This new version of the old mythology was gradually constructed by priestcraft during the second, third, and fourth centuries, of materials taken from all the oriental polytheisms; and is a similar sort of fraudful quackery upon these allegorical religions, that astrology is upon legitimate astronomy. Thus, (let us repeat the melancholy truth) out of the comparatively harmless astro-fables of antiquity hath sprung a foul collusion of religious and political tyranny, that has been dreadful in its effects; and every successive invention to strengthen this accursed coalition of an aristocracy of nobles and priests, linked together with royalty,* has tended more and more to depress the interests of the laboring population, or wealth producers of Europe, and served to crush them under the most merciless of all despotisms. And as it is utterly hopeless that our English hereditary lawgivers, who are virtually our feudal rulers, and whose interests are entirely exclusive, will ever pass any laws but such as support and perpetuate these interests, it is much to be feared that, as in France before the revolution, nothing but a sanguinary reaction on the part of the people, will reestablish their right to just representation in Parliament, equal laws, and a dissolution of that baneful state-confederacy between our aristocratic rulers and the reigning superstition; the support of which, we are tempted to conclude, is more the object of government than the interests of the common weal.

END OF LECTURE THIRD.

LECTURE FOURTH. PAGAN ALLEGORIES MADE CHRISTIAN DOGMAS (Continued.)

DOES not the New Testament speak very distinctly of two crucifixions, viz., one as having taken place upon Mount Calvary, and another at, or in a Garden? There is even a third mentioned, as having occurred in Egypt, "where also our Lord was crucified," Rev. xi., 8; which is a plain recognition of the astro-religion, and solar worship of the Egyptian priests. The crucifixion upon Mount* Calvary was allegorical of the sun's passing over, or crossing the equator in March; of which month the Ram, or Lamb of God, was the zodiacal emblem, God, the sun, being in that sign at the spring equinox. This was also the origin of the Pascal Lamb, and the Passover of the Jews, which they borrowed of their masters, the Egyptians.

This crossing of the sun, while in the Ram of March, was likewise metonymised into the phrase about "The Lamb that was slain from the beginning of the world," that is, the Lamb that was figuratively crucified at every vernal equinox, while the sun was in the sign Aries or the Lamb. The Evangelist John, in describing God, declares that the hair of his head was like wool; (O, John, you are too apt to tell tales ont of school!) which setting aside the ludicrous simile, is a sublime symbol of God, the sun, in the sign of the Bam, in March. Why is the second crucifixion, as narrated by this tell-tale, John, said to have happened, not upon a mount, but in or near a garden? Because this crucifixion has allusion to the autumnal equinox, when the sun crosses the line of the equator, in September; and nothing can be a prettier, or more appropriate emblem of that month than a fruit garden, or vineyard. Why is the mother of Jesus said to be standing by, or near him, at the garden crucifixion, as stated by John, though her presence is not at all acknowledged by any of the other evangelists? His mother could no more be near him at his Calvary crucifixion, than August can be near March; but as she, as the sign Virgo, or the Virgin, is also the genius of August, she was, of course, near, or standing "by the cross," when her son Jesus Christ, that is, the sun, was crossified, or crossed the equator in September, that month being next door neighbor to August. The Christ, or Savior of the vernal equinox ascends into the Heaven of summer, and saves, or recreates the organised existences of this globe, by his genial and animative power; whereas the Christ of the autumnal Cross descends gradually to the winter solstice, and is said, therefore, to descend into Hell, that is, to enter the signs and constellations of winter, which, being antagonistic to those of summer, are emblematical of evil. In the September crucifixion, Christ, as the sun, is called "the Just One," because he is then in the zodiacal sign, Libra, or the Balance.

The Egyptian deity, Bacchus, or the wine-producing god, being also a personification of the sun, is the same as Christ, and of course, like him, visited the "lowest regions" after being unjustly put to death. These being only the Egyptian and Indian names for the same divinity, it was quite in analogy to preserve a symbolical allusion to the vine and blood of the grape, in the crucifixion of Christ. But it requires little penetration to perceive that all we find there said about the "agony,"* in the garden, and sweating "great drops of blood," has a very plain allusion to the wine-press and the compression of the grapes;** and here the secret meaning is as near the surface as it possibly can be in allegory. The rich, sweet juice is at first expressed in "great drops," or copiously, and is called "the blood of the grape;" by a second pressure, the thin lees, or "vinegar," is compressed, which they are allegorically said to have given him to drink; and after this last process the business is truly said to be "finished." After this manner, and in every age and country of the world, down to the present day, have the allegories invented by priests, and cunningly drawn from the astronomical phænomena of nature, passed for religion amongst the unthinking million.*** If the cruel usage given to John Barleycorn, in the process of turning him into beer, had been allegorised to us in our present ignorance, and priest-nursed stupidity, it would have answered equally as well as the fable of Christ and the "blood of the wine-press."

The name of Chrishna, Christna, or Christ, was common to Egypt as well as to India, in the remotest known antiquity. In the Sanscrit Dictionary, the name of the Nile is Christna; which is further proof of what Sir William Jones says about the exceedingly ancient intercourse which subsisted between India and Egypt "before the time of Homer." And although this pious author, and several other writers on eastern affairs, seem carefully to have avoided saying a word about the crucifixion of the Hindu Savior, and many Christians have exulted in the similarity of the legends being entirely broken off by this pretended discrepancy, yet the fact is incontrovertible, that not only was Christ, or Christna, crucified in India, but in Egypt "also," as we have already shown on Scripture authority. Mr. Higgins asserts that the Brahmin "crucifixion was well known in the time of St. Jerome," who, like the Evangelist John, was rather apt to tell astronomical secrets.

Mons. Guigniant says—"The death of Chrishna is variously related: one averred tradition very remarkably represents him to have perished on a fatal tree, or cross where he was pinned, or nailed with an arrow." Mr. Moor, in the "Hindu Pantheon," states, that many of the plates and pictures of India, of undoubted antiquity, represent the god Christna, with cicatrix, or scars in his hands and feet, the very points of the nails by which he was suspended on that fatal tree. Plate 98, in the "Hindu Pantheon," shows the figure of a man suspended on a cross; and it appears, that when the Romish artists imitated this Indian crucifixion, in their carvings and paintings, they omitted the cross itself; their reason for this is very obvious. The figure appears hanging in the sky, with arms distended, and the feet overlapping each other, so that one nail might perforate both at once. Now it is not a little extraordinary, that some of the earlier Christian sects maintained, that Christ was crucified in the sky. Here is a direct demonstration, that the Brahmin crucifixion is, wholly and radically, an astronomical allegory of the equatorial crossings of the sun at the Equinoxes; and that the Christian fable is identically the same, but the scientific meaning is lost, through the fraud of priestcraft, and the ignorance it fosters.

Mr. Moor further observes, that having some apprehension of giving offence to the bigoted and prejudiced on these points, he showed the plates and paintings above-mentioned to a friend, who suggested the propriety of omitting plate 98.

"I very much suspect," says Mr. Higgins, in his Anacalypsis, "that it is from some story, now unknown, or kept out of sight, relating to this Avata, that the ancient heretics alluded to, obtained their tradition of Jesus being crucified in the clouds." He says again, "That nothing more is known respecting this Avata, I cannot help suspecting, may be attributed to the same kind of feeling, which induced Mr. Moor's friend to wish him to remove print 98 from his book. The innumerable pious frauds of which Christian priests stand convicted, and the principle of the expediency of fraud, admitted to have existed by Mosheim, are a perfect justification of my suspicions respecting the concealment of the history of this Avata. I repeat, I cannot help suspecting that it is from this Avata," (incarnation) "of Chrishna, that the sect of Christian heretics got their Christ crucified in the clouds."

In regard to the Buddhists of India, who claim an antiquity of fifteen thousand years, Sir William Jones, though he appears to have been horrified at the idea of following truth beyond the limits of bible chronology, is constrained to assign the period of Buddha, or the ninth incarnation of Vishnu, in the year 1400 before Christ, though according to Volney and others, it was 600 years earlier. Christna and Buddha are identical* in principle; both are incarnations of Vishnu, the second person in the Hindu Trinity, and were born of virgin mothers, and each was the son of a carpenter; both suffer death by crucifixion. Christna raised the dead, by descending for that purpose to the lowest regions. Both names signify Shepherd and Savior. The crucified Christna is represented in the aforesaid plate 98, with rays of glory surrounding the head, as is also the head of Buddha, which may be seen in the museum of the India House. To the rational mind, this glory will appear emblematical only of the sun himself in his radiant summer brightness, because it is manifestly so of no other object in nature.

Mr. Higgins goes on to show "the idle pretensions that the Brahmins, some way or other, have got copies of the apocryphal gospels, from which they have taken the history of the birth, life, and adventures of Chrishna. How wonderfully absurd," says he, "to suppose that all the ancient emblems and idols of Christna, in the temples and caves scattered over every part of India, and absolutely identified with them in point of antiquity, can have been copied from the gospels written after the time of Jesus! How wonderfully absurd, that the Brahmins, and people of this widely extended empire, should condescend to copy from the real or cast-away spurious gospels of a sect, at that time almost unknown in their own country; and many thousand miles distant from these Brahmins!"

The deified Hercules, the personified power of the sun, was known in very remote antiquity; yet according to Arrian, he was fifteen centuries later than Bacchus, who was the same as the Hindu deity Siva. The triplicate godhead of India, says Arrian, consisted of Brahma, Chrishna, and Seeva, three in one, and one in three viz., the Creator, Preserver, or Savior, and the Destroyer.* Now, Arrian wrote in the second century, in the time of the Emperor Adrian, when the New Testament of the Christians was not yet got up; and as for their Trinity, they did not fully imitate the Hindu in that triune point, until about the close of the fourth century.

All the garbled statements, and mean subterfuges that could be invented by powerful priesthoods, in league with corrupt Rulers, have been brought into play to oppose and stifle the above incontrovertible facts. This unblushing effrontery is quite "in trade" with parties whose interest it undoubtedly is that these things should be known only amongst themselves, lest the "simple-minded" should be induced to suspect that they had been most egregiously duped by men whose very living depends upon deception. The wonderful resemblance,—the apparent sameness or identity—of the Indian and Christian mythics, must have shaken the well-settled faith of Sir William Jones; and so far, his love of truth got the better of his piety; otherwise, he would no doubt have been willing to suppress the alarming truth of the vastly higher antiquity of the Hindu allegory.* Why did he conceal the crucifixion part of the fable, and the fact of its being represented as taking place in the sky? It was in vain he expected that other writers on India, many of whom were equally well-informed, would be as disingenuous as himself.

The ancient hieroglyph of the cross itself is, beyond all contradiction, of the most remote antiquity in the different countries of India; and it is found on most of the Egyptian obelisks—all the three monograms of Osiris, and those of Jupiter Ammon,—the staffs of Isis and Osiris, etc. The pious and orthodox Mr. Skelton, in his "Appeal to common sense," confesses as follows:—"How it came to pass that the Egyptians, Arabians, and Indians, long before Christ came among us, paid such a remarkable veneration to the cross, is to me unknown; but the fact itself is known." In Dr. Clarke's "Travels," there is an engraved copy of a Phoenician medal, found in the ruins of Citium, and proved by him to be Phoenician, on which are inscribed, not only the cross, but the rosary or string of beads, attached to it, together with the figure of a Lamb. The Rev. Mr. Maurice, in his "Indian Antiquities," informs us that the two principal Pagodas of India, Benares and Mathura, are erected in the form of vast crosses.

The famous crux ansata, says Mr. Higgins, is to be seen on all the ancient buildings of Egypt; and is the mark alluded to by Ezekiel ix., 4. It is as common in India as in Egypt and Europe. Mr. Moor, in his "Oriental Fragments," tells us that, placed in a circle, it was an emblem of eternity, having equally neither beginning nor end. The signing of the cross** on the forehead of individuals, as a token of security for life, is of great antiquity. Cain, it seems, wore this mark of security.

Jablonski was of opinion that this figure, the crux ansata, was also an emblem of generation,—"nihil aliud esse quam phallum," etc. However, we have historical facts stating that the women of ancient Egypt wore ornaments of a character or form so very unequivocal, as to leave no doubt about the allusion. The proofs of the vast antiquity of the cross might be carried much farther, acknowledged and confirmed as they are in many instances even by divines themselves, who have deeply investigated the subject, and could see no way to elude the unpalatable truth, that the cross was an object of superlative sanctity and veneration amongst the eastern nations, not only long anterior to the time of the Emperor Tiberius, but in the most remote of the known ages of antiquity. Thus this mystical figure was emblematical of at least four things, viz., eternity, generation, the crossing of the equator by the sun at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, besides its allusion, in Egypt, to the rising and falling of the Nile.

The Spaniards, in their murderous invasion of Mexico and Peru, were astonished to find there the whole machinery of Christianity; but the priests and the court of Spain smothered the fact as much as lay in their power. The immaculate conception was in full force, by a Virgin of Peru becoming pregnant by the Sun; the cross was the principal emblem, and had been sacred from time immemorial: one of their Trinity was crucified upon a mountain, between two thieves; and also in the sky or heavens, where the serpent (not the boar, as in the case of Adonis, see Lecture II.) is depriving him of the organs of generation.* Here is an astro-fable, known positively to have existed in Syria, and even among the Jews, long anterior to the present version of Christianity; and, therefore, when the early Christians carried over their religion to America, they must have been wicked enough to carry over also the whole of the heathen mythoses of Africa and Asia. The Spaniards had likewise the mortification to find the resurrection of the crucified Savior, after three days; the ascension through the clouds, and that his return was expected, to save the human race.

There is no accounting for these astronomical fables, being found in the new world, and their indisputable identity with those of the old, but in the one clear solution, of there being, in remote antiquity, one universal solar mythos, or fabled history of the planetary system, in which the sun, under a thousand different appellatives, as redeemer or savior, and as the grand ruling principle of the whole, was the chief object of adoration. This mythos is still prevalent, though abused for the most atrocious purposes.

With respect to the color of gods in the most ancient times of Paganism, there is ample proof remaining that it varied according to the color of the people who cultivate the sciences for the time being. That men with complexions perfectly black, such as the Hindus, the southern Arabians, and the Ethiopians,* were formerly the depositaries of the sciences, perhaps exclusively, is proved by monuments found throughout.

Near the city of Benares, in India, are astronomical instruments cut out of the solid rock of a mountain, and formerly used for making observations; but these are so exceedingly ancient, that it is said, the Brahmins of the present day do not understand the use of them.

India and Egypt. The knowledge of the great truths of astronomy seems to have been as full and perfect in those times as it is now; and as that science, in the hands of skilful god-makers, has supplied emblem gods for the adoration of the ignorant, in all religions whatever, we cannot wonder that these personifications of natural objects should take the sable color of the priests who invented and deified them. The great Sphinx, supposed to be one of the oldest as well as most wonderful of these Egyptian monuments, is a Nubian Black.* At the time the new version of Hindu superstition spread itself in western Asia and Europe, under the name of Christianity, its machinery was kept out of sight in the archives of the priests; and, as its derivation was known to themselves alone, they did not then deem it indispensably necessary to change the color of their eastern deities; but adopted both Chrishna and his mother, in their sable Gentoo complexions; and, in after times, it was found no easy matter to get them whitewashed. But as these disagreeable facts will raise the angry bristles of the Christian fanatic, it is necessary to support them by the most profoundly learned authorities on the subject.

Mr. Higgins says:—"On the color of the gods of the ancients, and of the identity of them all with the god Sol,** and with the Chrishna of India, nothing more need be said." The reader has already seen the striking marks of similarity in the history of Chrishna, and the stories related of Jesus in the Romish and heretical books. He probably will not think that their effect is destroyed, as Mr. Maurice flatters himself, by the word Chrishna, in the Indian language, signifying black, and the god being of that color, when he is informed of what Mr. Maurice was probably ignorant, that in all Romish countries of Europe, in France, Italy, Germany, etc., the god Christ, as well as his mother, are described in their old pictures and statues to be black. The infant god in the arms of his black mother, his eyes and drapery white, is himself perfectly black.

If the reader doubts my word, he may go to the cathedral at Moulins; to the famous chapel of the virgin at Loretto; to the church of the Annunciata; to the church of St. Lazaro; or the church of St. Stephen at Genoa; to St. Francisco, at Pisa; to the church at Brixen, in the Tyrol; and to that at Padua; to the church of St. Theodore, at Munich; in the two last of which the whiteness of the eyes and teeth, and the studied redness of the lips are very observable; to the church and to the cathedral of Augsburg, where are a black virgin and child as large as life; to Rome, to the Borghese chapel Maria Maggiore; to the Pantheon; to a small chapel of St. Peters, on the right hand side on entering near the door, and in fact, to almost innumerable other churches, in the countries professing the Romish religion.

"There is scarcely an old church in Italy where some remains of the black virgin and black child are not to be met with. Very often the black figures have given way to white ones, and in these cases, the black ones, as being held sacred, were put into retired place» in the churches; they were not destroyed, but are yet to be found there. In many instances, these images are painted all over, and look like bronze, often with colored aprons or napkins round the loins and other parts. No doubt, in many places, when the priests have new painted the images, they have colored the eyes and teeth, in order that they might not shock the feelings of devotees, by a too sudden change from black to white; and in order, at the same time, that they might furnish a devout pretence for their blackness, namely, that they are in imitation of bronze; but the number left with white teeth, let out the secret: their blackness is not to be questioned for a moment." Mr. Higgins concludes from the knowledge of the foregoing facts, that, "the Romish Chrishna is black in India, black in Europe, and black he must remain. But, after all, what was he but their Jupiter, the second person of their Trinurti, or trinity, the Logos of Parmenides and Plato, an incarnation or emanation of the solar power" (Anacalypsis).

Of these Trinities it is not requisite to say much here, as ample proof has been adduced in the course of these lectures to show that, from Japan in the east to Egypt in the west, every country had, in the remotest antiquity, a triad of gods for the vulgar, which, in the mystical or hidden sense, had allusion to physical principles. But as we have a partiality for the authority of theologians on these subjects, we beg to quote that of the Rev. Mr. Maurice, who traces the principles of Tritheism among the most ancient nations of the earth, before as well as in the times of the Greeks and Romans. He says that the Indian Temple of Elephanta, "is of exquisite workmanship and of stupendous antiquity; antiquity to which neither the page of history or human traditions can ascend. That magnificent piece of sculpture so often alluded to in the cavern of Elephanta, decidedly establishes the solemn fact, that from the remotest eras, the Indian nations have adored a triune Deity. There the traveller, with awe and astonishment, beholds, carved out of the solid rock, in the most conspicuous part of the most ancient and venerable temple of the world, a bust expanding in breadth near twenty feet, and no less than eighteen feet in altitude, by which amazing proportions, as well as by its gorgeous decorations, it is known to be the image of the grand, presiding Deity of that hallowed retreat: he beholds, I say, a bust composed of three heads united to one body, adorned with the oldest symbols of Indian theology; and thus expressly fabricated according to the unanimous confession of the sacred sacerdotal tribe of India, to indicate the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer, or Regentrator, of mankind." Notwithstanding the absolute conclusiveness of the evidence adduced by Mr. Maurice, proving the infinitely higher antiquity of the Hindu Trinity, he still recollects his obligation to support the Christian priesthood, and argues that the Indians must have derived their notions of a triune Deity from the Hebrews, though that people had no known existence in the time he refers to, and their books (the Old Testament) if rightly translated, do not, even by the slightest allusion, acknowledge anything of the kind. By such subterfuges theology is not ashamed to deny the clearest light.

The sacrament of Baptism, like all the other dogmas of Christianism, is drawn from the ancient religious observances of India and Egypt; and is also one of the sacred rites of solar worship, the mysteries of which required that the neophyte should be pure in body as well as in mind. It existed among the Pythagoreans and Druids. In an Arabic work, translated by Mr. Hammer, it is stated that in ancient Egypt, when a child was born, the mother took it to a priest of the temple, and laid it down without speaking a word. The priest then came, with a golden cup full of water in his hand, accompanied by six other priests. He then said prayers, and sprinkled the water over the child. The dead were also baptised, though by proxy. St. Paul establishes this point in his first epistle to the Corinthians, chap. xv., 29; and he is so far from condemning the custom, that he adduces it as an argument in proof of the resurrection.

Mr. Higgins says: "John the Baptist was nothing but one of the followers of Mithra, with whom the deserts of Syria and the Thebais of Eyypt abounded, under the name of Essenes. He was a Nazarite; and it is a striking circumstance that the fountain (Enon, or Enon), where he baptised, was sacred to the sun." Even the name signifies the sun, or Mithra. If this was the (Enon of Locris, in ancient Greece (we know of no other), John must have taken wide excursions in his baptism. In the New Testament allegories there are many coincidents which point out that John (the Janus of the Latins) is the personified genius of January, the zodiacal sign of which month is Aquarius with his pitcher, the water of which is generally poured out plentifully. Aquarius being the mansion of the sun in John's month, or January, his pitcher is figuratively the fountain of OEnon, that was sacred to the sun, and where, as the Evangelist tells us there was "much water." During this month and February the "kingdom of heaven," or Christ (the sun), was said to be coming, or at hand; but he was not considered as come until after the vernal equinox, in March, when, by entering the sign Aries, or the Ram, he became the Lamb, at which time John exclaims—"Behold the Lamb of God; he cometh after me, but is preferred before me." "I baptise with water—he with the Holy Ghost." That is to say, March comes after January, and the genial sun of spring and summer will always be preferred to that of January. The wilderness in which John was said to sojourn was metaphorical of the sterile and bleak face of nature during that month. In Matthew it is said—"He shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire."* The Holy Ghost was metaphoric of the salubrious summer winds in May, as the fire was of the scorching heat of the dog-days.

It has often been observed that the learned, or the initiated in religious mysteries, had language peculiar to themselves, and unknown to the rabble, whereby they concealed science under tropes and allegories; so that, aided by the vivacity of the imagination, the most ordinary phænomena of nature were embodied as mystical existences, and there was hardly anything spoken of without being personified. Philo Judæus informs us that, amongst the arts and mysteries which Moses learnt from his masters the Egyptians, was that of philosophy by symbols, hieroglyphics, and marks of animals. Clemens Alexandrinus states, that "all who have treated of divine matters, the barbarous nations as well as the Greeks, have hid the principles of things, and delivered down the truth enigmatically, by signs, and symbols, and allegories, and metaphors."** Similar confessions were made by all the learned fathers of Christianism, many of whom allowed that their own religion was veiled in exactly the same manner; and for this they might claim even St. Paul as sufficient authority.

But in the present day, amongst an ignorant and interested clergy, although their superstition is directly derived from, and is only a varied version of the solar adoration of Paganism, the "principles of things" are lost and unknown, or if known to a very few of the learned, the little lamp of truth is extinguished by the roguery of self-interest, which will ever be sufficient to secure its suppression. Thus, from ignorance or interest, or both together, the allegories and metaphors of speech which we find in the Bible, are monstrously inculcated and palmed upon simplicity as matters of fact and history. Whilst committing these outrages upon the highest branches of science, the theologians have absurdly attempted to blend the eternal religion of Nature* with the evanescent revelations which man has, in successive ages, invented to be the greatest curse of his brother.

Having, in this and the foregoing lectures, noticed most of the leading dogmas of Christianity, and the Pagan astro-fables, from which they are derived, that exposure alone renders it unnecessary to enter upon the endless task of commenting on the unsightly mass of heterogeneous doctrines, to which the ignorant abuse of these fables has given rise. Where the foundation is fallacious, the superstructure cannot stand.

The overwhelming master-curse, springing out of these mythological fictions, in past and present times, is their perversion from a scientific purport, that was radically and wholly physical and sub-natural, to a sense that is chimerically called spiritual and super-natural. In thus fraudulently putting the latter of these words in place of the former, (which we maintain is contrary to the original meaning of the Bible itself,) does the whole science and essence of priestcraft consist. By this departure from everything tangible—from all that is to the human mind conceivable, the theologians have cunningly decoyed their dupes into imaginary regions, peopled, as in the old mythology, with existences of fabled creation, where phantasy takes all the hues of the chamelion; and where the intangibility of their whole apparatus eludes the grasp of reason, and secures their wild assertions against demonstration. When the minds of men are thus lured into the fictitious empire of theology, the good things of this world are over with them, and fall to the share of the priests, who live in luxury, while they preach to their deluded votaries the unspeakable blessings of poverty; and that through the unsearchable mysteries of God's love to man, want and misery in this world are by far the best preparatives for "their exceeding great reward," in kingdom come. This is what is called "religious instruction," which, being interpreted, signifies the diffusion of that abject ignorance which shuts out the light of experience and reason—puts blind faith* in its place, and thereby fits both mind and body for slavery. In this element of ignorance, so congenial to the profession, from its being of their own creation, the priesthoods of Europe, aided by the corruption of civil rulers, have been allowed to embody themselves into vast and well organised phalanxes, regularly trained to wage perpetual war against the light of nature and common sense.

It is particularly observable in the esprit du corps of theologians, that in order to epitomise and mould the mind of man into a total subjection to their interest and power, and to establish the absolute necessity of their mediatorial office, it is indispensable that he should, through what they call original sin, be degraded below the scale of his true position in the order of nature, in exact proportion to the elevation above that scale, which they confer upon him on the score of his soul's immortality. In this final destination which they assign him, his fate must either be eternal blessedness, through their official interference in his favor, in wiping off his imputed transgressions, committed six thousand years before he was born, or everlasting perdition and misery, should that intercession be wanting.*

Between these two extremes of heaven and hell they keep him suspended, themselves holding the haulyards rope in their own hands, ready to pull him up to the one or lower him down to the other, according as he believes, in and supports, or rejects and condemns their craft and traffic. In the political and religious drama of enslaving the great majority of the people, the above parts of the play are, of course, the peculiar province of the priesthood, who to the fabled guilt of original sin, have charged upon the gloomy minds of their wretched votaries, an endless catalogue of sins, by thought, word, and deed; to every one of which the punishment of eternal flames has been awarded. The kingly and aristocratic part of this drama is to make laws to suit themselves and their priesthood—to bind down reason, so as to prevent it rebelling against the most shocking absurdities—compel it to acquiesce in the imperative mandates of a vile superstition; and demonstrate, through the powerful arguments of imprisonment and ruin, that all investigation of the plot or proof of falsehood adduced against the actors, is wickedness.*

This species of delusion, which passes under the name of supernatural revelation, upon which impostors in every age have founded their schemes, is too gross and palpable in many of its dogmas, to maintain a footing even among ignorant men, but for the protection of corrupt governments, that seek aid in fraud. Its ministers have ever said to civil rulers—"take us into partnership—give us riches and honors—support our pretensions when we gull the millions, and in return, with our adherence and connivance, you may safely carry oppression to any lengths you please." Thus between a governing aristocracy, (as in England) and their adopted hierarchy, there is an inborn affinity and coincidence of views and interests, which not only exclude, but are incurably opposed to the natural happiness of the mass of mankind; and as for the means of compassing their ends, each wields that sort of power which serves to uphold the other; and when united, resistance is unavailing, unless it is backed by the unanimous will of a nation. But this national unanimity in eradicating these collusive and deep rooted frauds, is not to be expected, until natural humanity and sound morality shall take place of supernaturalism, and "religious instruction" make way for practical virtue and useful knowledge, in the education of youth. Then, and not till then, will every individual be able to perceive, that the man who contributes to the support of any priesthood, subsidizes a standing army, for the perpetual subversion of his dearest rights and liberties.

We shall now make a digression from the opening subjects of this lecture, with the view of adducing additional facts which tend to prove, that the chief moral and political evils which pervade Christendom, sprang from laws and institutions derived from, or sanctioned by, the books of Jewish theocracy, all of which have been uniformly calculated to uphold the injustice of the idle few, against the industrious many. Amongst these, the feudal curse of primogeniture, as "part and parcel of the law," stands prominent in bad eminence. Yet this law, even among the Jews, was not so outrageously cruel as it now is among many European nations; for, with them, the first-born son, though consecrated to the Hebrew god, was not, it seems, entitled to more than a double portion of the inheritance. In regard to the entailing of land, for the most iniquitous purpose of securing it against sale for the payment of just debts, the Jews and their deity, barbarous as they were, would probably have been ashamed of such rank injustice. In early ages, land was considered merely as the means of subsistence; but in the darkest times of ignorance and feudal oppression, it became the overbearing means of obtaining political power, and was monopolised by the aristocratic orders;* whilst their class-law of primogeniture, and its execrable concomitant of entail upon land, were unrighteously resorted to, as the only means of eternising the domineering sway of feudal tyranny, and to perpetuate possession, in defiance of all the just debts which might have been incurred by the possessor. The absurdity of these laws is no less glaring than the injustice of their original object, "when they presume that each successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth—that the property of the present generation should be restrained and regulated to the fancy of those who lived many centuries ago."