Chapter VII: Part 7

The artificers of this scheme saw well that the power and influence of the priest and despot, were ever in exact proportion to the debasement of man; and, therefore, they laid their foundation in that hideous sink of vice and depravity, the Jewish superstition; for there they found the examples of a numerous and rapacious priesthood, the enforcement of tithes, and a perfect specimen of the iniquitous league between civil and theological tyranny; a combination which makes an easy conquest of the human mind in a state of ignorance and renders it incapable of one liberal, manly or independent sentiment. When man is thus shorn of his native energy, and all virtuous dignity, by the surrender of his reason, these confederate powers erect their common throne on the ruins of his freedom, welfare and happiness. The ferocious character ascribed to deity in the barbarous books of the Jews, was no stumbling-block against their adoption, when contrasted with the mighty advantages to be derived from the precedents already noticed, and which have so eminently served the successors of the adopters in the way of trade. They were utterly reckless that the writers of these books, in the delirium of blasphemy (to use a cant word) have depicted the ruling power of the universe as a contemptible and wicked personation, with the worst of human passions, and as sanctioning or commanding the perpetration of the blackest crimes that ever disgraced human nature. By quoting these bloody examples as laudable and worthy of imitation, have not priests caused half the earth to be ravaged, and debauched the minds of princes (who would otherwise have been humane and virtuous) and made them devastators and infamous persecutors?

Some philosophers have been of opinion that the history of past ages is a true picture of what the fate of man ever must be; that he is destined for ever to-be the slave of a succession of superstitions--to be the tool and puppet of tyrants in the shape of priests and aristocratic rulers. This is a melancholy representation, which implies inherent viciousness in his nature; and that there will never be a want of rogues to prey upon ignorance. In the coalition of the priest and the law-giver, we invariably find the unchangeable enemy of the human race; for, besides the mental slavery thereby maintained, anything like good civil government is necessarily precluded, that being found impossible while it is leagued with the pernicious inventions of supernaturalism. Have the majority of mankind, who are thus victimised, no remedy against this horrid order of things? * They are not entitled to any, while they find it easier to be cheated than to think for themselves, a case which will always be theirs until they become self-regenerated, by the removal of ignorance; a reform that must be effected by themselves alone, since it is evidently and energetically opposed by their oppressors. Ignorance being the only element in which priestcraft can thrive, or its concomitant, bad government be tolerated; so is it the primary source of that degradation and baseness which rears up the mind-subduing altars, of superstition, whose foster-mother it is; and without whose aid no kind of secular despotism could have plunged man into the abject and contemptible condition he is in at present throughout Europe.**

* "Small hopes have the nations!
While reason is brought
Every hour to be laid on credulity's shrine,
Till the truth-seeking spirit submission is taught,
And the dreams of a dotard seem doctrines divine!"

** When the humane and enlightened Cortes of Spain would
have abolished the Inquisition, the priests told the
populace that it would be an infringement of their
liberties; and the priests were bettered!' So true is the
Spanish proverb, that "Man is an ass that kicks those? who
take off his panniers."

We repeat, that a better order of things cannot result until man shall, by education and a virtuous reform of his moral habits assert his own dignity and thereby emancipate himself from being the devoted grovelling victim of this theologico-aristocratic conspiracy, and the unjust laws and institutions which ever must of necessity spring from it; whereby he is at all points robbed of the enjoyment of his nature, and vegetates as the regularly trained slave of the most abominable artifice.

A truly wise and equitable government, so far from coalescing with the priesthood of any religion or superstition for mutual support against the justice of equal rights, would not allow itself to know anything whatever about theology and its train of distracting, misery-creating delusions. It would leave these wholly to the incurable ignorant dupes who _will_ maintain impostors in idleness, eschewing with contempt all such nefarious alliance, and recognising alone the infinitely more dignified principle and functions of civil policy, i.e., the protection of person and property, the equality of rights, and the sacred freedom which is every man's birthright. Where is such a government to be found? To the shame of a degraded and abused world, such a government is nowhere to be found but in the United States of America; for although the populace there are exceedingly bigoted, and grievously preyed upon by the locusts of superstition, still the supreme authority has, with a wise jealousy, preserved itself uncontaminated by any connexion with, or preference given to, anyone of the religious factions, while giving equal protection to all. Nevertheless, every enlightened American will remember, with the most lively gratitude, that but for the philosophic caution and foresight of Thomas Jefferson, and two or three other patriots, the probability is that the new and glorious state would have closed with the foul embrace of some one of the contending sects (glorious then no longer), as the most importunate efforts were made by the sectarian, leaders to effect that object; though nearly all of them had studiously and sneakingly stood aloof from the patriotic cause, while the issue of that noble struggle was doubtful.

In the proud rank of national greatness which the United States have so deservedly attained in the present day, and with the example of priest-governed Europe continually before their eyes, nothing more than the prudent vigilance of common patriotism is required in the supreme councils, to guard against the co-partnership, or admission of anyone of all the pernicious systems of churchcraft, to the slightest connexion with the government. But in the unsettled infancy of the republic, after the declaration of independence, when those insidious clerical hypocrites, who had kept aloof, as aforesaid, ready to join whichever party might be victorious, and, backed by ignorance and fanaticism, beset the framers of the constitution with their spiritual claims and conflicting pretensions--by incessant solicitations and intrigues, to gain their execrable ends, it required the incorruptible virtues of a Washington, a Jefferson, a Paine, a Franklin, and a Barlow, to prevent their effecting a similar "adulterous connexion" with the state to that which is now the bane and disgrace of the mother country.

Whenever the government of these great and powerful States shall become so mentally imbecile as to favor, by an exclusive state establishment, any form of superstition,* or system of religion pretending to supernatural revelation, the fatal time of their division, weakness, and final decline and fall, will follow at a very short distance.

* Let the priest be ever kept on the same footing as the
merchant--that is, maintained at the expense of the
consumer. He who has no priest, and consumes none of the
commodity he deals in, should not be compelled to pay any
part of his hire.

END OF LECTURE FIFTH.

LECTURE SIXTH. EFFECTS OF THE CHRISTIAN SUPERSTITION (Continued)

Let those weak minds that live in doubt and fear,
To juggling priests--fair Nature's foes, repair;
These soul-savers,--truth's blackest enemies,
I ne'er consult, and heartily despise.

Its foul leagues with tyranny, persecutions, cruelty;
society poisoned by its all-pervading influence; what is
good in gospel morals borrowed from the ancients; its
usurpation of one-seventh of man's time, and one-tenth of
the proceeds of his industry; other evils which it occasions
generally.

In extending our view of the immoral, degrading, and malign effects of the Christian superstition, it is but just and fair to observe, that all other systems of religion which have successively plagued the world, founded on the pretensions of impostors to supernatural revelations, have also been destructive of human welfare, though in a degree much less subversive of natural rights. The scanty remains of ancient history and science, which Christian and Mahommedan priests and tyrants have suffered to reach us, show clearly that in all ages and countries, the ignorance of the bulk of mankind hath constantly rendered them the dupes of some sort of priests, by whom that ignorance has been uniformly cherished and promoted, as the most congenial soil for the growth of church and state corruptions. There never has been, and there never can be, any very bad government without the confederate aid of that master evil,* the imaginary science of theology (for all is illusion that is said to be beyond the physical powers of Nature** the poetical personification of which is called "Nature's God"); and a wicked and tyrannical government, whether kingly or aristocratic, can no more do without a sympathetic priesthood, than the latter can do without their devil; hence it follows that all state authority has been pernicious in the exact ratio of its connexion with these priesthoods. This may partly be proved by the superiority of the government of the United States, (where the alloy of ecclesiastical union is strictly guarded against) over that of any European nation, not excepting England, where both houses of Parliament are sadly tainted, and one of them almost governed by the wizard influence of the church; yet, owing to the decayed, and rapidly decaying, power of this incubus, these dominions enjoy more liberty than Spain,*** which for many centuries has had no other executive rule than the most oppressive and irksome superstition that ever degraded and enslaved the human race; and whose sons are at this moment pouring out their blood in the endeavor to pull out the teeth, and curtail the claws, if they cannot kill, the monster.

* Plato states that religious pretences have always formed
one of the most powerful frauds of political despotism; and
Aristotle calls the profession of religion not only the
surest auxiliary of tyrants, but an enslaving tyranny in
itself.

** Divines say that Nature is wholly inexplicable without a
god; that is, to explain what they know very little of, they
have recourse to a cause which they know not at all.

*** For many centuries past, the finest countries in Europe,
via., Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, have been nothing but
theological beargardens, and so they are to this day.

The history of all religions, we repeat, is but a catalogue of follies, knavery, cruelty, and crime; the whole forming a continued libel upon mankind, and proving their ignorance and unbounded credulity; the tyrant, confederate with the priest, assists him to impose upon you his creed, on the strength of which he demands your faith, on the strength of which he "_demands your money_"--not at the point of the bayonet, in the first instance, but if you refuse to _deliver_, he calls in the aid of his political partner, whom he has ever taught you "to obey in all things;" so that, between the priest and "the powers that be," your money is extorted, though not by a highwayman. The iniquity of compelling a man to support an idle and rapacious order of theologians, whom he wishes to have nothing to do with, is an act of injustice too shameful to be committed by any wise and good government.

Since we can distinctly trace priestcraft so far back as the times of Hesiod and Homer, to talk of its origin would be as futile and unprofitable, as it would be to speak of the first evil amongst men; if the two are not necessarily coeval, certainly the cup of the latter was not full until the former filled up the measure. And, as "things naturally bad make strong themselves by ill," tyrannical governments have been enabled, through collusion with this baleful pest, to carry their oppressions to the highest pitch of profligacy and wickedness; and for a quiet submission to the degradation and miseries thus occasioned in real life, the dupes are promised a blissful remuneration, in an imaginary _post mortem life_, created for this express purpose. But every endeavor to open the eyes of the deceived, or to remove the evils arising from this mischievous confederacy, is threatened with a life of everlasting burning after death.*

* "The object of the first legislators was to govern the
people; and the easiest method to effect it was through the
priesthood, to terrify their minds, and prevent the exercise
of reason. They led them through winding by-paths, lest they
might perceive the designs of their guides; they forced them
to fix their eyes in the air lest they should look at their
feet; they amused them on the way with idle stories; in a
word, they treated them as nurses do children."

By thus playing upon the unlimited credulity of man, in a state of ignorance, through the delusive medium of supernatural existences, he is trained from childhood to submit to mental and bodily oppressions, which manhood would make him shake off, and spurn with indignation, were it not for these paralyzing deceptions, which, while they degrade, form the principal tower of strength against him in the hands of his oppressors. His belief in the traditionary tales of the Jewish compilation, is anxiously instilled into his mind in childhood, as the word of the Supreme Power of the Universe; and this false impression subsequently becomes so rooted and strong, that he neither can nor dares to see the immoral and destructive tendency of these tales; and, that from them have been drawn precedents to justify the most atrocious and murderous invasions of peaceful countries. From these mischievous legends have also been drawn, as a common fountain of evil, all those conflicting doctrines, dogmas, and creeds, which the militant priests of Christendom have made convertible at will, and turned into a channel overflowing with the good things of a world which they affect to despise. This is the polluted source from which has sprung what is falsely called civilisation, which has created around man an unnatural atmosphere, wherein vice and dissimulation are the chief ingredients, rendering civilised man in many respects, the vilest of animals; and more contemptible, because less virtuous, than the uncorrupted child of Nature.

These pernicious dogmas and creeds did not begin to show their deadly effects nationally, until the imperial apostate Constantine gave patronage and strength to one of the belligerent sects; and by interposing his authority, prevented, for a short time, their cutting each other's throats; but as for attempting to assimilate their wild and discordant schemes, he might as well have commanded the winds to blow continually from one point; for as the heterogeneous mass of theological machinery arose out of the fabulous or allegorical legends of various countries, a system drawn from such chaotic materials, must be always at war in its parts; hence the fierce and virulent animosities--the remorseless and exterminating devastations, which these maniacal notions and creeds engendered all over Europe. Such of the contending sects who, from their number or their violence, were considered most suitable for the purposes of political tyranny, were taken into league with successive governments, which gave them the power of exercising over all their opponents, the utmost cruelty and oppression. From these times till about the close of the sixteenth century, when the science of Nature began to check the mischievous demon of theology, we repeat that millions upon millions of men, women and children were tortured and murdered in religious persecutions* and wars; whilst a sum not less than L400,000,000,000 in money, besides other property, was wrung from the laboring man, not to instruct him in a particle of useful knowledge, but to keep him in that state of abject ignorance which alone fits him for slavery.

* All religions pretending to revelation, are necessarily of
the persecuting kind; and it is these alone that show an
extraordinary zeal for-dissemination in other countries:
but the religion of Nature being perfectly tolerant, leaves
its own propagation to self-evidence.

All this has been done to maintain various denominations of aristocratic tyranny, combined with rapacious priests, in whose minds were seated the deepest hypocrisy and the blackest vices--who carried humanity on their lips, and robbery and murder in their hearts. The victims of Christianity far exceed in number the whole that have fallen by all the other idolatrous superstitions which at any time have plagued the world; and most truly did it announce that it "came not to send peace on earth, but a sword;" a sword that never has, and never will find a scabbard, until the whole baseless fabric of delusion shall sink into merited oblivion; we would say a thousand times over--look at Spain--look at Ireland--look at any country in Europe before the 17th century, and you will see the priests reeking with gore. And if you are not utterly lost in ignorance and prejudice, you will see the effects of corrupt governments striving to force favored superstitions upon the dupes of other religions. No intellectual blindness but that which will not see, could prevent your seeing palpably, that all religion, except that of Nature, is the accursed thing which occasions and perpetuates the deadly feuds between man and man; and creates those insane animosities which embitter and poison all the natural sweets of this fair world. Such fatal results must be inevitable whilst man has the credulous folly to maintain in idleness and luxury, myriads of his own species whom his labor educates, as it were, for the express purpose of deceiving him. These are the professors of the pretended science of supernaturals, _alias_, nonentities, or at all events of unproved existences, of which the most illiterate hind knows just as much as the proudest hierarch.

The _principle_ of priestcraft being unchangeable, the countries where this freshly modified superstition first gained a footing had been kept in deep ignorance by the old mythology,* so that the hierarchy of the new were safe in going any lengths in multiplying absurdities; for nothing can ever be monstrous enough to shake the credulity of the vulgar populace;** so prodigies of all dimensions grew common, and every cunning impostor, who found himself able to deceive others, had inspirations from heaven--turned priest, and dealt in supematurals; knowing well that where mental imbecility has been successfully fostered by the craft, it is sheer silliness to be scrupulous about the means of deception, however monstrous.***

"Be joggled mob! you are the tools
That priests do work with, called fools."

* One universal mythos, or fable wearing the garb of
history, has been the basis of all religions, ancient and
modern. This mythos is rooted in, and has secret allusion to
the zodiac and the solar system, in which the sun and the
rest of the "Host of Heaven" were turned into imaginary
personages, under peculiar nomenclatures in each country;
and fanciful narratives concerning them, were invented by
the astronomising priests, in order to stultify and subject
the minds of the ignorant populace. This deception continues
to the present day, for the solar mythos was the true
Christianity. When the French, under Napoleon, possessed
Italy, they examined the chair of St. Peter, and found upon
it the signs of the zodiac.

** Nothing, says the Cardinal de Retz, convinces fools so
much as that which they cannot comprehend.--Lucian
Redivivus.

*** As the ignorance of nations grows darker, priests of all
religions see their way the more clearly.

In regard to the theogony upon which these conjurors founded their various systems, it appears never to have been of the slightest importance whether it consisted of one, two, three, or thirty thousand divinities; though it must be confessed that the triune mythology of Christianity has answered, better than any other, the aristocratic purpose of general ignorance and oppression. Like their predecessors, its priests have governed solely in the names of their gods, whom on all occasions they cause to speak whatever is fitting and agreeable to sacerdotal interests and power; and all this passes as the commands of God, which, they declare, must take precedence of all civil affairs. From this usurpation is formed the almost insurmountable barrier against human liberty, "the _imperium in imperio_," or the visionary empire of supernaturalism within, and either confederate with, or independent of, the secular empire. All belief in anything supernatural is a pitiable and deplorable hallucination of mind, everything pretending to be such being the offspring of sheer imposture; and until the age of reason and science shall have succeeded those ages of delusion and ignorance through which the world has hitherto rolled, the paramount power upon its surface will be priestcraft.

This craft is twin sister to witchcraft; and the former cherished and supported the latter as long as her head could be kept above water; but when the sun of science (the mortal foe of these two crafts) began to beam upon the imaginary hag, she sank to rise no more;* and men are now astonished at the credit she had gained in the world, and still more at the brutal ignorance which allowed her to shed so much innocent blood.**

* Science having thus as it were suffocated the weird hag of
witchcraft, a most useful auxiliary is gone of that religion
which, more than all others, has been

"Blood-nursed, and watered by the widow's tears."

** The Stat. 1 James 1st, c. 12, enacts, "That all persons
invoking any evil spirit, or consulting, covenanting with,
entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil
spirit, etc., etc., etc., shall be guilty of felony, without
benefit of clergy, and suffer death." Oh the height, the
profound depth of the "wisdom of our ancestors!"

It is computed that about 30,000 miserable victims were tortured and burnt for this supposed offence; yet, if this blood be compared with the quantity shed by the still surviving sister, it would appear but as a drop in the ocean. But the same sun of science, in exact ratio as it is now dispelling the mists of ignorance and superstition which the mother, theology, has raised, is hastening the remaining twin's downfall. Witchcraft was one of the thousand dismal evils arising from the belief in preternatural existences, but quite conducive to the views in trade of all church mystagogues, who never failed to sanction and abet the horrid executions of the poor defenceless culprits. The priests drew their justifying precedent from that book in which the vindication of every crime may be found: in Exod. xxii., 18, the inhuman order is given, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Here we have a point-blank justification of all those atrocious immolations which disgraced humanity for so many centuries, and laid the foundation of detestable laws, in the countries of America. At Salem, where so many murders were committed for the fanciful crime of witchcraft, the accusations originated in the house of a priest were chiefly carried on by priests, who blew the terrible flame of fanaticism against the helpless accused, whose lives were acknowledged to be moral and blameless. Nineteen of these innocent victims were executed,* one was pressed to death because he would not plead to the indictment, and eight more were condemned. This hideous business ended by a declaration of the priests that, in the whole the devil got just nothing; but God got praises, Christ got subjects, the holy spirit got temples, the church got addition, and the souls of men got everlasting benefits! With similar views, and in such a laudable spirit, John Wesley exclaimed, "_While I live I will bear the most public testimony I can to the reality of witchcraft_." At a torturing and burning which took place at Irvine in 1613, in the affair of Margaret Barclay and others, there were present the Earl of Eglinton, the ministers of Ayr, Kilmarnock, Dairy, and Irvine, when three innocent people were sacrificed.** these wretched

* It is said that several of these victims were persuaded by
the priests to believe, and even to confess that they had
been guilty of this imaginary crime. This affords a
melancholy proof that, in a state of ignorance, the
credulity of man is absolutely boundless.

** See Scott's "Demonology," and Murphy's "Essay."

What! Were not these holy ministers prompted by their superior learning and humanity, to endeavor to save people? Quite the contrary, they appear to have been there rather to countenance and approve, if not to enjoy, the shocking spectacle. Such as these were the heavenly teachers, who, for more than a thousand years, asserted, preached, and practised, _that the rack was the fittest engine of conviction_, and the stake the most effectual cure for unbelief.* As conservators and upholders of every invention in the delusive machinery of supernaturalism, upon which their trade wholly depends, anything in the shape of human interference in favor of the victims, or any compunctious feelings for the barbarities which these men of peace and love sanctioned, were altogether out of the question on such occasions. No animal has ever been more cruel and remorseless than priests of all religions have been, in supporting those delusions which support them, _whenever they had the power._*** The Jew books being now nullified as authorities for the existence of witchcraft, what sustains their validity in all other matters?

* What terrific outrages does superstitious ignorance
perpetrate. Thousands have been burnt for witchcraft.
Millions have been murdered for being what bad government
and Christianity have made them. And hundreds of millions
are threatened with eternal tortures for having beliefs
which it is impossible for them not to have.

** Belief or disbelief (being the work of the judgment, and
not of the will) is involuntary; and there is neither merit
nor demerit in either. You believe only that which seems to
you to be true, and, in spite of your hypocrisy, I defy you
to believe more. What does the Atheist less? And that which
appears to you to be a lie, you necessarily reject, and what
does the Atheist more.

*** Superstition is to be feared only when the authority of
iniquitous laws rallies round her standard, for then her
cruel and sanguinary nature is gratified.

Such has been Jewish and Christian immorality and wickedness, in punishing the guiltless for the fanciful crime of witchcraft; and in other respects we may find in these books innumerable instances of sanctioned cruelty and injustice, both in example and precept:--take the following malevolent sentiment, said to have been uttered by the all-ruling power of the universe; "let his children be fatherless; let them be vagabonds continually, and beg; let them also seek their bread out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the stranger spoil his labor, let there be none to extend mercy to him, neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children; let his posterity be cut off," etc., etc. Again, in Exod. xxiii., 3.

"_Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his own cause_." These are specimens of Bible morality! He alone is the blasphemer who attributes such vicious and malevolent orders to the supreme power.

The Christian, in their presumptuous and unwarrantable assertions, assume that the science of ethics is comparatively of modern date, and that the personage called Jesus Christ was the first who taught that pure morality and virtue constituted the summum bonum of human happiness; and that all morality owes its existence to their gospels; and that all ethical goodness to be found out of Christendom, is entirely attributable to their Scriptures. But nothing can be farther from the truth than this evangelical detraction, with its inexorable disregard to facts. Fortunately for the calumniated cause of Paganism, we have data, chronological and historical, to show that the science of ethics was not only perfectly known to the ancients, but that the few really good things which are to be found in the New Testament, were borrowed from what is called "the divine philosophy of the ancients;" or the moral maxims of Pythagoras, Thales, Solon, Bias, Pittacus, Chilo, Cleobulus, Periander, and many others, who lived full 500 years before the Christian era. This is so demonstrably true, that the sayings of these men are in some instances copied into the New Testament almost word for word; but for the maxims of that book which are either bad or questionable (and these are not a few), there is no authority to be found in the ancients cited.

The compilers of the above book have also drawn literally from the moral maxims of Confucius,* who, according to some writers, has been held in great esteem in China for about 4,000 years, but all agree that he lived at least 550 before our era.

* As names in eastern languages are expressive of some
attribute or quality adherent to the possessor; so Confucius
signifies a speaker of wisdom.

His 24th moral is the most precious standard maxim in ethics: "Do to another what you would he should do to you, and do not unto another what you would should not be done unto you." To impress this indelibly upon the mind, as the concentrated essence of morality, he adds, "_thou needest this law alone, it is the foundation and principle of all the rest_." In his 53rd moral, he says, "Acknowledge thy benefits by return of other benefits, but never revenge injuries." This is a noble maxim when compared with that abject and slavish one of the "new will of God," which enjoins the holding up of the cheek to receive a second blow. The disciples of Confucius are yet numerous, though many thousands of years have elapsed since he lived. He instructed as well by example as by his precepts; and it would be well if his morals were taught in all the schools of Christendom, instead of dogmas and creeds which are unintelligible, inasmuch as they relate to things which have no proven existence, The German writer Boll, very justly observes that, "if Christianity be got rid of, which seems likely, men must labor not to let such absurd ideas get into the new religion of morals, which will be established on the ruins of superstition." He was alluding to the eternal tortures of those priestly indispensables called souls, and other unsightly dogmas.

* To the shame of credulous and priest-degraded mankind, the
present superstition of Europe hath been established, as it
were, in defiance of the light of Nature, reason, common
sense, and all experience; and what is still more strange
and revolting, by those very means and agencies which men
ought to hold most in contempt and detestation; viz., fraud,
forgery, pretended miracles and prophecies, hypocrisy,
avarice, tyranny, cruelty, massacres, and wars which have
deluged the earth with blood, and sacrificed hundreds of
millions of human beings to its frenzied demon.

In no age of the world was morality ever found more pure and virtuous than amongst the Epicureans of old; and no ancient sect has been so much traduced and vilified by Christian priests of all denominations, who, in lauding the most revolting system that ever insulted the understanding of man,* have been utterly regardless of truth in their foul aspersions of Paganism; and have represented these amiable rationalists as reckless sensualists--profligate voluptuaries; which is just the reverse of their true characters. With them the preservation of health was the fundamental principle, since there can be no enjoyment of life without that pre-requisite; and the means they used to secure its permanence was the strict observance of temperance in everything, according to the dictates of Nature; all excess of any kind whatsoever was avoided as injurious, and the full and proper exercise of the body was enjoined as indispensable. Free from the restlessness of ambition, the utility of their maxims was evinced in their lives, and they were generally esteemed as the most exemplary and virtuous of all the ancients, and the most noted for the value of their moral actions. We may gather from the writings of Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, that they did more scrupulously observe the laws, piety, and fidelity among men, than any other sect whatsoever, not excepting even the Stoics themselves. Like the philanthropist, Owen, they held that a man was either good or bad according to education and custom. Being, above all others, strict observers of truth and honesty, they were often chosen to manage the inheritances of orphans, and it was common with them to rear and educate, at their own expense, the children of deceased friends; their known integrity frequently procured for them offers from the Roman consuls and emperors, to fill high places of employment and trust; but these offers were often declined, from the strong desire they had to lead private lives, free from care and anxiety. They had no desire for posthumous renown, and denied that there was any future state of existence for man, more than for any other animal; and teaching that mind or soul is wholly dependent on animal organisation*--the mere creature of the brain, without which it has no existence; and that the matter composing the bodies of men and other animals, is alone eternal, though subject to thousands of millions of different forms, modes, or states of being.

* Intelligence is the result of the animal organisation of
matter, and cannot be separated from, or have existence
without it. "Animated matter is not the result of
intelligence." Thought, mind, soul, or breath, call it
which you will, is as much the offspring or effect of
organisation as music is of the instrument that produces it.

One of the great luminaries of the church, even the Bishop
of Llandaff, has given us his own creed respecting what is
called soul, which savors of something more than mere
scepticism. Speaking of its supposed flight into
immortality, after death, he says,--"This notion was,
without doubt, the offspring of prejudice and ignorance; I
must own that my knowledge of the nature of the soul is much
the same now that it was then" (in childhood). "I have read
volumes on the subject, but I have no scruple in saying that
I know nothing about it"--Anecdotes of his own life,
written by himself.

But in modern times, under the triune mythology (or the three-god fable), society is in a great measure destitute of such pure morality, and sound philosophy; all being mixed up with the deleterious alloy of theology, and its ever-changing inventions in its own peculiar element of unproved existences. This supernaturalism is the only delusion that deserves the name of atheism, because it beguiles man to set at nought the immutable revelations of Nature; and its very essence being to prevent all correct views of that Power, the pretension to look beyond it nullifies or vitiates everything good on earth. Whilst mankind shall not only continue to be advocates for those impositions which destroy their own pleasure and happiness, but pay for their degradation by supporting a mischievous canker-worm priesthood, they deprive themselves of a fair trial to see what a state of affluence and ease they might attain by very moderate labor; and by repudiating all doctrines and dogmas founded on spiritualism, immaterialism, or any other nothingism, because they are words absolutely without meaning, as they represent nothing that has a real existence; and therefore, until some immaterial entity can be made palpable to the senses, they will remain downright contradictions in terms, though they have hitherto served as the principle machinery of theologie deception.* Contemning all such visionary mummeries, our divines of the present day are at no loss to find you a vast difference between a spiritual body, and a bodily spirit!

* The learned amongst the Fathers were materialists.
Tertullian says, "Nihil incorporale nisi quod non est."
Saint Hilary, in the fourth century, affirmed that, "there
is nothing but what is corporeal" Yet and attending to the
principles of their own nature, together with the physical
realities that surround them, and upon which alone depends
every atom of their welfare and happiness, mankind will be
able by perseverance to remove the overwhelming evils of
their present condition; but in vain will they expect such
results, while they continue mere automata, to be played at
pleasure by superstition and despotism.

Amongst the many immoral corruptions which the present superstition of Europe has entailed on the laboring man, few have a worse tendency than the compulsory exaction of one seventh of his time, which its priests have procured to be dedicated to their purposes alone; whereby he is compelled either to be idle, or to swell their vain pageant train to that shrine of hypocrisy called church. The observance of Sunday is, like everything else in Christianism, borrowed from the heathens; and is merely a continuation of the Pagan festival that was held in the temples of the Sun, in adoration of that luminary, as the name attests beyond all contradiction; with this difference alone, that the Fathers, as if it were to make the thing more expensive and intolerable in their Scripture traffic, changed it into a weekly festival, substituting the triune machinery of the church for that of the temple. But as the present observance of this day throughout Christendom is nowhere enjoined in the New Testament, it was customary with Christians, even in the fourth century, to perform their usual work on that day; and, according to Mosheim, many of them held Thursdays and Fridays to be as sacred as Sunday. The entailing upon human industry this weekly curse of idleness was reserved for, and was worthy of, the Emperor Constantine, a man who had the guilt of seven family murders upon his head: and as the priests of Paganism refused to expiate those crimes (so Zosimus and others say), he abandoned their religion, and adopted that of Christianity, whose less scrupulous priests absolved him, and white-washed his crimes to the purity of snow. In return for this scouring, the imperial murderer felt himself prompted by gratitude to do all in his power to establish a new hierarchy, who could make themselves so subservient to the purposes of tyranny; so he began by paving the way for finally depriving the industrious man of one seventh of his time, which was to be appropriated in promoting the importance, the riches, and the power of his newly adopted priesthood.

But even this pious man of blood (who to the very last, kept two strings to his bow, but was rather more willing to pay his respects to Jupiter than to Jehovah), wedded as he was to that priesthood, which had so kindly effaced the stains of so many inhuman murders, durst not gratify them all at once, lest he should bring a famine upon the empire; and therefore by his edict issued on the subject, the observance of Sunday was compulsory only upon magistrates, and the inhabitants of cities generally; but in regard to the people in the country, and all agriculturists, he says:--"_On the venerable day of the Sun, let those who are situated in the country, freely and at full liberty, attend to the business of agriculture_." After the death of this emperor, the church which he had planted soon grew strong in wealth and power; and the consequent influence of the hierarchy enabled them, gradually to extend the forced respect for their own harvest-day, over both town and country.

This clerical usurpation is so far from being sanctioned by any authority, that the New Testament suffers no man to "judge another in respect to the Sabbath day, or of any holy days" (see Coloss, ii., 16). It asserts the right to esteem every day alike, "agreeably to the persuasions of a man's own mind" (Romans, xiv., 5). It binds no man "to the observance of days, and months, and times, and years" (Gal. iv., 10) Jesus did not enjoin respect for the Sabbath, but justified the contrary (Matt, xii., 5). There being no gospel authority requiring this waste of time for the benefit and gratification of priests alone, it was not until some time in the fourth century that they fully succeeded in palming upon industry this weekly inlet to every vice; nor was it legally enforced, we believe, until a considerable time after the Council of Nice, that foulest combination of fraud, knavery, and priestcraft that ever degraded the human race, Let us now attend a little to the glaring immoralities and crimes which are the inevitable effects of compulsory idleness on this day, that was originally the heathen festival of the glorious solar deity.

There are few exceptions to the general rule, that the industrious man is the virtuous. "By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," is the universal decree of Nature; and every violator of this law of health shall be unhappy in the precise ratio of its violation. Hence it follows that when men are compelled either to be idle vagrants, or give up their minds mechanically to a worship which appears to them at once useless and irrational, they cannot do otherwise than prefer the former; and being thus compelled to be idle, they are virtually forced to be vicious, which leads to the reverse of happiness. The profligacy and crime arising from this weekly idleness, is amply set forth in those scenes of drunkenness, debauchery, gaming, and quarrelling, which are of constant Sunday occurrence in our beer and gin palaces: but as the various poisons vended in these sinks of ruin pay high duties to government, and are, next to its oppressive ally, a rapacious priesthood, the surest means of keeping the multitude in poverty and ignorance, that virtuous and salutary legislation which would suppress or regulate them according to public health and good morals, is not to be expected from our present lawgivers, aristocratical and clerical, who feel a deep interest in the ignorance and debasement of the laboring classes. The orthodox Paley, who "_could not afford to keep a conscience_" alludes to such places of public resort, when he says, "the laboring classes" (being doomed to idleness) "consume their time in rude, if not criminal pleasures--in stupid sloth or brutish intemperance." He might have added, that vast numbers of young men who have ended their career by an ignominious death, have dated the commencement of their vicious courses from what the pampered harpies in black are pleased to call "sabbath breaking," or "profanation of the Lord's day." And who is to blame for all this? Verily none but that powerful phalanx of hypocritical delusionists, who pretend to be delegated from the immaterial, invisible "Persons," who rule the upper regions; and who, in confederacy with hereditary lawgivers on earth, have, amongst other conventional impositions, not only deprived the wealth producers of their right to spend the seventh part of their time in the way most suitable to their circumstances, but enforced idleness during that time, which, coupled with that lurid ignorance called religious instruction, most commonly leads to vice and debasement. With a dissimulation and effrontery that is matchless out of the sacerdotal order, they pretend an interest in the laboring man's ease and welfare; that he requires the seventh as a day of rest, which day should be dedicated to the "Lord" but as their Levitical authorities are derived from the rankest species of priestcraft that ever degraded man, they will no longer pass in the present age; for those must be mentally blind who do not see, that in all times, whatever was ostensibly dedicated as "God's share," was appropriated solely for the benefit of the priests. It is most true that the working man wants rest; but is not he the best judge when recreation or rest becomes necessary? The simple fact is, he never can have either peace or rest, or live under equitable and salutary laws, nor enjoy the fruits of his labor, whilst his mind is kept in darkness by the delusions of supernaturalism, and his industry preyed upon by its priests. To perpetuate the stultifying influence of this wizard power, whose nature it is to be adverse to the natural enlightenment of the bulk of mankind,* every corner of the country is assiduously studded with expensive temples, devoted to the exercise of its Sunday spells; but particularly for the nursing of popular ignorance. Against such an overwhelming antagonist, abetted by the government and riches of the country, all in deep array to frustrate his intellectual improvement, the laboring man has nothing to oppose but self-cultivation alone, which will lead him to the knowledge that it is better to think for himself than to be cheated; and that all the miseries he suffers are in reality rooted in unearthly chimeras--nonentities which, in all ages and religions, have been invented for similar purposes of deception and slavery. Until he so relieves himself from this bondage (no other power will do it for him), his condition must continue to be more abject and pitiable than that of the sturdy savage, who stalks in the pride of his mental and bodily independence; or even that of the beast of the field.

* Hobbes calls the pretended science of theology the kingdom
of darkness. It is indeed a perpetual insult to human
reason, debasing and debauching the mind.

Thus it appears that amongst the Christians, the coercive observance of Sunday originated in a combination of the two crafts, kingly and clerical, as a potential auxiliary for the permanent inthralment of the human mind; for which it is indeed extremely well calculated, owing to its unceasing recurrence as the weekly stifler of reason, and the soporific of folly and ignorance; its frequency allows no breathing time for common-sense. If men will contemn the light of Nature and the evidence of their senses, to maintain a degrading superstition, let them not suffer their political rulers to form co-partnership alliance, offensive and defensive, with its priests. There can be no surer proof of the corruption of a government than its confederacy with the professors of any religion whatsoever. Mahommed was so sensible of the danger of priesthoods in political states, and of their corrupting all government, that he disapproved the allowance of any such institution, and wished every Moslem to keep a copy of the Koran, and be his own priest. But exactly as in the case of Christianism, his political and theological followers soon established "the accursed thing." The Quakers are too wise and too moral to allow this locust race to spring up amongst them.

In the leading dogmas invented by theologians, it seems essential that spiritual or divine justice should reverse the simplest rules of morality and virtue; and that Nature's immutable law of death should be held in terror as the greatest evil, though in reality it is merely a necessary and happy transition of organised matter into another form, throughout the animated creation; and as such, an absolute good.* The ancients did not represent death as Christians do, with meagre countenance, and a hideous structure of bones; but pleasant and composed, as the image of the profoundest sleep; and such it struck no terror. As the stronghold of priests, however, it has been clothed in every imaginary horror that fraud can conceive, to render their spells indispensable for death-bed or gallows repentance, where a belief in their conjurations expiates all the crimes that may have outraged society.

Amongst the Gentiles, Pliny spoke the fullest and plainest on this subject, thus: "After the interment of our bodies, there is a great diversity of opinions concerning the future state of our souls, or ghosts; but the most general is this, that they return to the same state in which they were before they were born. However, such is the folly and vanity of men, that they extend this existence even to future ages; and some crown it with immortality; others pretend a transfiguration, and others render unto the soul of the departed honor and worship, making a God of him that was not so much as a man; as if the manner of men's breathing differed from that of other living creatures; or as if there were not to be found in the world many animals that live much longer than man. Now these are surely but fantastical, foolish, and childish toys, devised by men who would fain live always; the like foolery is there in preserving the bodies. But what a folly of follies is it to think that Death should be the way to a second life! Certainly this foolish credulity, and easiness of belief, destroy the benefit of the best gift of Nature--death;" (which is as necessary, nay, even as natural to every animal as life itself.) "How much more easy, and greater security, were it, for each man to ground his reasons and resolutions upon an assurance, that he should be in no worse a condition than he was before he was born."--Nat. Hist.

* The fear of death, which Christian dogmas create, has
effects the most baleful and pernicious imaginable; and has
contributed more to stock the Bedlam of Christendom, than
any other cause whatever. All animals avoid and fear bodily
pain, as the greatest evil--man alone fears death. Why?
Because he alone has priests and a hell. Epicurus says:
"Death, which some suppose to be the most terrible of evils,
is nothing to us; seeing that while we are in being, death
is not present; and when it is present, then we are not"
Hesiod, in alluding to those who, in the golden age (when it
may be presumed, there were neither priests, hells, nor
supernaturals) died without superstitions fears, sung thus:--

"They sunk to death, as opiate slumber stole
Soft o'er the sense, and whelm'd the willing soul."
_The Works and Days._

Among the Republican Romans, the deed that was accounted the most virtuous and heroic, was that of dying on the field of battle, in defence of liberty; and the next was the act of suicide, resorted to as the means of avoiding subjection or dishonor. And so indulgent was custom in this case, that those who were proscribed in after times, were commonly permitted to retire from life in any way they thought proper, to elude the disgrace of being public spectacles. This was humane, as far as it is possible to extend lenience under such a predicament; and as for the act itself, there was neither impiety nor the slightest odium attached to it, but the contrary. It is curious to observe that, amongst the host of evils introduced with, or generated by, the modern superstition of Europe, a total change of law and sentiment regarding this action has been effected by its priests, who, as they engrossed all learning when in the zenith of their sway, were enabled to brand everything as heinous wickedness that militated against, or seemed to evince contempt for, their avocations. And as the act of suicide affords no harvest for the priest--shuts the door against fees and confessions--punishes him in his purse, and overlooks the importance of his conjurations, it comprises every other offence; and, therefore, every ignominy and abuse is heaped upon the memories, and even the dead bodies of the self-victims, though their only crime was ridding themselves of those unbearable miseries, which are chiefly caused by theology, and the laws which it has occasioned.*

* The person who commits suicide, is no more criminally
guilty, and in all probability, much less insane than he who
dies of fever,--they are exactly on a footing, both had
supported life so long as it was supportable.

Though reason and science have now cooled the roasting-alive spirit down to the moderate temperature of modern times, yet the essential property of priestcraft to augment, and in no rational manner ever to alleviate, human suffering will never fail to show itself, wherever its views and interests are concerned. By laws and customs procured in its all-powerful days, the mental and bodily tortures of condemned criminals are most unmercifully prolonged between sentence and execution, and their situation rendered as horrid as possible. Under pretence of the soul-saving anxiety, the dreadful anguish of their minds is, by a cruel delay, increased in a ten-fold degree, whilst they are inexorably guarded lest they should anticipate their doom by relieving themselves, and give the priest the go-by, which they are told is the acme of sin and wickedness; but if they drag out their agonising misery quietly, and give him due opportunity to play off his incantations, and above all--believe, or pretend to believe in the efficacy of his dogmas, then a heavenly pardon is secured, even at the gallows. If, in the endeavor to avoid this catastrophe, the unhappy victim of the ignorance and crimes of society--overwhelmed as he is with misery and despair, is driven to seek relief in the quiet sleep of death, he is seized and accused by the "authorities" of a "_felonious intention_" to escape from the evils with which bad laws and abominable superstitions have surrounded him; and is, therefore, absurdly required to "_find security_" that he will not again attempt to elude his wretchedness, but will quietly linger out the remainder of life in hunger, rags and cold; all entailed upon him by existing society, every element of which is pregnant with corruption.