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.
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?*
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.*
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.
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.**
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.
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.
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.*
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 £400,000,000,000 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 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.***
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.**
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
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?
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.
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.