrygians, that the ancient theology, not only of the Greeks, but of all nations, was nothing more than a system of physics--a picture of the operations of Nature, wrapped up in mysteries, allegories, enigmatical symbols, in a manner that the ignorant multitude attended rather to their apparent than to their hidden meaning: and even what they understood of the latter, led them to suppose there was still something more than they perceived." When the lost works of Plutarch contained such disclosures, their destruction by Christian priests is anything but wonderful.

When all these circumstances are duly weighed in the mind that dares to look truth in the face, the conviction flashes upon it instantly, that all our gospels, and everything else that is said about Jesus Christ in the New Testament, has no reference whatever to any event that ever did in reality take place upon this globe; or to any personages that ever in truth existed: and that the whole is an astronomical allegory, or parable, having invariably a primary and sacred allusion to the sun, and his passage through the signs of the zodiac: or a verbal representation of the phaenomena of the solar year and seasons. A belief in the literal or ostensible meaning of these parables, shows the sottish credulity into which man sinks after his reason has been mortgaged in youth to the priest, who keeps him in the ignorance that is suitable for mental slavery.

This view of these matters unveils and draws forth good sense and science out of both Testaments; and all our wonder at once ceases in regard to the total absence of even the slightest corroborating historical trace of the miraculous narratives of these books. This revelation of these enigmas also reconciles with truth that apparently false prediction of Jesus, wherein, he tells his auditors that some of them would live to see the coming of the Christ he alluded to; and to do this it was only requisite that they should live until the following year, when the true Christ, the sun would again be "triumphant in the clouds," as he approached the summer solstice. Moreover, we may here notice another similar New Testament prediction, which from the stubborn preciseness of the terms in which it is expressed, can neither be twisted by the priest nor rationally solved without the allegorical interpretation;--it declares--"Ye shall not taste of death" till all these things are accomplished. If Christian priests are not willing that Paul should pass for a notorious cheat and impostor, let them explicate, in any other way than the above, his "_Heavenly_" enigmas and literally false predictions:--we challenge them to this; and if they cannot or will not do it satisfactorily, to whom will the epithets of cheats and impostors properly belong? The above solution of these astro-allegories forces so irresistible a conviction upon the ingenuous and unprejudiced mind as leaves no room to suppose a possibility of its being otherwise:--it is the physical truths of nature and scientific demonstration, against that which is false in physics, false in analogy, and, consequently, contrary to all experience and reason.

The Jewish sects of Essenes and Therapeutae,* out of which the Galileans and Christians more immediately sprang, had thus their superstition composed of a mixture of the Egyptian and Persian mysteries, consequently sun worship was common to many of the subsequent branches of Christianity, such as the Mani-chees and others. Tertullian, in the apologetics, makes a broad confession of this, as follows:--"Many think, with more probability, _that our god is the Sun_;** and they trace our religion to that of the Persians." If this is not an admission, it is the next thing to it, that about the beginning of the third century, the secret object of Christian worship _was the Sun_; and it would have been well if they had continued in that rational adoration, instead of adopting those midnight rites which were held in horror and detestation by their Gentile neighbors, as being cruel, wicked, and blasphemous;*** and which caused the votaries of the new religion to be branded as atheists. Arnobius who turned Christian, (most probably in view of a bishopric), complains of the Gentiles thus:--"We (the Christians) are called by you ill-omened men, and atheists; you call us impious and irreligious atheists. You are in the habit of exciting the hatred of the mob against us, by calling us atheists."****

* We are told by Philo, that these pious enthusiasts
abandoned father, mother, wife, children, and property, and
devoted themselves to a contemplative life; which are
exactly the injunctions attributed to Christ.

** In another treatise Tertullian alludes to the strong
similarity between the religion of Christ, and that of
Mithra, or the Sun. "The priests of the Persian god had
sacraments. Their baptism procured the remission of sins to
the believers and the faithful."

"Saint Justin also alludes to the mystical consecrations of
these two religions; and to the similarity of the birth of
Christ, and his Persian rival, the Sun."

*** The Agapae, or love feasts of the early Christians, were
close imitations of the bacchanal orgies; at the latter, it
was a vital principle, that no action whatsoever constituted
a crime, if committed by any of the initiated during their
meetings. It appears that the spirit of this horrible
license was fully entered into by the Christians.--Vide
Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," vol. ii, p. 894.

**** Adv. Gentes.

Some of the learned, however, have been of opinion that the present version of Christianism is more immediately founded on the writings of Philo Judaeus, who speaks much of the "Logos," which in Greek signifies the principle of reason; having the same figurative moral sense as the epithet Christos. The epistle to the Hebrews, and St. John's Gospel, are adduced as complete imitations of Philo's manner and style. The epithet "_Logos_" is often used by him, but in John's Gospel it is falsely translated, being rendered "the word."* Philo also speaks at large of the Therapeutae and Essenes, from whom the Christians borrowed so freely in making their collection; and though in his time they existed not as a sect, they might be mainly indebted to his writings for the groundwork of their fabric. This opinion is greatly strengthened, inasmuch as the heads of our church have always kept Philo, as much as possible, in the back ground. He was a much more learned man than Josephus--a better writer; and had arrived at the years of maturity before the period assigned for the birth of Christ.

* The first verse in John's Gospel is literally copied from
Plato. As a play upon words, it is almost worthy of St.
Paul.

The restless and prying zeal of Paul having gained him this knowledge in the Pagan mysteries, which he boasts of, he perceived that the spirit of the mythos in all the polytheisms of the east was essentially the same, that is, the emblematical personification of physical and moral principles; and that the removal of this veil of allegory developed all the mysteries, and was indeed the only rational meaning of the word revelation. He knew, like the Pagan priests, that in order to deceive the multitude, and make their industry maintain idleness and imposture, miracle and mystery were indispensable; and while he dealt largely in the latter article, he showed a peculiar aptitude for rendering mystery doubly mysterious, whereby he became the grand exemplar of all theological quacks, and founder of that school of quibble which has been so eminently useful to his successors in the Christian church: for whenever they cannot escape from contradictions and absurdities of their own raising, they transfer the solving of their enigmas to the regions of Paul's "third heaven," where all are lost in his mysteries and awful "unspeakables;" fooleries which will always captivate the wonder-struck million; while common sense, with persecution before his eyes, dares to venture only a shrug of the shoulders.

Let us now attend to the moral and political effects produced by this new version of the old mythology, to which, with regard to its absurd and unnatural dogmas, St Paul is the principal contributor. After it had grown strong under the protection of the cruel, kin-killing Constantine, and his parasite Eusebius, it soon turned persecutor in its turn, and began to engender legions of other moral and physical evils, which gradually overwhelmed the Roman empire, in proportion as the human mind became debased and emasculated by abject slavery, under an intolerant superstition--the gorgeous demon of Catholic despotism, erected on the ruins of the less degrading and less expensive Paganism.* Each succeeding year and age was marked by the onward degeneracy and baseness of the Roman spirit. The new modelled mystery of a triune godhead, with its accompanying train of chimeras,** sunk all classes into mental imbecility, and such was the infatuation that nothing but the grossest supernatural follies excited their attention; and as these were made up of insignificant mummeries--theological cant and jargon altogether unintelligible, they caused the bitterest disputes and animosities in both the empires; and glorious high-minded Pagan Italy became the land of pious frauds, clerical knavery, and lies,*** in which absurdities the effeminate and contemptible emperors joined, with their trains of monks and eunuchs.

* In the mythology of the Pagans, their Theogony consisted
of full thirty thousand bearded and unbearded divinities. We
have reduced that establishment to three only; yet
nevertheless, (unaccountable as it may appear) it has been
so contrived by our modern hierophants, that the service of
this triune deity, with their hosts of privileged deputies,
holy days, etc., and taxing the people in one-seventh of
their time, and one-tenth of their substance, has entailed
on human industry, a tax of one hundred times the amount of
that which was contributed to regale the nasal senses of the
whole celestial army of antiquity!

** In imitation of the Pagans, the crafty Christian priests
soon perceived the advantages of polytheism, and that it
would tend greatly to their interest to associate some other
subaltern gods along with the deity of Moses; for, by thus
introducing a plurality of gods, they would not only more
effectually embarrass and perplex the minds of the credulous
people; but by multiplying the objects of worship, and
constituting themselves the acting attornies for these
deities, they would increase their stipends and other
exactions, in proportion to the various rites and ceremonies
they invented for each.

*** Where Cicero and Antoninus lived,
A cowled and hypocritical monk
Prays, curses, and deceives.--Shelley.

Where then, O Rome, were your Brutus', your Cincinnatus', your Catos, your Marcus Aurelius', your Julians? The fact was, so far from being able to produce such examples of heroic virtue, your sons had nearly ceased to deserve the name of men; and as Machiavel truly observes, the doctrines of your new religion, teaching only passive courage and suffering, had subdued the Roman spirit, and fitted you for subjection and slavery. All manly dignity, all strength of mind, and all the virtues had forsaken your sons, and you had become the nucleus of theological absurdity--of all that is worthless, vicious, and unnatural. Your handling of arms to prevent barbarian invasion had ceased, and they were used alone to cut each others throats about the supernatural phantoms of your fraudful priests; witness your Emperor Honorius, who was most holily employed at Ravenna "in punishing Manicheans, Donatists, Priscillianists, and heretics of every denomination, _whilst the Goths marched without opposition to Rome_." Again, when the Heruli, the Goths, the Vandals, and the Huns, invaded the empire, what steps were taken by the two emperors to withstand their attack, and resist the torrent of invasion? None at all; these superstitious fools in purple, aided by their priests and monks, were settling the difference between _Omoosis_ and _Omousis_; and, probably, the different degrees of efficacy in concomitant, versatile, and sufficient grace. With these heavenly matters upon their hands, how could these holy men find time to resist the invasion of their country? Suppose for a moment, that by one of the Christian miracles, the great Caius Julius had started up amongst these degenerate reptiles, and witnessed their ridiculous fooleries, would he have believed that he was among Romans? What would he have said of Saint Anthony's preaching to the fishes with such "spiritual efficacy," that a huge cod looks at the preacher with a face of sanctified beatitude; whilst a beautiful salmon turns up his eyes to heaven, imploring divine light and grace?

When such shameful and degrading absurdities had thus sunk the Romans, and the contagion of the new superstition had so thoroughly and incurably vitiated the minds of all ranks, that all firmness and nobility of character were extinct amongst them; and the change was rapidly leading to the downfall of that vast empire,--dastards and mental recreants in nature, they were marked by the northern nations as an easy prey to the first invader. Little or no symptom of such a decline had appeared until after the gods of the Christians had gained the countenance of the Emperor Constantine, who did not destroy, but made a change in the worship of the Gentile gods, under whom, it was supposed, the empire had attained the highest pitch of glory and power. Yet even this Constantine, so far as regarded himself, was ever as ready to pay his respect to Jupiter, Apollo, and Venus, as to Jehovah, Christ, and the Virgin Mary,* having wit enough to perceive that the latter were mere copies of the former.

* He died more a Pagan than a Christian; and all the change
that he in reality effected was to amalgamate, or unite the
two superstitions. This is proved in the fact that, under a
change of names and forms, nearly the whole of the heathen
mythos was adopted and continued.

In order to conceal as much as possible the fact, that the adoption of the Christian superstition was the principal cause of the downfall of Roman greatness, it has been assumed by church historians and others, that a very considerable decline had visibly taken place during the hundred and seventy years that elapsed between the reign of Adrian and that of Constantine; but this assumption appears to be fallacious. It is true that the integrity of the empire was sometimes endangered during that period, from the despotism falling into unworthy and profligate hands; but at the time when Constantine possessed himself of it, the extent of territory seems to have been undiminished at any point; for it still included the provinces east of the Euphrates (lost by the sons of this emperor), and towards the west, northern Africa, Gaul, Spain, and Britain; so that the real "decline and fall," commenced with the adoption of Christianity.* If the subversion of this immense empire had been the only political effect of this freshly compounded system of theology, the cause of humanity might not have suffered; but it is a most lamentable truth that all the ancient learning of the east was involved in that destruction; for we know from historic facts which are indisputable, that the priests, and tyrants acting in league with them, took special care, as far as it lay in their power, to destroy every root and branch of natural science; but more particularly the writings of those philosophers who exposed the immoral and wicked rites and secrets of the new sect, and its origin amongst the lowest and vilest of the populace.** As one proof amongst a hundred of the persecution of such learned Gentiles as exposed the profligacy of the first Christians, we quote part of the decree of the Emperor Theodosius, as follows:--"We decree that all writings whatever, which Porphyry, or anyone else, hath written against the Christian religion, in the possession of whomsoever they may be found, _shall be committed to the fire_." (See the original Latin, quoted by Lardner.) Thus the Emperors soon found that, with the connivance and subserviency of the priests, the new superstition was much better calculated than the old for the purposes of tyranny; and that the one thing needful was to suppress all Pagan learning--to foster and diffuse the gloom of ignorance, as the only element in which their nefarious schemes for the subjugation of the human mind could prosper.

* The tide of prosperity and greatness followed the Romans,
so long as they were reared under the moral and heroic
virtues of the old religion, until the new superstition
arose like a blighting meteor, shedding its baleful
influence over the empire; and by its pernicious dogmas and
emasculating tendency, gradually reduced the most warlike
nation in the world to contempt and vassalage.

** The Emperor Julian, in a discourse to the Christians,
told them that "It was enough for you at first to seduce a
few servants--a few beggars, such as Cornelius and Sergius.
But let me be regarded as the most impudent of impostors, if
among those who embraced your feet under Tiberius and
Claudius, there was a single man of birth or merit." Julian
here alludes to the Jewish sect of Galileans, who had not
assumed the name of Christians under Tiberius and Claudius.

In latter times history vouches for the horrible persecutions and bloody wars, which this fresh version of Christianity occasioned throughout Europe and part of Asia, for more than thirteen hundred years, viz., from the reign of Constantine till towards the latter end of the sixteenth century, when some glimmerings of science began to dispel the gloom of ignorance, and to weaken that priestly and aristocratic despotism, which even to this day has not been entirely shaken off by any European nation.

A celebrated philosopher,* when speaking of the above period, makes the following observations:--If, says he, God deigned to make himself a man, and a Jew, and to die in Palestine by an infamous punishment, to expiate the crimes of mankind, and to banish sin from the earth, there ought to have been no longer any sin or crime amongst men, whereas religious crimes seem only to have commenced since the time when that event is said to have happened: and the Christians, by their holy massacres and burnings, have shown themselves more abominable monsters than all the sectaries of the other religions put together.**

* Freret.

** The Jews may be regarded as an exception; for their
history displays the most memorable examples of the evils
arising from superstition and fanaticism; from these arose
the numerous revolutions, the horrid and bloody wars; and at
last their total destruction as a petty dependent nation,
owing to their submission to priests, and their unbounded
credulity. From the roguish deceptions of their tribe of
priests alone, they became, beyond all contradiction, the
most despicable people that ever existed. Their barbarous
ignorance was easily played upon by Levitical commissions
from heaven.

In proof of this, witness the gibbets, the wheels, the massacres, and the horrible burnings at the stake of nearly a hundred thousand human beings in a single province--the massacres and devastations of nine mad crusades of Christians against unoffending Turks, during nearly two hundred years; in which many millions of human beings perished--the massacres of the Anabaptists--the massacres of the Lutherans and Papists, from the Rhine to the extremities of the north--the massacres, in Ireland, England, and Scotland, in the time of Charles I., who was himself massacred--the massacres ordered by Henry VIII. and his daughter Mary--the massacres of St. Bartholomew in France; and forty years more of other massacres between the time of Francis I. and the entry of Henry IV. into Paris;--the massacres of the inquisition, which are more execrable still, as being judicially committed;--to say nothing of the innumerable schisms and twenty wars of popes against popes--bishops against bishops--the poisonings, assassinations--the cruel rapines of more than a dozen of popes, who far exceeded a Nero or a Caligula in every species of crime and wickedness;--the massacre of twelve millions of the inhabitants of the new world, executed CRUCIFIX IN HAND and all for the honor and glory of the Jewish deity and his son!! This is without reckoning all the massacres committed in the same names, precedently to any of the above. Finding no end to this dismal catalogue of theological enormities, this philosopher shortly observes, that such a hideous and almost uninterrupted chain of religious wars, for fourteen centuries, never subsisted but among Christians; and that none of all the numerous nations called heathen ever spilt a drop of human blood on the score of theological arguments.

* Under the banners and sanction of the exterminating god of
Moses and of Joshua, "the Spaniards did not treat the
inhabitants of the New World as human beings, because they
were not Christians. All sense of remorse was stifled; and
those unfeeling men, whom Europe had disgorged from her
bosom, were abandoned without control to their insatiable
thirst for gold and for blood."

We are obliged to grant that all this is true; and to this may be added, that in these shocking devastations, the blind ferocity of the Christians was everywhere written in blood, whereas the behavior of their opponents was frequently marked by clemency. As an instance let us compare the conduct of Saladin with that of Godfrey of Bouillon, and his followers, though shame and detestation would draw a veil over the contrast: when the latter took Jerusalem, an indiscriminate butchery took place; neither age nor sex was spared; and _after the surrender_, the streets streamed with the blood of at least seven thousand victims. When Saladin retook the place, no lives were taken _after the surrender_; and he showed the greatest kindness to the Christian captives; _giving those who were poor their liberty without ransom_. The massacres of Antioch and Thessalonica, by the Emperor Theodosius, may be regarded as other instances of sectarian ferocity, partaking, as they certainly did, of religious animosity. Did the Emperor Julian punish these Antiochians in any way whatever, when they heaped upon him every kind of abuse and indignity?*

* Did he not also spare the ten or more Christian soldiers
of his own army, who were proved to have conspired against
his life?

Descending from the great and general calamities which the Christian superstition has entailed upon nations, let us notice a very few of its malignant persecutions of individuals whose only crimes were superior genius, learning, and science; and this persecution has ever been marked by a deadly rancor, which plainly shows that the study and knowledge of Nature is incompatible with, and a decided enemy to, this theological fabrication. Before the time of Copernicus, and the famous Galileo, Christians were taught by their priests, that the sun revolved round the earth; that the latter was flat like a table, (it is quite clear that the Bible-makers knew no better) and one-third longer than it was broad, hence our terms of latitude and longitude. Copernicus showed the absurdity of these notions, and taught that the sun is the centre of his own, or the solar, system, in which this globe of ours is comparatively but a mole-hill. But knowing of the hosts of priests who were ready to pounce upon him if he discovered these truths openly, he declined to publish his works till near the time of his death, and he lived just long enough to receive a corrected copy of them.

Galileo, at the distance of more than a hundred years after the former, offended the church by defending the system of Copernicus, but still more in proving that the earth had a double motion, in revolving on its own centre in twenty-four hours, and also in its orbit round the sun; the former being the cause of day and night, and the latter measuring the solar year. The discovery, or rather the revival, of these and many other grand and sublime truths, drew down upon the head of this great man the implacable vengeance of an interested priesthood; and he was condemned by a wicked conclave, which calls itself holy, for daring to know and to propagate truths that are now known to every schoolboy. All that could be done for him by the wise and learned of the age was merely to save him from being burnt by the priests. He was confined for life, and died a prisoner of the Inquisition. As the sentence against him is hardly credible in the present day, we cite the following part of it:--"To assert that the earth is not immoveable in the centre of the world, is an absurd proposition, false in philosophy, heretical in religion, and contrary to the testimony of Scripture." As an instance of the malicious and inexorable nature of priestcraft, we note the curious fact, that Galileo's sentence was, in spite of the clearest light, _renewed at Rome in 1819!_

Virgilius, Bishop of Saltzberg, was condemned by the church for maintaining that the figure of the earth is spherical; and, consequently, the existence of antipodes.

The learned Stephen Dolet was burnt by the Inquisition for exposing priestcraft, and asserting the unity of God.

Julius Vanini was burnt by the clergy for saying that "God is both the beginning and the end, without being in need of either--in no one place, yet present everywhere; his power is his will." For these tenets did the theologians burn the innocent Vanini.

The blameless life and manners of William Tyndale could not save him from the stake and fagot; his great learning enabled him to expose the frauds of the priests, and the false translations of their Scriptures: so he fell their victim, through the aid and authority of his tyrannical and blood-thirsty king.

The great Descartes died in a foreign land from church persecution.

That persecution is necessarily ingrained in priests of every denomination, and that they will have recourse to it whenever they have the power, we have a memorable instance in the much vaunted reformer, John Calvin, who, when armed with authority by the magistrates of Geneva, wrote to the high Chamberlain of the King of Navarre, (of date the 30th Sept., 1561) as follows:--"Honor, glory, and riches, shall be the reward of your pains; but, above all, do not fail to rid the country of those zealous scoundrels who stir up the people to revolt against _us_. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael Servetus, the Spaniard." Now the fact is well known, that when Calvin found himself unable to cope in argument with this learned Spaniard, he took the true orthodox way of getting a riddance, by roasting him alive at a slow fire, _inhumanly made on purpose, of green wood._

The intrepid Bruno resolutely suffered at the stake for condemning that baleful source of distraction to the human race--the spirituality of priests.

In latter times matters are not much mended. A considerable portion of the 19th century has now elapsed, and has been deemed a period of science; yet free discussion, and the exercise of reason on all subjects have made but small progress; and it is melancholy to reflect that plain truth is still at the bottom of her well, where she is stifled by the demon of supernatural theology and its political colleagues, from whence she has been suffered to emit only partial glimmerings of light; whilst, from base interest, she is shunned or unacknowledged by those very men of science by whom alone she can be rescued from this detestable thraldom of the mind. By corrupt judges and packed juries she is jealously excluded from courts of pretended justice, lest she should expose, in her odious colors, the reigning hag of superstition, with her Bibyline books of mystery and fraud; hence the fines, the robberies, and the incarcerations of a great number of the most virtuous, enlightened, and most talented advocates of free discussion and mental liberty, for the last thirty years. Thus has the peace of countries been incessantly disturbed and outraged, for nearly two thousand years, by this strange fabrication of artificial theology; thus has it been perpetually in exercise as an instrument in the persecution of great and good men, and raised up the most inextinguishable flames of hatred, wars, and devastations amongst nations. Such will ever be its effects, particularly where it is iniquitously upheld as a device to strangle mental liberty, through the hopes and fears of ignorance; and as an engine of state to sustain corrupt government.

On a retrospective view of this direful superstition, we cannot ascertain from any certain authority at what time the Galileans took the name of Christians, as there is not the slightest historical trace of their using the latter term throughout the first century of their assumed existence. There appears to have been no sect of that name in Jerusalem when it was taken and destroyed by Titus in the year seventy, and it was not until full thirty years afterwards that it was mentioned by the younger Pliny (governor of Bithynia) in a letter to the Emperor Trajan. This letter was written about the beginning of the second century, and it shows that Pliny had heard nothing of Christians until he went to that province, as he speaks of them as a novelty with which he did not know how to deal, and represents them to the Emperor as a set of vile and vicious fanatics. However, it appears that the animosities and dissensions amongst the propagators of the new sect had produced effects destructive of the peace and welfare of society, at a very early period. Numerous party-gospels, and forged writings under the names of apostles, were in circulation at the latter end of the second and third centuries; all hostile to each other, and generating nothing but fraud and contention. These writings being exclusively in the hands of the leading impostors, they could alter them at pleasure, and make any invention the "word of God." Our four adopted gospels are as spurious as the others.*

* The earliest Christians, viz., the Ebionites, Nasarenes,
Corinthians, etc., denied that any of our four gospels were
genuine, except that of Matthew; but they excluded as
forgeries the two first chapters, containing the miraculous
conception and birth, declaring them to be spurious, and not
to be found in the genuine copies of Matthew. Both St.
Jerome and Epiphanius allow that this is true.

Nothing is more certain than that no man can rationally predict of the future, otherwise than by deduction drawn from the past; and, therefore, there is reason to believe that the writers of Matthew and Luke, who most probably wrote after the middle of the second century, spoke by inference drawn from their own experience, when they uttered that plain, bold, and bloody declaration regarding the future fruits of Christianity. "Suppose ye that I came to send peace on earth? I tell you nay; _I came not to send peace, but a sword._ For I am come to set a man at variance with his father, and the daughter against her mother. And a man's foes shall be those of his own household." This terrible denunciation has proved true to a tittle. Where is there another of all the New Testament predictions that has been so literally fulfilled? If such effects began to show themselves while it was yet in its infancy, and even crying out for tolerance amongst the Pagans, can we wonder that in subsequent times, after gaining the patronage of tyranny, riches, and power, it should engender a greater mass of human misery than was ever caused by all the other systems of religious plagues put together.