THOMAS PAINE, AGE OF REASON
Re: THOMAS PAINE, AGE OF REASON
Age of Reason, Part II, Section 19, concluded ...
Sometimes Paul affects to be a naturalist and to prove his system of resurrection from the principles of vegetation.
"Thou fool, (says he), that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die."
To which one might reply in his own language and say, "Thou fool, Paul, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die not; for the grain that dies in the ground never does, nor can vegetate."
"It is only the living grains that produce the next crop."
But the metaphor, in any point of view, is no simile.
It is succession, and not resurrection.
The progress of an animal from one state of being to another, as from a worm to a butterfly, applies to the case; but this of a grain does not, and shows Paul to have been what he says of others, a fool.
Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul were written by him or not, is a matter of indifference; they are either argumentative or dogmatical; and as the argument is defective and the dogmatical part is merely presumptive, it signifies not who wrote them.
And the same may be said for the remaining parts of the Testament.
It is not upon the epistles, but upon what is called the Gospel, contained in the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and upon the pretended prophecies, that the theory of the church calling itself the Christian Church is founded.
The epistles are dependent upon those, and must follow their fate; for if the story of Jesus Christ be fabulous, all reasoning founded upon it as a supposed truth must fall with it.
We know from history that one of the principal leaders of this church, Athanasius, lived at the time the New Testament was formed; [NOTE 1] and we know also, from the absurd jargon he left us under the name of a creed, the character of the men who formed the New Testament; and we know also from the same history that the authenticity of the books of which it is composed was denied at the time.
It was upon the vote of such as Athanasius, that the Testament was decreed to be the word of God; and nothing can present to us a more strange idea than that of decreeing the word of God by vote.
Those who rest their faith upon such authority put man in the place of God, and have no foundation for future happiness; credulity, however, is not a crime, but it becomes criminal by resisting conviction.
It is strangling in the womb of the conscience the efforts it makes to ascertain truth.
We should never force belief upon ourselves in anything.
I here close the subject of the Old Testament and the New.
The evidence I have produced to prove them forgeries is extracted from the books themselves, and acts, like a two-edged sword, either way.
If the evidence be denied, the authenticity of the scriptures is denied with it; for it is scripture evidence; and if the evidence be admitted, the authenticity of the books is disproved.
The contradictory impossibilities contained in the Old Testament and the New, put them in the case of a man who swears for and against.
Either evidence convicts him of perjury, and equally destroys reputation.
Should the Bible and the New Testament hereafter fall, it is not I that have been the occasion.
I have done no more than extracted the evidence from the confused mass of matter with which it is mixed, and arranged that evidence in a point of light to be clearly seen and easily comprehended; and, having done this, I leave the reader to judge for himself, as I have judged for myself
Footnotes:
1. Athanasius died, according to the Church chronology, in the year 371.
Sometimes Paul affects to be a naturalist and to prove his system of resurrection from the principles of vegetation.
"Thou fool, (says he), that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die."
To which one might reply in his own language and say, "Thou fool, Paul, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die not; for the grain that dies in the ground never does, nor can vegetate."
"It is only the living grains that produce the next crop."
But the metaphor, in any point of view, is no simile.
It is succession, and not resurrection.
The progress of an animal from one state of being to another, as from a worm to a butterfly, applies to the case; but this of a grain does not, and shows Paul to have been what he says of others, a fool.
Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul were written by him or not, is a matter of indifference; they are either argumentative or dogmatical; and as the argument is defective and the dogmatical part is merely presumptive, it signifies not who wrote them.
And the same may be said for the remaining parts of the Testament.
It is not upon the epistles, but upon what is called the Gospel, contained in the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and upon the pretended prophecies, that the theory of the church calling itself the Christian Church is founded.
The epistles are dependent upon those, and must follow their fate; for if the story of Jesus Christ be fabulous, all reasoning founded upon it as a supposed truth must fall with it.
We know from history that one of the principal leaders of this church, Athanasius, lived at the time the New Testament was formed; [NOTE 1] and we know also, from the absurd jargon he left us under the name of a creed, the character of the men who formed the New Testament; and we know also from the same history that the authenticity of the books of which it is composed was denied at the time.
It was upon the vote of such as Athanasius, that the Testament was decreed to be the word of God; and nothing can present to us a more strange idea than that of decreeing the word of God by vote.
Those who rest their faith upon such authority put man in the place of God, and have no foundation for future happiness; credulity, however, is not a crime, but it becomes criminal by resisting conviction.
It is strangling in the womb of the conscience the efforts it makes to ascertain truth.
We should never force belief upon ourselves in anything.
I here close the subject of the Old Testament and the New.
The evidence I have produced to prove them forgeries is extracted from the books themselves, and acts, like a two-edged sword, either way.
If the evidence be denied, the authenticity of the scriptures is denied with it; for it is scripture evidence; and if the evidence be admitted, the authenticity of the books is disproved.
The contradictory impossibilities contained in the Old Testament and the New, put them in the case of a man who swears for and against.
Either evidence convicts him of perjury, and equally destroys reputation.
Should the Bible and the New Testament hereafter fall, it is not I that have been the occasion.
I have done no more than extracted the evidence from the confused mass of matter with which it is mixed, and arranged that evidence in a point of light to be clearly seen and easily comprehended; and, having done this, I leave the reader to judge for himself, as I have judged for myself
Footnotes:
1. Athanasius died, according to the Church chronology, in the year 371.
Re: THOMAS PAINE, AGE OF REASON
Age of Reason, Part II, Section 20
CONCLUSION.
In the former part of the Age of Reason I have spoken of the three frauds, mystery, miracle, and prophecy; and as I have seen nothing in any of the answers to that work that in the least affects what I have there said upon those subjects, I shall not encumber this Second Part with additions that are not necessary.
I have spoken also in the same work upon what is called revelation, and have shown the absurd misapplication of that term to the books of the Old Testament and the New; for certainly revelation is out of the question in reciting anything of which man has been the actor or the witness.
That which a man has done or seen, needs no revelation to tell him he had done it or seen it, for he knows it already; nor to enable him to tell it or to write it.
It is ignorance or imposition to apply the term revelation in such cases: yet the Bible and Testament are classed under this fraudulent description of being all revelation.
Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between God and man, can only be applied to something which God reveals of his will to man; but though the power of the Almighty to make such a communication is necessarily admitted, because to that power all things are possible, yet the thing so revealed (if anything ever was revealed, and which, bye the bye, it is impossible to prove), is revelation to the person only to whom it is made.
His account of it to another person is not revelation; and whoever puts faith in that account, puts it in the man from whom the account comes; and that man may have been deceived, or may have dreamed it, or he may be an impostor and may lie.
There is no possible criterion whereby to judge of the truth of what he tells, for even the morality of it would be no proof of revelation.
In all such cases the proper answer would be, "When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be a revelation; but it is not, and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of a man as the word of God, and put man in the place of God."
This is the manner in which I have spoken of revelation in the former part of the Age of Reason; and which, while it reverentially admits revelation as a possible thing, because, as before said, to the Almighty all things are possible, it prevents the imposition of one man upon another, and precludes the wicked use of pretended revelation.
But though, speaking for myself, I thus admit the possibility of revelation, I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did communicate anything to man, by any mode of speech, in any language, or by any kind of vision, or appearance, or by any means which our senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than by the universal display of himself in the works of the creation, and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and the disposition to do good ones.
The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.
It has been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the Divinity, the most destructive to morality and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist.
It is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit among us.
Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled, and the bloody persecutions and tortures unto death, and religious wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes — whence rose they but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man?
The lies of the Bible have been the cause of the one, and the lies of the Testament of the other.
Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by the sword; but of what period of time do they speak?
It was impossible that twelve men could begin with the sword; they had not the power; but no sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently powerful to employ the sword, than they did so, and the stake and fagot, too; and Mahomet could not do it sooner.
By the same spirit that Peter cut off the ear of the high priest's servant (if the story be true), he would have cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he been able.
Besides this, Christianity grounds itself originally upon the Bible, and the Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that in the worst use of it — not to terrify, but to extirpate.
The Jews made no converts; they butchered all.
The Bible is the sire of the Testament, and both are called the word of God.
The Christians read both books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing called Christianity is made up of both.
It is then false to say that Christianity was not established by the sword.
The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the only reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists than Christians.
They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and they call the scriptures a dead letter.
Had they called them by a worse name, they had been nearer the truth.
It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the Creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial miseries, and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among mankind, to expel all ideas of revealed religion, as a dangerous heresy and an impious fraud.
What is that we have learned from this pretended thing called revealed religion?
Nothing that is useful to man, and everything that is dishonorable to his maker.
What is it the Bible teaches us? — rapine, cruelty, and murder.
What is it the Testament teaches us? — to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly scattered in these books, they make no part of this pretended thing, revealed religion.
They are the natural dictates of conscience, and the bonds by which society is held together, and without which it cannot exist, and are nearly the same in all religions and in all societies.
The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous.
The doctrine of not retaliating injuries is much better expressed in Proverbs, which is a collection as well from the Gentiles as the Jews, than it is in the Testament.
It is there said, Proverbs xxv, ver. 21, "If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink;" [NOTE 1] but when it is said, as in the Testament, "If a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also;" it is assassinating the dignity of forbearance, and sinking man into a spaniel.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
CONCLUSION.
In the former part of the Age of Reason I have spoken of the three frauds, mystery, miracle, and prophecy; and as I have seen nothing in any of the answers to that work that in the least affects what I have there said upon those subjects, I shall not encumber this Second Part with additions that are not necessary.
I have spoken also in the same work upon what is called revelation, and have shown the absurd misapplication of that term to the books of the Old Testament and the New; for certainly revelation is out of the question in reciting anything of which man has been the actor or the witness.
That which a man has done or seen, needs no revelation to tell him he had done it or seen it, for he knows it already; nor to enable him to tell it or to write it.
It is ignorance or imposition to apply the term revelation in such cases: yet the Bible and Testament are classed under this fraudulent description of being all revelation.
Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between God and man, can only be applied to something which God reveals of his will to man; but though the power of the Almighty to make such a communication is necessarily admitted, because to that power all things are possible, yet the thing so revealed (if anything ever was revealed, and which, bye the bye, it is impossible to prove), is revelation to the person only to whom it is made.
His account of it to another person is not revelation; and whoever puts faith in that account, puts it in the man from whom the account comes; and that man may have been deceived, or may have dreamed it, or he may be an impostor and may lie.
There is no possible criterion whereby to judge of the truth of what he tells, for even the morality of it would be no proof of revelation.
In all such cases the proper answer would be, "When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be a revelation; but it is not, and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of a man as the word of God, and put man in the place of God."
This is the manner in which I have spoken of revelation in the former part of the Age of Reason; and which, while it reverentially admits revelation as a possible thing, because, as before said, to the Almighty all things are possible, it prevents the imposition of one man upon another, and precludes the wicked use of pretended revelation.
But though, speaking for myself, I thus admit the possibility of revelation, I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did communicate anything to man, by any mode of speech, in any language, or by any kind of vision, or appearance, or by any means which our senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than by the universal display of himself in the works of the creation, and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and the disposition to do good ones.
The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.
It has been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the Divinity, the most destructive to morality and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist.
It is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit among us.
Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled, and the bloody persecutions and tortures unto death, and religious wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes — whence rose they but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man?
The lies of the Bible have been the cause of the one, and the lies of the Testament of the other.
Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by the sword; but of what period of time do they speak?
It was impossible that twelve men could begin with the sword; they had not the power; but no sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently powerful to employ the sword, than they did so, and the stake and fagot, too; and Mahomet could not do it sooner.
By the same spirit that Peter cut off the ear of the high priest's servant (if the story be true), he would have cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he been able.
Besides this, Christianity grounds itself originally upon the Bible, and the Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that in the worst use of it — not to terrify, but to extirpate.
The Jews made no converts; they butchered all.
The Bible is the sire of the Testament, and both are called the word of God.
The Christians read both books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing called Christianity is made up of both.
It is then false to say that Christianity was not established by the sword.
The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the only reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists than Christians.
They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and they call the scriptures a dead letter.
Had they called them by a worse name, they had been nearer the truth.
It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the Creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial miseries, and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among mankind, to expel all ideas of revealed religion, as a dangerous heresy and an impious fraud.
What is that we have learned from this pretended thing called revealed religion?
Nothing that is useful to man, and everything that is dishonorable to his maker.
What is it the Bible teaches us? — rapine, cruelty, and murder.
What is it the Testament teaches us? — to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly scattered in these books, they make no part of this pretended thing, revealed religion.
They are the natural dictates of conscience, and the bonds by which society is held together, and without which it cannot exist, and are nearly the same in all religions and in all societies.
The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous.
The doctrine of not retaliating injuries is much better expressed in Proverbs, which is a collection as well from the Gentiles as the Jews, than it is in the Testament.
It is there said, Proverbs xxv, ver. 21, "If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink;" [NOTE 1] but when it is said, as in the Testament, "If a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also;" it is assassinating the dignity of forbearance, and sinking man into a spaniel.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: THOMAS PAINE, AGE OF REASON
Age of Reason, Part II, Section 20. concluded ...
Loving enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides no meaning.
It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense, for there is no end to retaliation, each retaliates on the other, and calls it justice; but to love in proportion to the injury, if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for crime.
Besides the word enemies is too vague and general to be used in a moral maxim, which ought always to be clear and defined, like a proverb.
If a man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon as, and it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we put the best construction upon a thing that it will bear.
But even this erroneous motive in him makes no motive for love on the other part; and to say that we can love voluntarily, and without a motive, is morally and physically impossible.
Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first place, are impossible to be performed; and, if they could be, would be productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime.
The maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine of loving enemies: for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity.
Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies are in general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches.
For my own part I disown the doctrine, and consider it as a feigned or fabulous morality; yet the man does not exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the American Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that I have, in any case, returned evil for evil.
But it is not incumbent on man to reward a bad action with a good one, or to return good for evil; and whenever it is done, it is a voluntary act, and not a duty.
It is also absurd to suppose that such doctrine can make any part of a revealed religion.
We imitate the moral character of the Creator by forbearing with each other, for he forbears with all; but this doctrine would imply that he loved man, not in proportion as he was good, but as he was bad.
If we consider the nature of our condition here, we must see there is no occasion for such a thing as revealed religion.
What is it we want to know?
Does not the creation, the universe we behold, preach to us the existence of an Almighty Power that governs and regulates the whole?
And is not the evidence that this creation holds out to our senses infinitely stronger than anything we can read in a book that any impostor might make and call the word of God?
As for morality, the knowledge of it exists in every man's conscience.
Here we are.
The existence of an Almighty Power is sufficiently demonstrated to us, though we cannot conceive, as it is impossible we should, the nature and manner of its existence.
We cannot conceive how we came here ourselves, and yet we know for a fact that we are here.
We must know also that the power that called us into being, can, if he please, and when he pleases, call us to account for the manner in which we have lived here; and, therefore, without seeking any other motive for the belief, it is rational to believe that he will, for we know beforehand that he can.
The probability or even possibility of the thing is all that we ought to know; for if we knew it as a fact, we should be the mere slaves of terror; our belief would have no merit, and our best actions no virtue.
Footnotes:
1. According to what is called Christ's sermon on the mount, in the book of Matthew, where, among some other good things, a great deal of this feigned morality is introduced, it is there expressly said, that the doctrine of forbearance, or of not retaliating injuries, was not any part of the doctrine of the Jews; but as this doctrine is found in Proverbs it must, according to that statement, have been copied from the Gentiles, from whom Christ had learned it.
Those men, whom Jewish and Christian idolaters have abusively called heathens, had much better and clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be found in the Old Testament, so far as it is Jewish; or in the New.
The answer of Solon on the question, Which is the most perfect popular government? has never been exceeded by any one since his time, as containing a maxim of political morality.
"That," says he, "where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole constitution."
Solon lived about 500 years before Christ.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Loving enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides no meaning.
It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense, for there is no end to retaliation, each retaliates on the other, and calls it justice; but to love in proportion to the injury, if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for crime.
Besides the word enemies is too vague and general to be used in a moral maxim, which ought always to be clear and defined, like a proverb.
If a man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon as, and it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we put the best construction upon a thing that it will bear.
But even this erroneous motive in him makes no motive for love on the other part; and to say that we can love voluntarily, and without a motive, is morally and physically impossible.
Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first place, are impossible to be performed; and, if they could be, would be productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime.
The maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine of loving enemies: for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity.
Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies are in general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches.
For my own part I disown the doctrine, and consider it as a feigned or fabulous morality; yet the man does not exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the American Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that I have, in any case, returned evil for evil.
But it is not incumbent on man to reward a bad action with a good one, or to return good for evil; and whenever it is done, it is a voluntary act, and not a duty.
It is also absurd to suppose that such doctrine can make any part of a revealed religion.
We imitate the moral character of the Creator by forbearing with each other, for he forbears with all; but this doctrine would imply that he loved man, not in proportion as he was good, but as he was bad.
If we consider the nature of our condition here, we must see there is no occasion for such a thing as revealed religion.
What is it we want to know?
Does not the creation, the universe we behold, preach to us the existence of an Almighty Power that governs and regulates the whole?
And is not the evidence that this creation holds out to our senses infinitely stronger than anything we can read in a book that any impostor might make and call the word of God?
As for morality, the knowledge of it exists in every man's conscience.
Here we are.
The existence of an Almighty Power is sufficiently demonstrated to us, though we cannot conceive, as it is impossible we should, the nature and manner of its existence.
We cannot conceive how we came here ourselves, and yet we know for a fact that we are here.
We must know also that the power that called us into being, can, if he please, and when he pleases, call us to account for the manner in which we have lived here; and, therefore, without seeking any other motive for the belief, it is rational to believe that he will, for we know beforehand that he can.
The probability or even possibility of the thing is all that we ought to know; for if we knew it as a fact, we should be the mere slaves of terror; our belief would have no merit, and our best actions no virtue.
Footnotes:
1. According to what is called Christ's sermon on the mount, in the book of Matthew, where, among some other good things, a great deal of this feigned morality is introduced, it is there expressly said, that the doctrine of forbearance, or of not retaliating injuries, was not any part of the doctrine of the Jews; but as this doctrine is found in Proverbs it must, according to that statement, have been copied from the Gentiles, from whom Christ had learned it.
Those men, whom Jewish and Christian idolaters have abusively called heathens, had much better and clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be found in the Old Testament, so far as it is Jewish; or in the New.
The answer of Solon on the question, Which is the most perfect popular government? has never been exceeded by any one since his time, as containing a maxim of political morality.
"That," says he, "where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole constitution."
Solon lived about 500 years before Christ.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: THOMAS PAINE, AGE OF REASON
Age of Reason, Part II, Section 21
Deism, then, teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived, all that is necessary or proper to be known.
The creation is the Bible of the Deist.
He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of his existence and the immutability of his power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries.
The probability that we may be called to account hereafter will, to a reflecting mind, have the influence of belief; for it is not our belief or disbelief that can make or unmake the fact.
As this is the state we are in, and which it is proper we should be in, as free agents, it is the fool only, and not the philosopher, or even the prudent man, that would live as if there were no God.
But the belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the strange fable of the Christian creed, and with the wild adventures related in the Bible, and of the obscurity and obscene nonsense of the Testament, that the mind of man is bewildered as in a fog.
Viewing all these things in a confused mass, he confounds fact with fable; and as he cannot believe all, he feels a disposition to reject all.
But the belief of a God is a belief distinct from all other things, and ought not to be confounded with any.
The notion of a Trinity of Gods has enfeebled the belief of one God.
A multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief; and in proportion as anything is divided it is weakened.
Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form, instead of fact — of notion, instead of principles; morality is banished to make room for an imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its origin in a supposed debauchery; a man is preached instead of God; an execution is an object for gratitude; the preachers daub themselves with the blood, like a troop of assassins, and pretend to admire the brilliancy it gives them; they preach a humdrum sermon on the merits of the execution; then praise Jesus Christ for being executed, and condemn the Jews for doing it.
A man, by hearing all this nonsense lumped and preached together, confounds the God of the creation with the imagined God of the Christians, and lives as if there were none.
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity.
Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics.
As an engine of power it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.
The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it every evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple Deism.
It must have been the first, and will probably be the last, that man believes.
But pure and simple Deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments.
They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine, but by mixing it with human inventions, and making their own authority a part; neither does it answer the avarice of priests, but by incorporating themselves and their functions with it, and becoming, like the government, a party in the system.
It is this that forms the otherwise mysterious connection of church and state; the church humane, and the state tyrannic.
Were man impressed as fully and as strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of that belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either.
To give this belief the full opportunity of force, it is necessary that it acts alone.
This is Deism.
But when, according to the Christian Trinitarian scheme, one part of God is represented by a dying man, and another part called the Holy Ghost, by a flying pigeon, it is impossible that belief can attach itself to such wild conceits. [NOTE 1]
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Deism, then, teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived, all that is necessary or proper to be known.
The creation is the Bible of the Deist.
He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of his existence and the immutability of his power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries.
The probability that we may be called to account hereafter will, to a reflecting mind, have the influence of belief; for it is not our belief or disbelief that can make or unmake the fact.
As this is the state we are in, and which it is proper we should be in, as free agents, it is the fool only, and not the philosopher, or even the prudent man, that would live as if there were no God.
But the belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the strange fable of the Christian creed, and with the wild adventures related in the Bible, and of the obscurity and obscene nonsense of the Testament, that the mind of man is bewildered as in a fog.
Viewing all these things in a confused mass, he confounds fact with fable; and as he cannot believe all, he feels a disposition to reject all.
But the belief of a God is a belief distinct from all other things, and ought not to be confounded with any.
The notion of a Trinity of Gods has enfeebled the belief of one God.
A multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief; and in proportion as anything is divided it is weakened.
Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form, instead of fact — of notion, instead of principles; morality is banished to make room for an imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its origin in a supposed debauchery; a man is preached instead of God; an execution is an object for gratitude; the preachers daub themselves with the blood, like a troop of assassins, and pretend to admire the brilliancy it gives them; they preach a humdrum sermon on the merits of the execution; then praise Jesus Christ for being executed, and condemn the Jews for doing it.
A man, by hearing all this nonsense lumped and preached together, confounds the God of the creation with the imagined God of the Christians, and lives as if there were none.
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity.
Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics.
As an engine of power it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.
The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it every evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple Deism.
It must have been the first, and will probably be the last, that man believes.
But pure and simple Deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments.
They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine, but by mixing it with human inventions, and making their own authority a part; neither does it answer the avarice of priests, but by incorporating themselves and their functions with it, and becoming, like the government, a party in the system.
It is this that forms the otherwise mysterious connection of church and state; the church humane, and the state tyrannic.
Were man impressed as fully and as strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of that belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either.
To give this belief the full opportunity of force, it is necessary that it acts alone.
This is Deism.
But when, according to the Christian Trinitarian scheme, one part of God is represented by a dying man, and another part called the Holy Ghost, by a flying pigeon, it is impossible that belief can attach itself to such wild conceits. [NOTE 1]
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: THOMAS PAINE, AGE OF REASON
Age of Reason, Part II, Section 21, concluded …
It has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of Government to hold man in ignorance of his rights.
The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support.
The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.
Not any thing can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.
Instead then, of studying theology, as is now done, out of the Bible and Testament, the meanings of which books are always controverted and the authenticity of which is disproved, it is necessary that we refer to the Bible of the creation.
The principles we discover there are eternal and of divine origin; they are the foundation of all the science that exists in the world, and must be the foundation of theology.
We can know God only through his works.
We cannot have a conception of any one attribute but by following some principle that leads to it.
We have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not the means of comprehending something of its immensity.
We can have no idea of his wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which it acts.
The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the Creator of man is the Creator of science; and it is through that medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face.
Could a man be placed in a situation, and endowed with the power of vision, to behold at one view, and to contemplate deliberately, the structure of the universe; to mark the movements of the several planets, the cause of their varying appearances, the unerring order in which they revolve, even to the remotest comet; their connection and dependence on each other, and to know the system of laws established by the Creator, that governs and regulates the whole, he would then conceive, far beyond what any church theology can teach him, the power, the wisdom, the vastness, the munificence of the Creator; he would then see, that all the knowledge man has of science, and that all the mechanical arts by which he renders his situation comfortable here, are derived from that source; his mind, exalted by the scene, and convinced by the fact, would increase in gratitude as it increased in knowledge; his religion or his worship would become united with his improvement as a man; any employment he followed, that had any connection with the principles of the creation, as everything of agriculture, of science and of the mechanical arts has, would teach him more of God, and of the gratitude he owes to him, than any theological Christian sermon he now hears.
Great objects inspire great thoughts; great munificence excites great gratitude; but the groveling tales and doctrines of the Bible and the Testament are fit only to excite contempt.
Though man cannot arrive, at least in this life, at the actual scene I have described, he can demonstrate it, because he has a knowledge of the principles upon which the creation is constructed. [NOTE 2]
We know that the works can be represented in model, and that the universe can be represented by the same means.
The same principles by which we measure an inch, or an acre of ground, will measure to millions in extent.
A circle of an inch diameter has the same geometrical properties as a circle that would circumscribe the universe.
The same properties of a triangle that will demonstrate upon paper the course of a ship, will do it on the ocean; and when applied to what are called the heavenly bodies, will ascertain to a minute the time of an eclipse, though these bodies are millions of miles from us.
This knowledge is of divine origin, and it is from the Bible of the creation that man has learned it, and not from the stupid Bible of the church, that teacheth man nothing.
All the knowledge man has of science and of machinery, by the aid of which his existence is rendered comfortable upon earth, and without which he would be scarcely distinguishable in appearance and condition from a common animal, comes from the great machine and structure of the universe.
The constant and unwearied observations of our ancestors upon the movements and revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in what are supposed to have been the early ages of the world, have brought this knowledge upon earth.
It is not Moses and the prophets, nor Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, that have done it.
The Almighty is the great mechanic of the creation; the first philosopher and original teacher of all science.
Let us, then, learn to reverence our master, and let us not forget the labors of our ancestors.
Had we, at this day, no knowledge of machinery, and were it possible that man could have a view, as I have before described, of the structure and machinery of the universe, he would soon conceive the idea of constructing some at least of the mechanical works we now have; and the idea so conceived would progressively advance in practice.
Or could a model of the universe, such as is called an orrery, be presented before him and put in motion, his mind would arrive at the same idea.
Such an object and such a subject would, while it improved him in knowledge useful to himself as a man and a member of society, as well as entertaining, afford far better matter for impressing him with a knowledge of, and a belief in, the Creator, and of the reverence and gratitude that man owes to him, than the stupid texts of the Bible and of the Testament from which, be the talents of the preacher what they may, only stupid sermons can be preached.
If man must preach, let him preach something that is edifying, and from texts that are known to be true.
The Bible of the creation is inexhaustible in texts.
Every part of science, whether connected with the geometry of the universe, with the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties of inanimate matter, is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy — for gratitude as for human improvement.
It will perhaps be said, that if such a revolution in the system of religion takes place, every preacher ought to be a philosopher.
Most certainly; and every house of devotion a school of science.
It has been by wandering from the immutable laws of science, and the right use of reason, and setting up an invented thing called revealed religion, that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have been formed of the Almighty.
The Jews have made him the assassin of the human species to make room for the religion of the Jews.
The Christians have made him the murderer of himself and the founder of a new religion, to supersede and expel the Jewish religion.
And to find pretence and admission for these things, they must have supposed his power or his wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable; and the changeableness of the will is imperfection of the judgement.
The philosopher knows that the laws of the Creator have never changed with respect either to the principles of science, or the properties of matter.
Why, then, is it supposed they have changed with respect to man?
I here close the subject.
I have shown in all the foregoing parts of this work, that the Bible and Testament are impositions and forgeries; and I leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it, to be refuted, if any one can do it: and I leave the ideas that are suggested in the conclusion of the work, to rest on the mind of the reader; certain as I am, that when opinions are free, either in matters of government or religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail.
END OF THE SECOND PART.
THE END
Footnotes:
1. The book called the book of Matthew says, chap, iii, verse 16, that the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of a dove.
It might as well have said a goose; the creatures are equally harmless, and the one is as much of a nonsensical lie as the other.
The second of Acts, verse, 2, 3, says that it descended in a mighty rushing wind, in the shape of cloven tongues, perhaps it was cloven feet.
Such absurd stuff is only fit for tales of witches and wizards.
2. The Bible-makers have undertaken to give us, in the first chapter of Genesis, an account of the creation; and in doing this, they have demonstrated nothing but their ignorance.
They make there to have been three days and three nights, evenings and mornings, before there was a sun; when it is the presence or absence of the sun that is the cause of day and night, and what is called his rising and setting that of morning and evening.
Besides, it is a puerile and pitiful idea, to suppose the Almighty to say, Let there be light.
It is the imperative manner of speaking that a conjuror uses when he says to his cups and balls, Presto, begone, and most probably has been taken from it; as Moses and his rod are a conjuror and his wand.
Longinus calls this expression the sublime; and by the same rule, the conjuror is sublime too, for the manner of speaking is expressively and grammatically the same.
When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.
The sublime of the critics, like some parts of Edmund Burke's Sublime and Beautiful, is like a windmill just visible in a fog, which imagination might distort into a flying mountain, or an archangel, or a flock of wild geese.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
It has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of Government to hold man in ignorance of his rights.
The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support.
The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.
Not any thing can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.
Instead then, of studying theology, as is now done, out of the Bible and Testament, the meanings of which books are always controverted and the authenticity of which is disproved, it is necessary that we refer to the Bible of the creation.
The principles we discover there are eternal and of divine origin; they are the foundation of all the science that exists in the world, and must be the foundation of theology.
We can know God only through his works.
We cannot have a conception of any one attribute but by following some principle that leads to it.
We have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not the means of comprehending something of its immensity.
We can have no idea of his wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which it acts.
The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the Creator of man is the Creator of science; and it is through that medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face.
Could a man be placed in a situation, and endowed with the power of vision, to behold at one view, and to contemplate deliberately, the structure of the universe; to mark the movements of the several planets, the cause of their varying appearances, the unerring order in which they revolve, even to the remotest comet; their connection and dependence on each other, and to know the system of laws established by the Creator, that governs and regulates the whole, he would then conceive, far beyond what any church theology can teach him, the power, the wisdom, the vastness, the munificence of the Creator; he would then see, that all the knowledge man has of science, and that all the mechanical arts by which he renders his situation comfortable here, are derived from that source; his mind, exalted by the scene, and convinced by the fact, would increase in gratitude as it increased in knowledge; his religion or his worship would become united with his improvement as a man; any employment he followed, that had any connection with the principles of the creation, as everything of agriculture, of science and of the mechanical arts has, would teach him more of God, and of the gratitude he owes to him, than any theological Christian sermon he now hears.
Great objects inspire great thoughts; great munificence excites great gratitude; but the groveling tales and doctrines of the Bible and the Testament are fit only to excite contempt.
Though man cannot arrive, at least in this life, at the actual scene I have described, he can demonstrate it, because he has a knowledge of the principles upon which the creation is constructed. [NOTE 2]
We know that the works can be represented in model, and that the universe can be represented by the same means.
The same principles by which we measure an inch, or an acre of ground, will measure to millions in extent.
A circle of an inch diameter has the same geometrical properties as a circle that would circumscribe the universe.
The same properties of a triangle that will demonstrate upon paper the course of a ship, will do it on the ocean; and when applied to what are called the heavenly bodies, will ascertain to a minute the time of an eclipse, though these bodies are millions of miles from us.
This knowledge is of divine origin, and it is from the Bible of the creation that man has learned it, and not from the stupid Bible of the church, that teacheth man nothing.
All the knowledge man has of science and of machinery, by the aid of which his existence is rendered comfortable upon earth, and without which he would be scarcely distinguishable in appearance and condition from a common animal, comes from the great machine and structure of the universe.
The constant and unwearied observations of our ancestors upon the movements and revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in what are supposed to have been the early ages of the world, have brought this knowledge upon earth.
It is not Moses and the prophets, nor Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, that have done it.
The Almighty is the great mechanic of the creation; the first philosopher and original teacher of all science.
Let us, then, learn to reverence our master, and let us not forget the labors of our ancestors.
Had we, at this day, no knowledge of machinery, and were it possible that man could have a view, as I have before described, of the structure and machinery of the universe, he would soon conceive the idea of constructing some at least of the mechanical works we now have; and the idea so conceived would progressively advance in practice.
Or could a model of the universe, such as is called an orrery, be presented before him and put in motion, his mind would arrive at the same idea.
Such an object and such a subject would, while it improved him in knowledge useful to himself as a man and a member of society, as well as entertaining, afford far better matter for impressing him with a knowledge of, and a belief in, the Creator, and of the reverence and gratitude that man owes to him, than the stupid texts of the Bible and of the Testament from which, be the talents of the preacher what they may, only stupid sermons can be preached.
If man must preach, let him preach something that is edifying, and from texts that are known to be true.
The Bible of the creation is inexhaustible in texts.
Every part of science, whether connected with the geometry of the universe, with the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties of inanimate matter, is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy — for gratitude as for human improvement.
It will perhaps be said, that if such a revolution in the system of religion takes place, every preacher ought to be a philosopher.
Most certainly; and every house of devotion a school of science.
It has been by wandering from the immutable laws of science, and the right use of reason, and setting up an invented thing called revealed religion, that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have been formed of the Almighty.
The Jews have made him the assassin of the human species to make room for the religion of the Jews.
The Christians have made him the murderer of himself and the founder of a new religion, to supersede and expel the Jewish religion.
And to find pretence and admission for these things, they must have supposed his power or his wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable; and the changeableness of the will is imperfection of the judgement.
The philosopher knows that the laws of the Creator have never changed with respect either to the principles of science, or the properties of matter.
Why, then, is it supposed they have changed with respect to man?
I here close the subject.
I have shown in all the foregoing parts of this work, that the Bible and Testament are impositions and forgeries; and I leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it, to be refuted, if any one can do it: and I leave the ideas that are suggested in the conclusion of the work, to rest on the mind of the reader; certain as I am, that when opinions are free, either in matters of government or religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail.
END OF THE SECOND PART.
THE END
Footnotes:
1. The book called the book of Matthew says, chap, iii, verse 16, that the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of a dove.
It might as well have said a goose; the creatures are equally harmless, and the one is as much of a nonsensical lie as the other.
The second of Acts, verse, 2, 3, says that it descended in a mighty rushing wind, in the shape of cloven tongues, perhaps it was cloven feet.
Such absurd stuff is only fit for tales of witches and wizards.
2. The Bible-makers have undertaken to give us, in the first chapter of Genesis, an account of the creation; and in doing this, they have demonstrated nothing but their ignorance.
They make there to have been three days and three nights, evenings and mornings, before there was a sun; when it is the presence or absence of the sun that is the cause of day and night, and what is called his rising and setting that of morning and evening.
Besides, it is a puerile and pitiful idea, to suppose the Almighty to say, Let there be light.
It is the imperative manner of speaking that a conjuror uses when he says to his cups and balls, Presto, begone, and most probably has been taken from it; as Moses and his rod are a conjuror and his wand.
Longinus calls this expression the sublime; and by the same rule, the conjuror is sublime too, for the manner of speaking is expressively and grammatically the same.
When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.
The sublime of the critics, like some parts of Edmund Burke's Sublime and Beautiful, is like a windmill just visible in a fog, which imagination might distort into a flying mountain, or an archangel, or a flock of wild geese.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: THOMAS PAINE, AGE OF REASON
Age of Reason, Part III, Section 1
An Examination Of The Passages In The New Testament, Quoted From The Old, And Called Prophecies Of The Coming Of Jesus Christ.
[THIS work was first published by Mr. Paine, at New York, in 1807, and was the last of his writings edited by himself. It is evidently extracted from his answer to the bishop of Llandaff, or from his third part of the Age of Reason, both of which it appears by his will, he left in manuscript. The term, "The Bishop," occurs in this examination six times without designating what bishop is meant. Of all the replies to his second part of the Age of Reason, that of bishop Watson was the only one to which he paid particular attention; and he is, no doubt, the person here alluded to. Bishop Watson's apology for the Bible had been published some years before Mr. P. left France, and the latter composed his answer to it, and also his third part of the Age of Reason, while in that country.
When Mr. Paine arrived in America, and found that liberal opinions on religion were in disrepute, through the influence of hypocrisy and superstition, he declined publishing the entire of the works which he had prepared; observing that "An author might lose the credit he had acquired by writing too much." He however gave to the public the examination before us, in a pamphlet form. But the apathy which appeared to prevail at that time in regard to religious inquiry, fully determined him to discontinue the publication of his theological writings. In this case, taking only a portion of one of the works before mentioned, he chose a title adapted to the particular part selected.]
The passages called Prophecies of, or concerning, Jesus Christ, in the Old Testament, may be classed under the two following heads :
First those referred to in the four books of the New Testament, called the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Secondly, those which translators and commentators have, of their own imagination, erected into prophecies, and dubbed with that title at the head of the several chapters of the Old Testament.
Of these it is scarcely worth while to waste time, ink, and paper upon; I shall, therefore, confine myself chiefly to those referred to in the aforesaid four books of the New Testament.
If I show that these are not prophecies of the person called Jesus Christ, nor have reference to any such person, it will be perfectly needless to combat those which translators, or the Church, have invented, and for which they had no other authority than their own imagination.
I begin with the book called the Gospel according to St. Matthew.
In the first chap. ver. 18, it is said, "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this wise; when his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together SHE WAS FOUND WITH CHILD BY THE HOLY GHOST."
This is going a little too fast; because to make this verse agree with the next it should have said no more than that she was found with child; for the next verse says, "Then Joseph her husband being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily."
Consequently Joseph had found out no more than that she was with child, and he knew it was not by himself.
V. 20. "And while he thought of these things, (that is whether he should put her away privily, or make a public example of her,) behold the Angel of the Lord appeared to him IN A DREAM (that is, Joseph dreamed that an angel appeared unto him) saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost."
"And she shall bring forth a son and call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins."
Now, without entering into any discussion upon the merits or demerits of the account here given, it is proper to observe, that it has no higher authority than that of a dream; for it is impossible for a man to behold any thing in a dream, but that which he dreams of.
I ask not, therefore, whether Joseph (if there was such a man) had such a dream or not; because admitting he had, it proves nothing.
So wonderful and rational is the faculty of the mind in dreams, that it acts the part of all the characters its imagination creates, and what it thinks it hears from any of them, is no other than what the roving rapidity of its own imagination invents.
It is, therefore, nothing to me what Joseph dreamed of; whether of the fidelity or infidelity of his wife.
I pay no regard to my own dreams, and I should be weak indeed to put faith in the dreams of another.
The verses that follow those I have quoted, are the words of the writer of the book of Matthew.
"Now, (says he,) all this (that is, all this dreaming and this pregnancy) was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the Prophet, saying, 'Behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted, is, God with us.'"
TO BE CONTINUED ...
An Examination Of The Passages In The New Testament, Quoted From The Old, And Called Prophecies Of The Coming Of Jesus Christ.
[THIS work was first published by Mr. Paine, at New York, in 1807, and was the last of his writings edited by himself. It is evidently extracted from his answer to the bishop of Llandaff, or from his third part of the Age of Reason, both of which it appears by his will, he left in manuscript. The term, "The Bishop," occurs in this examination six times without designating what bishop is meant. Of all the replies to his second part of the Age of Reason, that of bishop Watson was the only one to which he paid particular attention; and he is, no doubt, the person here alluded to. Bishop Watson's apology for the Bible had been published some years before Mr. P. left France, and the latter composed his answer to it, and also his third part of the Age of Reason, while in that country.
When Mr. Paine arrived in America, and found that liberal opinions on religion were in disrepute, through the influence of hypocrisy and superstition, he declined publishing the entire of the works which he had prepared; observing that "An author might lose the credit he had acquired by writing too much." He however gave to the public the examination before us, in a pamphlet form. But the apathy which appeared to prevail at that time in regard to religious inquiry, fully determined him to discontinue the publication of his theological writings. In this case, taking only a portion of one of the works before mentioned, he chose a title adapted to the particular part selected.]
The passages called Prophecies of, or concerning, Jesus Christ, in the Old Testament, may be classed under the two following heads :
First those referred to in the four books of the New Testament, called the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Secondly, those which translators and commentators have, of their own imagination, erected into prophecies, and dubbed with that title at the head of the several chapters of the Old Testament.
Of these it is scarcely worth while to waste time, ink, and paper upon; I shall, therefore, confine myself chiefly to those referred to in the aforesaid four books of the New Testament.
If I show that these are not prophecies of the person called Jesus Christ, nor have reference to any such person, it will be perfectly needless to combat those which translators, or the Church, have invented, and for which they had no other authority than their own imagination.
I begin with the book called the Gospel according to St. Matthew.
In the first chap. ver. 18, it is said, "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this wise; when his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together SHE WAS FOUND WITH CHILD BY THE HOLY GHOST."
This is going a little too fast; because to make this verse agree with the next it should have said no more than that she was found with child; for the next verse says, "Then Joseph her husband being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily."
Consequently Joseph had found out no more than that she was with child, and he knew it was not by himself.
V. 20. "And while he thought of these things, (that is whether he should put her away privily, or make a public example of her,) behold the Angel of the Lord appeared to him IN A DREAM (that is, Joseph dreamed that an angel appeared unto him) saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost."
"And she shall bring forth a son and call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins."
Now, without entering into any discussion upon the merits or demerits of the account here given, it is proper to observe, that it has no higher authority than that of a dream; for it is impossible for a man to behold any thing in a dream, but that which he dreams of.
I ask not, therefore, whether Joseph (if there was such a man) had such a dream or not; because admitting he had, it proves nothing.
So wonderful and rational is the faculty of the mind in dreams, that it acts the part of all the characters its imagination creates, and what it thinks it hears from any of them, is no other than what the roving rapidity of its own imagination invents.
It is, therefore, nothing to me what Joseph dreamed of; whether of the fidelity or infidelity of his wife.
I pay no regard to my own dreams, and I should be weak indeed to put faith in the dreams of another.
The verses that follow those I have quoted, are the words of the writer of the book of Matthew.
"Now, (says he,) all this (that is, all this dreaming and this pregnancy) was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the Prophet, saying, 'Behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted, is, God with us.'"
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: THOMAS PAINE, AGE OF REASON
Age of Reason, Part III, Section 1, continued …
This passage is in Isaiah, chap. vii. ver. 14, and the writer of the book of Matthew endeavours to make his readers believe that this passage is a prophecy of the person called Jesus Christ.
It is no such thing — and I go to show it is not.
But it is first necessary that I explain the occasion of these words being spoken by Isaiah; the reader will then easily perceive, that so far from their being a prophecy of Jesus Christ, they have not the least reference to such a person, or any thing that could happen in the time that Christ is said to have lived — which was about seven hundred years after the time of Isaiah.
The case is this:
On the death of Solomon the Jewish nation split into two monarchies: one called the kingdom of Judah, the capital of which was Jerusalem: the other the kingdom of Israel, the capital of which was Samaria.
The kingdom of Judah followed the line of David, and the kingdom of Israel that of Saul; and these two rival monarchies frequently carried on fierce wars against each other.
At the time Ahaz was king of Judah, which was in the time of Isaiah, Pekah was king of Israel; and Pekah joined himself to Rezin, king of Syria, to make war against Ahaz, king of Judah and these two kings marched a confederated and powerful army against Jerusalem.
Ahaz and his people became alarmed at the danger, and "their hearts were moved as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind." Isaiah, chap. vii. ver. 3.
In this perilous situation of things, Isaiah addressed himself to Ahaz, and assures him, in the name of the Lord, (the cant phrase of all the prophets) that these two kings should not succeed against him; and, to assure him that this should be the case, (the case was however directly contrary*) tells Ahaz to ask a sign of the Lord.
* Chron. chap, xxviii. ver. 1st.
This Ahaz declined doing, giving as a reason, that he would not tempt the Lord; upon which Isaiah who pretends to be sent from God, says, ver. 14, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign, behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son — Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good — For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land which thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings" — meaning the king of Israel and the king of Syria, who were marching against him.
Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, but he did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord. — ver. 5.
Wherefore the Lord his God delivered him into the hand of the king of Syria, and they smote him, and carried away a great multitude of them captive and brought them to Damascus; and he was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who smote him with a great slaughter. Ver. 6.
And Pekah (king of Israel) slew in Judah an hundred and twenty thousand in one day. — ver. 8.
And the children of Israel carried away captive of their brethren two hundred thousand women, sons, and daughters.
Here then is the sign, which was to be the birth of a child, and that child a son; and here also is the time limited for the accomplishment of the sign, namely, before the child should know to refuse the evil and choose the good.
The thing, therefore, to be a sign of success to Ahaz, must he something that would take place before the event of the battle then pending between him and the two kings could be known.
A thing to be a sign must precede the thing signified.
The sign of rain must be before the rain.
It would have been mockery and insulting nonsense for Isaiah to have assured Ahaz as a sign, that these two kings should not prevail against him: that a child should be born seven hundred years after he was dead; and that before the child so born should know to refuse the evil and choose the good, he, Ahaz, should be delivered from the danger he was then immediately threatened with.
But the case is, that the child of which Isaiah speaks was his own child, with which his wife or his mistress was then pregnant; for he says in the next chapter, v. 2, "And I took unto me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah; and I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and bear a son;" and he says, at ver. 18 of the same chapter, "Behold I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel."
It may not be improper here to observe, that the word translated a virgin in Isaiah, does not signify a virgin in Hebrew, but merely a young woman.
The tense also is falsified in the translation.
Levi gives the Hebrew text of the 14th ver. of the 7th chap. of Isaiah, and the translation in English with it — "Behold a young woman is with child and beareth a son."
The expression, says he, is in the present tense.
This translation agrees with the other circumstances related of the birth of this child, which was to be a sign to Ahaz.
But as the true translation could not have been imposed upon the world as a prophecy of a child to be born seven hundred years afterwards, the Christian translators have falsified the original: and instead of making Isaiah to say, behold a young woman is with child and beareth a son — they make him to say, behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.
It is, however, only necessary for a person to read the 7th and 8th chapters of Isaiah, and he will be convinced that the passage in question is no prophecy of the person called Jesus Christ.
I pass on to the second passage quoted from the Old Testament by the New, as a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew, chap. ii. ver. 1. "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judah, in the days of Herod the king, behold there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem — saying, where is he that is born king of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him."
"When Herod, the king, heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him — and when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born — and they said unto him in Bethlehem, in the land of Judea: for thus it is written by the prophet — and thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judea, art not the least among the Princes of Judea for out of thee shall come a Governor that shall rule my people Israel."
This passage is in Micah, chap. 6. ver. 2.
I pass over the absurdity of seeing and following a star in the day-time, as a man would a Will with the wisp, or a candle and lantern at night; and also that of seeing it in the east, when themselves came from the east; for could such a thing be seen at all to serve them for a guide, it must be in the west to them.
I confine myself solely to the passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
The book of Micah, in the passage above quoted, chap. v. ver. 2, is speaking of some person without mentioning his name from whom some great achievements were expected; but the description he gives of this person at the 5th verse, proves evidently that it is not Jesus Christ, for he says at the 5th ver. "and this man shall be the peace when the Assyrian shall come into our land, and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise up against him (that is, against the Assyrian) seven shepherds and eight principal men" — v. 6.
"And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod on the entrance thereof; thus shall He (the person spoken of at the head of the second verse) deliver us from the Assyrian when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders."
This is so evidently descriptive of a military chief, that it cannot be applied to Christ without outraging the character they pretend to give us of him.
Besides which, the circumstances of the times here spoken of, and those of the times in which Christ is said to have lived, are in contradiction to each other.
It was the Romans, and not the Assyrians, that had conquered and were in the land of Judea, and trod in their palaces when Christ was born, and when he died, and so far from his driving them out, it was they who signed the warrant for his execution, and he suffered under it.
Having thus shown that this is no prophecy of Jesus Christ. I pass on to the third passage quoted from the Old Testament by the New, as a prophecy of him.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
This passage is in Isaiah, chap. vii. ver. 14, and the writer of the book of Matthew endeavours to make his readers believe that this passage is a prophecy of the person called Jesus Christ.
It is no such thing — and I go to show it is not.
But it is first necessary that I explain the occasion of these words being spoken by Isaiah; the reader will then easily perceive, that so far from their being a prophecy of Jesus Christ, they have not the least reference to such a person, or any thing that could happen in the time that Christ is said to have lived — which was about seven hundred years after the time of Isaiah.
The case is this:
On the death of Solomon the Jewish nation split into two monarchies: one called the kingdom of Judah, the capital of which was Jerusalem: the other the kingdom of Israel, the capital of which was Samaria.
The kingdom of Judah followed the line of David, and the kingdom of Israel that of Saul; and these two rival monarchies frequently carried on fierce wars against each other.
At the time Ahaz was king of Judah, which was in the time of Isaiah, Pekah was king of Israel; and Pekah joined himself to Rezin, king of Syria, to make war against Ahaz, king of Judah and these two kings marched a confederated and powerful army against Jerusalem.
Ahaz and his people became alarmed at the danger, and "their hearts were moved as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind." Isaiah, chap. vii. ver. 3.
In this perilous situation of things, Isaiah addressed himself to Ahaz, and assures him, in the name of the Lord, (the cant phrase of all the prophets) that these two kings should not succeed against him; and, to assure him that this should be the case, (the case was however directly contrary*) tells Ahaz to ask a sign of the Lord.
* Chron. chap, xxviii. ver. 1st.
This Ahaz declined doing, giving as a reason, that he would not tempt the Lord; upon which Isaiah who pretends to be sent from God, says, ver. 14, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign, behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son — Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good — For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land which thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings" — meaning the king of Israel and the king of Syria, who were marching against him.
Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, but he did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord. — ver. 5.
Wherefore the Lord his God delivered him into the hand of the king of Syria, and they smote him, and carried away a great multitude of them captive and brought them to Damascus; and he was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who smote him with a great slaughter. Ver. 6.
And Pekah (king of Israel) slew in Judah an hundred and twenty thousand in one day. — ver. 8.
And the children of Israel carried away captive of their brethren two hundred thousand women, sons, and daughters.
Here then is the sign, which was to be the birth of a child, and that child a son; and here also is the time limited for the accomplishment of the sign, namely, before the child should know to refuse the evil and choose the good.
The thing, therefore, to be a sign of success to Ahaz, must he something that would take place before the event of the battle then pending between him and the two kings could be known.
A thing to be a sign must precede the thing signified.
The sign of rain must be before the rain.
It would have been mockery and insulting nonsense for Isaiah to have assured Ahaz as a sign, that these two kings should not prevail against him: that a child should be born seven hundred years after he was dead; and that before the child so born should know to refuse the evil and choose the good, he, Ahaz, should be delivered from the danger he was then immediately threatened with.
But the case is, that the child of which Isaiah speaks was his own child, with which his wife or his mistress was then pregnant; for he says in the next chapter, v. 2, "And I took unto me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah; and I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and bear a son;" and he says, at ver. 18 of the same chapter, "Behold I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel."
It may not be improper here to observe, that the word translated a virgin in Isaiah, does not signify a virgin in Hebrew, but merely a young woman.
The tense also is falsified in the translation.
Levi gives the Hebrew text of the 14th ver. of the 7th chap. of Isaiah, and the translation in English with it — "Behold a young woman is with child and beareth a son."
The expression, says he, is in the present tense.
This translation agrees with the other circumstances related of the birth of this child, which was to be a sign to Ahaz.
But as the true translation could not have been imposed upon the world as a prophecy of a child to be born seven hundred years afterwards, the Christian translators have falsified the original: and instead of making Isaiah to say, behold a young woman is with child and beareth a son — they make him to say, behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.
It is, however, only necessary for a person to read the 7th and 8th chapters of Isaiah, and he will be convinced that the passage in question is no prophecy of the person called Jesus Christ.
I pass on to the second passage quoted from the Old Testament by the New, as a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew, chap. ii. ver. 1. "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judah, in the days of Herod the king, behold there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem — saying, where is he that is born king of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him."
"When Herod, the king, heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him — and when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born — and they said unto him in Bethlehem, in the land of Judea: for thus it is written by the prophet — and thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judea, art not the least among the Princes of Judea for out of thee shall come a Governor that shall rule my people Israel."
This passage is in Micah, chap. 6. ver. 2.
I pass over the absurdity of seeing and following a star in the day-time, as a man would a Will with the wisp, or a candle and lantern at night; and also that of seeing it in the east, when themselves came from the east; for could such a thing be seen at all to serve them for a guide, it must be in the west to them.
I confine myself solely to the passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
The book of Micah, in the passage above quoted, chap. v. ver. 2, is speaking of some person without mentioning his name from whom some great achievements were expected; but the description he gives of this person at the 5th verse, proves evidently that it is not Jesus Christ, for he says at the 5th ver. "and this man shall be the peace when the Assyrian shall come into our land, and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise up against him (that is, against the Assyrian) seven shepherds and eight principal men" — v. 6.
"And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod on the entrance thereof; thus shall He (the person spoken of at the head of the second verse) deliver us from the Assyrian when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders."
This is so evidently descriptive of a military chief, that it cannot be applied to Christ without outraging the character they pretend to give us of him.
Besides which, the circumstances of the times here spoken of, and those of the times in which Christ is said to have lived, are in contradiction to each other.
It was the Romans, and not the Assyrians, that had conquered and were in the land of Judea, and trod in their palaces when Christ was born, and when he died, and so far from his driving them out, it was they who signed the warrant for his execution, and he suffered under it.
Having thus shown that this is no prophecy of Jesus Christ. I pass on to the third passage quoted from the Old Testament by the New, as a prophecy of him.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: THOMAS PAINE, AGE OF REASON
Age of Reason, Part III, Section 1, continued …
This, like the first I have spoken of, is introduced by a dream.
Joseph dreameth another dream, and dreameth that he seeth another angel.
The account begins at the 13th v. of 2d chap. of Matthew.
"The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise and take the young child and his mother and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: For Herod will seek the life of the young child to destroy him."
"When he arose he took the young child and his mother by night and departed into Egypt — and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt I have called my son."
This passage is in the book of Hosea, chap. xi. ver. 1.
The words are, "When Israel was a child then I loved him and called my son out of Egypt — As they called them, so they went from them, they sacrificed unto Balaam and burnt incense to graven images."
This passage falsely called a prophecy of Christ, refers to the children of Israel coming out of Egypt in the time of Pharoah, and to the idolatory they committed afterwards.
To make it apply to Jesus Christ, he must then be the person who sacrificed unto Balaam and burnt incense to graven images, for the person called out of Egypt by the collective name, Israel, and the persons committing this idolatory, are the same persons, or the descendants from them.
This, then, can be no prophecy of Jesus Christ, unless they are willing to make an idolator of him.
I pass on to the fourth passage, called, a prophecy by the writer of the book of Matthew.
This is introduced by a story, told by nobody but himself, and scarcely believed by any body, of the slaughter of all the children under two years old, by the command of Herod.
A thing which it is not probable should be done by Herod, as he only held an office under the Roman government, to which appeals could always be had, as we see in the case of Paul.
Matthew, however, having made or told his story, says, chap. ii. v. 17. — "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah, the prophet, saying, — In Ramah was there a voice heard, lamentation, weeping and great mourning; Rachael weeping for her children, and would not be comforted because they were not."
This passage is in Jeremiah, chap. xxxi. ver. 15, and this verse when separated from the verses before and after it, and which explains its application, might, with equal propriety, be applied to every case of wars, sieges, and other violences, such as the Christians themselves have often done to the Jews, where mothers have lamented the loss of their children.
There is nothing in the verse, taken singly, that designates or points out any particular application of it, otherwise than it points to some circumstances which, at the time of writing it, had already happened, and not to a thing yet to happen, for the verse is in the preter or past tense.
I go to explain the case and show the application of the verse.
Jeremiah lived in the time that Nebuchadnezzar besieged, took, plundered, and destroyed Jerusalem, and led the Jews captive to Babylon.
He carried his violence against the Jews to every extreme.
He slew the sons of king Zedekiah before his face, he then put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and kept him in prison till the day of his death.
It is of this time of sorrow and suffering to the Jews that Jeremiah is speaking.
Their temple was destroyed, their land desolated, their nation and government entirely broken up, and themselves, men, women and children, carried into captivity.
They had too many sorrows of their own, immediately before their eyes, to permit them, or any of their chiefs, to be employing themselves on things that might, or might not, happen in the world seven hundred years afterwards.
It is, as already observed, of this time of sorrow and suffering to the Jews that Jeremiah is speaking in the verse in question.
In the two next verses, the 16th and 17th, he endeavours to console the sufferers by giving them hopes, and, according to the fashion of speaking in those days, assurances from the Lord, that their sufferings should have an end, and that their children should return again to their own children.
But I leave the verses to speak for themselves, and the Old Testament to testify against the New.
Jeremiah, chap. xxxi. ver. 15. — "Thus saith the Lord, a voice was heard in Ramah (it is in the preter tense) lamentation and bitter weeping: Rachael, weeping for her children because they were not."
Verse 16. — "Thus saith the Lord, refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded, said the Lord, and THEY shall come again from the land of the enemy."
Verse 17. — "And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord that thy children shall come again to their own border."
By what strange ignorance or imposition is it, that the children of which Jeremiah speaks, (meaning the people of the Jewish nation, scripturally called children of Israel, and not mere infants under two years old,) and who were to return again from the land of the enemy, and come again into their own borders, can mean the children that Matthew makes Herod to slaughter?
Could those return again from the land of the enemy, or how can the land of the enemy be applied to them?
Could they come again to their own borders?
Good heavens!
How has the world been imposed upon by Testament-makers, priestcraft, and pretended prophecies.
I pass on to the fifth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
This, like two of the former, is introduced by dream.
Joseph dreamed another dream, and dreameth of another Angel.
And Matthew is again the historian of the dream and the dreamer.
If it were asked how Matthew could know what Joseph dreamed, neither the Bishop nor all the Church could answer the question.
Perhaps it was Matthew that dreamed, and not Joseph; that is, Joseph dreamed by proxy, in Matthew's brain, as they tell us Daniel dreamed for Nebuchadnezzar.
But be this as it may, I go on with my subject.
The account of this dream is in Matthew, chap. ii. verse 19. — "But when Herod was dead, behold an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt — Saying, arise, and take the young child and its mother and go into the land of Israel, for they are dead which sought the young child's life — and he arose and took the young child and his mother and came into the land of Israel."
"But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither."
"Notwithstanding being warned of God in a dream (here is another dream) he turned aside into the parts of Galilee; and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets — He shall be called a Nazarene."
Here is good circumstantial evidence, that Matthew dreamed, for there is no such passage in all the Old Testament; and I invite the bishop and all the priests in Christendom, including those of America, to produce it.
I pass on to the sixth passage, called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
This, as Swift says on another occasion, is lugged in head and shoulders; it need only to be seen in order to be hooted as a forced and far-fetched piece of imposition.
Matthew, chap. iv. v. 12. " Now when Jesus heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee — and leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zebulon and Nephthalim — That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias (Isaiah) the prophet, saying, The land of Zebulon and the land of Nepthalim, by (he way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the Gentiles — the people which sat in darkness saw great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is springing upon them."
I wonder Matthew has not made the cris-cross-row, or the christ-cross-row (I know not how the priests spell it) into a prophecy.
He might as well have done this as cut out these unconnected and undescriptive sentences from the place they stand in and dubbed them with that title.
The words, however, are in Isaiah, chap. ix. verse 1, 2, as follows: --
"Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulon and the land of Nephthali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations."
All this relates to two circumstances that had already happened, at the time these words in Isaiah were written.
The one, where the land of Zebulon and Nephthali had been lightly afflicted, and afterwards more grievously by the way of the sea.
But observe, reader, how Matthew has falsified the text.
He begins his quotation at a part of the verse where there is not so much as a comma, and thereby cuts off every thing that relates to the first affliction.
He then leaves out all that relates to the second affliction, and by this means leaves out every thing that makes the verse intelligible, and reduces it to a senseless skeleton of names of towns.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
This, like the first I have spoken of, is introduced by a dream.
Joseph dreameth another dream, and dreameth that he seeth another angel.
The account begins at the 13th v. of 2d chap. of Matthew.
"The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise and take the young child and his mother and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: For Herod will seek the life of the young child to destroy him."
"When he arose he took the young child and his mother by night and departed into Egypt — and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt I have called my son."
This passage is in the book of Hosea, chap. xi. ver. 1.
The words are, "When Israel was a child then I loved him and called my son out of Egypt — As they called them, so they went from them, they sacrificed unto Balaam and burnt incense to graven images."
This passage falsely called a prophecy of Christ, refers to the children of Israel coming out of Egypt in the time of Pharoah, and to the idolatory they committed afterwards.
To make it apply to Jesus Christ, he must then be the person who sacrificed unto Balaam and burnt incense to graven images, for the person called out of Egypt by the collective name, Israel, and the persons committing this idolatory, are the same persons, or the descendants from them.
This, then, can be no prophecy of Jesus Christ, unless they are willing to make an idolator of him.
I pass on to the fourth passage, called, a prophecy by the writer of the book of Matthew.
This is introduced by a story, told by nobody but himself, and scarcely believed by any body, of the slaughter of all the children under two years old, by the command of Herod.
A thing which it is not probable should be done by Herod, as he only held an office under the Roman government, to which appeals could always be had, as we see in the case of Paul.
Matthew, however, having made or told his story, says, chap. ii. v. 17. — "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah, the prophet, saying, — In Ramah was there a voice heard, lamentation, weeping and great mourning; Rachael weeping for her children, and would not be comforted because they were not."
This passage is in Jeremiah, chap. xxxi. ver. 15, and this verse when separated from the verses before and after it, and which explains its application, might, with equal propriety, be applied to every case of wars, sieges, and other violences, such as the Christians themselves have often done to the Jews, where mothers have lamented the loss of their children.
There is nothing in the verse, taken singly, that designates or points out any particular application of it, otherwise than it points to some circumstances which, at the time of writing it, had already happened, and not to a thing yet to happen, for the verse is in the preter or past tense.
I go to explain the case and show the application of the verse.
Jeremiah lived in the time that Nebuchadnezzar besieged, took, plundered, and destroyed Jerusalem, and led the Jews captive to Babylon.
He carried his violence against the Jews to every extreme.
He slew the sons of king Zedekiah before his face, he then put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and kept him in prison till the day of his death.
It is of this time of sorrow and suffering to the Jews that Jeremiah is speaking.
Their temple was destroyed, their land desolated, their nation and government entirely broken up, and themselves, men, women and children, carried into captivity.
They had too many sorrows of their own, immediately before their eyes, to permit them, or any of their chiefs, to be employing themselves on things that might, or might not, happen in the world seven hundred years afterwards.
It is, as already observed, of this time of sorrow and suffering to the Jews that Jeremiah is speaking in the verse in question.
In the two next verses, the 16th and 17th, he endeavours to console the sufferers by giving them hopes, and, according to the fashion of speaking in those days, assurances from the Lord, that their sufferings should have an end, and that their children should return again to their own children.
But I leave the verses to speak for themselves, and the Old Testament to testify against the New.
Jeremiah, chap. xxxi. ver. 15. — "Thus saith the Lord, a voice was heard in Ramah (it is in the preter tense) lamentation and bitter weeping: Rachael, weeping for her children because they were not."
Verse 16. — "Thus saith the Lord, refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded, said the Lord, and THEY shall come again from the land of the enemy."
Verse 17. — "And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord that thy children shall come again to their own border."
By what strange ignorance or imposition is it, that the children of which Jeremiah speaks, (meaning the people of the Jewish nation, scripturally called children of Israel, and not mere infants under two years old,) and who were to return again from the land of the enemy, and come again into their own borders, can mean the children that Matthew makes Herod to slaughter?
Could those return again from the land of the enemy, or how can the land of the enemy be applied to them?
Could they come again to their own borders?
Good heavens!
How has the world been imposed upon by Testament-makers, priestcraft, and pretended prophecies.
I pass on to the fifth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
This, like two of the former, is introduced by dream.
Joseph dreamed another dream, and dreameth of another Angel.
And Matthew is again the historian of the dream and the dreamer.
If it were asked how Matthew could know what Joseph dreamed, neither the Bishop nor all the Church could answer the question.
Perhaps it was Matthew that dreamed, and not Joseph; that is, Joseph dreamed by proxy, in Matthew's brain, as they tell us Daniel dreamed for Nebuchadnezzar.
But be this as it may, I go on with my subject.
The account of this dream is in Matthew, chap. ii. verse 19. — "But when Herod was dead, behold an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt — Saying, arise, and take the young child and its mother and go into the land of Israel, for they are dead which sought the young child's life — and he arose and took the young child and his mother and came into the land of Israel."
"But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither."
"Notwithstanding being warned of God in a dream (here is another dream) he turned aside into the parts of Galilee; and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets — He shall be called a Nazarene."
Here is good circumstantial evidence, that Matthew dreamed, for there is no such passage in all the Old Testament; and I invite the bishop and all the priests in Christendom, including those of America, to produce it.
I pass on to the sixth passage, called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
This, as Swift says on another occasion, is lugged in head and shoulders; it need only to be seen in order to be hooted as a forced and far-fetched piece of imposition.
Matthew, chap. iv. v. 12. " Now when Jesus heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee — and leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zebulon and Nephthalim — That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias (Isaiah) the prophet, saying, The land of Zebulon and the land of Nepthalim, by (he way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the Gentiles — the people which sat in darkness saw great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is springing upon them."
I wonder Matthew has not made the cris-cross-row, or the christ-cross-row (I know not how the priests spell it) into a prophecy.
He might as well have done this as cut out these unconnected and undescriptive sentences from the place they stand in and dubbed them with that title.
The words, however, are in Isaiah, chap. ix. verse 1, 2, as follows: --
"Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulon and the land of Nephthali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations."
All this relates to two circumstances that had already happened, at the time these words in Isaiah were written.
The one, where the land of Zebulon and Nephthali had been lightly afflicted, and afterwards more grievously by the way of the sea.
But observe, reader, how Matthew has falsified the text.
He begins his quotation at a part of the verse where there is not so much as a comma, and thereby cuts off every thing that relates to the first affliction.
He then leaves out all that relates to the second affliction, and by this means leaves out every thing that makes the verse intelligible, and reduces it to a senseless skeleton of names of towns.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: THOMAS PAINE, AGE OF REASON
Age of Reason, Part III, Section 1, continued …
To bring this imposition of Matthew clearly and immediately before the eye of the reader, I will repeat the verse, and put between crotchets the words he has left out, and put in Italics those he has preserved.
[Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation when at the first he lightly afflicted] the land of Zebulon and the land of Nephthali, [and did afterwards more grievously afflict her] by the way of the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations.
What gross imposition is it to gut, as the phrase is, a verse in this manner, render it perfectly senseless, and then puff it off on a credulous world as a prophecy. I proceed to the next verse.
Ver. 2. "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined."
All this is historical, and not in the least prophetical.
The whole is in the preter tense: it speaks of things that had been accomplished at the time the words were written, and not of things to be accomplished afterwards.
As then the passage is in no possible sense prophetical, nor intended to be so, and that to attempt to make it so, is not only to falsify the original, but to commit a criminal imposition; it is matter of no concern to us, otherwise than as curiosity, to know who the people were of which the passage speaks, that sat in darkness, and what the light was that shined in upon them.
If we look into the preceding chapter, the 8th, of which the 9th is only a continuation, we shall find the writer speaking, at the 19th verse, of "witches and wizards who peep about and mutter," and of people who made application to them; and he preaches and exhorts them against this darksome practice.
It is of this people, and of this darksome practice, or walking in darkness,that he is speaking at the 2d verse of the 9th chapter; and with respect to the light that had shined in upon them, it refers entirely to his own ministry, and to the boldness of it, which opposed itself to that of the witches and wizards who peeped about and muttered.
Isaiah is, upon the whole, a wild disorderly writer, preserving in general no clear chain of perception in the arrangement of his ideas, and consequently producing no defined conclusions from them.
It is the wildness of his style, the confusion of his ideas, and the ranting metaphors he employs, that have afforded so many opportunities to priestcraft in some cases, and to superstition in others, to impose those defects upon the world as prophecies of Jesus Christ.
Finding no direct meaning in them, and not knowing what to make of them, and supposing at the same time they were intended to have a meaning, they supplied the defect by inventing a meaning of their own, and called it his.
I have, however, in this place done Isaiah the justice to rescue him from the claws of Matthew, who has torn him unmercifully to pieces; and from the imposition or ignorance of priests and commentators, by letting Isaiah speak for himself.
If the words walking in darkness, and light breaking in, could in any case be applied prophetically, which they cannot be, they would better apply to the times we now live in than to any other.
The world has "walked in darkness" for eighteen hundred years, both as to religion and government, and it is only since the American Revolution began that light has broken in.
The belief of one God, whose attributes are revealed to us in the book or scripture of the creation, which no human hand can counterfeit or falsify, and not in the written or printed book which, as Matthew has shown, can be altered or falsified by ignorance or design, is now making its way among us: and as to government, the light is already gone forth, and whilst men ought to be careful not to be blinded by the excess of it, as at a certain time in France, when every thing was Robespierrean violence, they ought to reverence, and even to adore it, with all the firmness and perseverance that true wisdom can inspire.
I pass on to the seventh passage, called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew, chap. viii. ver. 16. "When the evening was come, they brought unto him (Jesus) many that were possessed with devils, and he cast out the spirit with his word, and healed all that were sick."
That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias (Isaiah) the prophet, saying, himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.
This affair of people being possessed by devils, and of casting them out, was the fable of the day when the books of the New Testament were written.
It had not existence at any other time.
The books of the old Testament mention no such thing; the people of the present day know of no such thing; nor does the history of any people or country speak of such a thing.
It starts upon us all at once in the book of Matthew, and is altogether an invention of the New Testament-makers and the Christian church.
The book of Matthew is the first book where the word Devil is mentioned.*
We read in some of the books of the Old Testament of things called familiar spirits, the supposed companions of people called witches and wizards.
It was no other than the trick of pretended conjurors to obtain money from credulous and ignorant people, or the fabricated charge of superstitious malignancy against unfortunate and decrepid old age.
* The word devil is a personification of the word evil.
But the idea of a familiar spirit, if we can affix any idea to the term, is exceedingly different to that of being possessed by a devil.
In the one case, the supposed familiar spirit is a dexterous agent, that comes and goes and does as he is bidden; in the other, he is a turbulent roaring monster, that tears and tortures the body into convulsions.
Reader, whoever thou art, put thy trust in thy Creator, make use of the reason he endowed thee with, and cast from thee all such fables.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
To bring this imposition of Matthew clearly and immediately before the eye of the reader, I will repeat the verse, and put between crotchets the words he has left out, and put in Italics those he has preserved.
[Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation when at the first he lightly afflicted] the land of Zebulon and the land of Nephthali, [and did afterwards more grievously afflict her] by the way of the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations.
What gross imposition is it to gut, as the phrase is, a verse in this manner, render it perfectly senseless, and then puff it off on a credulous world as a prophecy. I proceed to the next verse.
Ver. 2. "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined."
All this is historical, and not in the least prophetical.
The whole is in the preter tense: it speaks of things that had been accomplished at the time the words were written, and not of things to be accomplished afterwards.
As then the passage is in no possible sense prophetical, nor intended to be so, and that to attempt to make it so, is not only to falsify the original, but to commit a criminal imposition; it is matter of no concern to us, otherwise than as curiosity, to know who the people were of which the passage speaks, that sat in darkness, and what the light was that shined in upon them.
If we look into the preceding chapter, the 8th, of which the 9th is only a continuation, we shall find the writer speaking, at the 19th verse, of "witches and wizards who peep about and mutter," and of people who made application to them; and he preaches and exhorts them against this darksome practice.
It is of this people, and of this darksome practice, or walking in darkness,that he is speaking at the 2d verse of the 9th chapter; and with respect to the light that had shined in upon them, it refers entirely to his own ministry, and to the boldness of it, which opposed itself to that of the witches and wizards who peeped about and muttered.
Isaiah is, upon the whole, a wild disorderly writer, preserving in general no clear chain of perception in the arrangement of his ideas, and consequently producing no defined conclusions from them.
It is the wildness of his style, the confusion of his ideas, and the ranting metaphors he employs, that have afforded so many opportunities to priestcraft in some cases, and to superstition in others, to impose those defects upon the world as prophecies of Jesus Christ.
Finding no direct meaning in them, and not knowing what to make of them, and supposing at the same time they were intended to have a meaning, they supplied the defect by inventing a meaning of their own, and called it his.
I have, however, in this place done Isaiah the justice to rescue him from the claws of Matthew, who has torn him unmercifully to pieces; and from the imposition or ignorance of priests and commentators, by letting Isaiah speak for himself.
If the words walking in darkness, and light breaking in, could in any case be applied prophetically, which they cannot be, they would better apply to the times we now live in than to any other.
The world has "walked in darkness" for eighteen hundred years, both as to religion and government, and it is only since the American Revolution began that light has broken in.
The belief of one God, whose attributes are revealed to us in the book or scripture of the creation, which no human hand can counterfeit or falsify, and not in the written or printed book which, as Matthew has shown, can be altered or falsified by ignorance or design, is now making its way among us: and as to government, the light is already gone forth, and whilst men ought to be careful not to be blinded by the excess of it, as at a certain time in France, when every thing was Robespierrean violence, they ought to reverence, and even to adore it, with all the firmness and perseverance that true wisdom can inspire.
I pass on to the seventh passage, called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew, chap. viii. ver. 16. "When the evening was come, they brought unto him (Jesus) many that were possessed with devils, and he cast out the spirit with his word, and healed all that were sick."
That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias (Isaiah) the prophet, saying, himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.
This affair of people being possessed by devils, and of casting them out, was the fable of the day when the books of the New Testament were written.
It had not existence at any other time.
The books of the old Testament mention no such thing; the people of the present day know of no such thing; nor does the history of any people or country speak of such a thing.
It starts upon us all at once in the book of Matthew, and is altogether an invention of the New Testament-makers and the Christian church.
The book of Matthew is the first book where the word Devil is mentioned.*
We read in some of the books of the Old Testament of things called familiar spirits, the supposed companions of people called witches and wizards.
It was no other than the trick of pretended conjurors to obtain money from credulous and ignorant people, or the fabricated charge of superstitious malignancy against unfortunate and decrepid old age.
* The word devil is a personification of the word evil.
But the idea of a familiar spirit, if we can affix any idea to the term, is exceedingly different to that of being possessed by a devil.
In the one case, the supposed familiar spirit is a dexterous agent, that comes and goes and does as he is bidden; in the other, he is a turbulent roaring monster, that tears and tortures the body into convulsions.
Reader, whoever thou art, put thy trust in thy Creator, make use of the reason he endowed thee with, and cast from thee all such fables.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: THOMAS PAINE, AGE OF REASON
Age of Reason, Part III, Section 1, continued …
The passage alluded to by Matthew, for as a quotation it is false, is in Isaiah, chap. liii. ver. 4, which is as follows:
"Surely he (the person of whom Isaiah is speaking of) hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows."
It is in the preter tense.
Here is nothing about casting out devils, nor curing of sicknesses.
The passage, therefore, so far from being a prophecy of Christ, is not even applicable as a circumstance.
Isaiah, or at least the writer of the book that bears his name, employs the whole of this chapter, the 53d, in lamenting the sufferings of some deceased persons, of whom he speaks very pathetically.
It is a monody on the death of a friend; but he mentions not the name of the person, nor gives any circumstance of him by which he can be personally known; and it is this silence, which is evidence of nothing, that Matthew has laid hold of to put the name of Christ to it; as if the chiefs of the Jews, whose sorrows were then great, and the times they lived in big with danger, were never thinking about their own affairs, nor the fate of their own friends, but were continually running a wild-goose chase into futurity.
To make a monody into a prophecy is an absurdity.
The characters and circumstances of men, even in different ages of the world, are so much alike, that what is said of one may with propriety be said of many; but this fitness does not make the passage into a prophecy; and none but an impostor or a bigot would call it so.
Isaiah, in deploring the hard fate and loss of his friend, mentions nothing of him but what the human lot of man is subject to.
All the cases he states of him, his persecutions, his imprisonment, his patience in suffering, and his perseverance in principle, are all within the line of nature: they belong exclusively to none, and may with justness be said of many.
But if Jesus Christ was the person the church represents him to be, that which would exclusively apply to him, must be something that could not apply to any other person; something beyond the line of nature; something beyond the lot of mortal man; and there are no such expressions in this chapter, nor any other chapter in the Old Testament.
It is no exclusive description to say of a person, as is said of the person Isaiah is lamenting in this chapter.
He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a Lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.
This may be said of thousands of persons, who have suffered oppressions and unjust death with patience, silence, and perfect resignation.
Grotius, whom the bishop esteems a most learned man, and who certainly was so, supposes that the person of whom Isaiah is speaking, is Jeremiah.
Grotius is led into this opinion, from the agreement there is between the description given by Isaiah, and the case of Jeremiah, as stated in the book that bears his name.
If Jeremiah was an innocent man, and not a traitor in the interest of Nebuchadnezzar, when Jerusalem was besieged his case was hard; he was accused by his countrymen, was persecuted, oppressed, and imprisoned, and he says of himself, (see Jeremiah, chap. ii. ver. 19,) "But as for me, I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter."
I should be inclined to the same opinion with Grotius, had Isaiah lived at the time when Jeremiah underwent the cruelties of which he speaks; but Isaiah died about fifty years before; and it is of a person of his own time, whose case Isaiah is lamenting in the chapter in question, and which imposition and bigotry, more than seven hundred years afterwards, perverted into a prophecy of a person they call Jesus Christ.
I pass on to the eighth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew, chap, xii. ver. 14. "Then the Pharisees went out and held a council against him, how they might destroy him — But when Jesus knew it he withdrew himself; and great numbers followed him and he healed them all — and he charged them that they should not make him known; That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias (Isaiah) the prophet, saying, 'Behold my servant whom I have chosen; my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased, I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall show judgment to the Gentiles — he shall not strive nor cry, neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets — a bruised reed shall he not break, and smoaking flax shall he not quench, till he sends forth judgment unto victory — and in his name shall the Gentiles trust.'"
In the first place, this passage hath not the least relation to the purpose for which it is quoted.
Matthew says, that the Pharisees held a council against Jesus to destroy him — that Jesus withdrew himself — that great numbers followed him — that he healed them — and that he charged them they should not make him known.
But the passage Matthew has quoted as being fulfilled by these circumstances, does not so much as apply to any one of them.
It has nothing to do with the Pharisees holding a council to destroy Jesus — with his withdrawing himself — with great numbers following him — with his healing them — nor with his charging them not to make him known.
The purpose for which the passage is quoted, and the passage itself, are as remote from each other, as nothing from something.
But the case is, that people have been so long in the habit of reading the books, called the Bible and Testament, with their eyes shut, and their senses locked up, that the most stupid inconsistencies have passed on them for truth, and imposition for prophecy.
The all-wise Creator has been dishonoured by being made the author of fable, and the human mind degraded by believing it.
In this passage as in that last mentioned, the name of the person of whom the passage speaks is not given, and we are left in the dark respecting him.
It is this defect in the history, that bigotry and imposition have laid hold of, to call it prophecy.
Had Isaiah lived in the time of Cyrus, the passage would descriptively apply to him.
As king of Persia, his authority was great among the Gentiles, and it is of such a character the passage speaks; and his friendship for the Jews whom he liberated from captivity, and who might then be compared to a bruised reed, was extensive.
But this description does not apply to Jesus Christ, who had no authority among the Gentiles; and as to his own countrymen, figuratively described by the bruised reed, it was they who crucified him.
Neither can it be said of him that he did not cry, and that his voice was not heard in the street.
As a preacher it was his business to be heard, and we are told that he travelled about the country for that purpose.
Matthew has given a long sermon, which (if his authority is good, but which is much to he doubted since he imposes so much,) Jesus preached to a multitude upon a mountain, and it would be a quibble to say that a mountain is not a street, since it is a place equally as public.
The last verse in the passage (the 4th) as it stands in Isaiah, and which Matthew has not quoted, says, "He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth and the isles shall wait for his law."
This also applies to Cyrus.
He was not discouraged, he did not fail, he conquered all Babylon, liberated the Jews, and established laws.
But this cannot be said of Jesus Christ, who in the passage before us, according to Matthew, withdrew himself for fear of the Pharisees, and charged the people that followed him not to make it known where he was; and who, according to other parts of the Testament, was continually moving from place to place to avoid being apprehended.*
* In the second part of the Age of Reason, I have shown that the book ascribed to Isaiah is not only miscellaneous as to matter, but as to authorship; that there are parts in it which could not be written by Isaiah, because they speak of things one hundred and fifty years after he was dead.
The instance I have given of this, in that work, corresponds with the subject I am upon, at least a tittle better than Matthew's introduction and his quotation.
Isaiah lived, the latter part of his life, in the time of Hezekiah, and it was about one hundred and fifty years, from the death of Hezekiah to the first year of the reign of Cyrus, when Cyrus published a proclamation, which is given in the first chapter of the book of Ezra, for the return of the Jews to Jerusalem.
It cannot be doubted, at least it ought not to be doubted, that the Jews would feel an affectionate gratitude for this act of benevolent Justice, and it is natural they would express that gratitude in the customary style, bombastical and hyperbolical as it was, which they used on extraordinary occasions, and which was, and still is in practice with all the eastern nations.
The instance to which I refer, and which is given in the second part of the Age of Reason, is the last verse of the 14th chapter, and the beginning of the 45th — in these words: "That saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem thou shall be built, and to the Temple, thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut."
This complementary address is in the present tense, which shows that the things of which it speaks were in existence at the time of writing it; and consequently that the author must have been at least one hundred and fifty years later than Isaiah, and that the book which bears his name is a compilation.
The Proverbs called Solomon's, and the Psalms called David's, are of the same kind.
The two last verses of the second book of Chronicles, and the three first verses of the first chapter of Ezra, are word for word the same; which show that the compilers of the Bible mixed the writings of different authors together, and put them under some common head.
As we have here an instance in the 44th and 45th chapters of the introduction of the name of Cyrus into a book to which it cannot belong, it affords good ground to conclude, that the passage in the 42d chapter, in which the character of Cyrus is given without his name, has been introduced in like manner, and that the person there spoken of is Cyrus.
But it is immaterial to us, at this distance of time, to know who the person was: it is sufficient to the purpose I am upon, that of detecting fraud and falsehood, to know who it was not, and to show it was not the person called Jesus Christ.
I pass on to the ninth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew, chap. xxi. v. 1. "And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethpage, unto the mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying unto them, go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her, loose them and bring them unto me — and if any man say ought to you, ye shall say, the Lord hath need of them, and straitway he will send them."
"All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Sion, behold thy king cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass."
Poor ass!
Let it be some consolation amidst all thy sufferings, that if the heathen world erected a bear into a constellation, the Christian world has elevated thee into a prophecy.
This passage is in Zechariah, chap. ix. ver 9, and is one of the whims of friend Zechariah to congratulate his countrymen, who were then returning from captivity in Babylon, and himself with them, to Jerusalem.
It has no concern with any other subject.
It is strange that apostles, priests, and commentators, never permit, or never suppose, the Jews to be speaking of their own affairs.
Every thing in the Jewish books is perverted and distorted into meanings never intended by the writers.
Even the poor ass must not be a Jew-ass but a Christian-ass.
I wonder they did not make an apostle of him, or a bishop, or at least make him speak and prophecy.
He could have lifted up his voice as loud as any of them.
Zechariah, in the first chapter of his book, indulges himself in several whims on the joy of getting back to Jerusalem.
He says at the 8th verse, "I saw by night (Zechariah was a sharp-sighted seer) and behold a man setting on a red horse, (yes, reader, a red horse,) and he stood among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom, and behind him were red horses speckled and white."
He says nothing about green horses, nor blue horses, perhaps because it is difficult to distinguish green from blue by night, but a Christian can have no doubt they were there, because "faith is the evidence of things not seen."
Zechariah then introduces an angel among his horses, but he does not tell us what colour the angel was of, whether black or white, nor whether he came to buy horses, or only to look at them as curiosities, for certainly they were of that kind.
Be this however as it may, he enters into conversation with this angel, on the joyful affair of getting back to Jerusalem, and he saith at the 16th verse, "Therefore, thus saith the Lord, I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies; my house shall be built in it saith the Lord of hosts, and a line shall be stretched forth upon Jerusalem."
An expression signifying the rebuilding the city.
All this, whimsical and imaginary as it is, sufficiently proves that it was the entry of the Jews into Jerusalem from captivity, and not the entry of Jesus Christ, seven hundred years afterwards, that is the subject upon which Zechariah is always speaking.
As to the expression of riding upon an ass, which commentators represent as a sign of humility in Jesus Christ, the case is, he never was so well mounted before.
The asses of those countries are large and well-proportioned, and were anciently the chief of riding animals.
Their beasts of burden, and which served also for the conveyance of the poor, were camels and dromedaries.
We read in judges, chap. x. ver. 4, that "Jair, (one of the Judges of Israel,) had thirty sons that rode on thirty ass-colts, and they had thirty cities."
But commentators distort every thing.
There is besides very reasonable grounds to conclude that this story of Jesus riding publicly into Jerusalem, accompanied, as it is said at the 8th and 9th verses, by a great multitude, shouting and rejoicing, and spreading their garments by the way, is altogether a story destitute of truth.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
The passage alluded to by Matthew, for as a quotation it is false, is in Isaiah, chap. liii. ver. 4, which is as follows:
"Surely he (the person of whom Isaiah is speaking of) hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows."
It is in the preter tense.
Here is nothing about casting out devils, nor curing of sicknesses.
The passage, therefore, so far from being a prophecy of Christ, is not even applicable as a circumstance.
Isaiah, or at least the writer of the book that bears his name, employs the whole of this chapter, the 53d, in lamenting the sufferings of some deceased persons, of whom he speaks very pathetically.
It is a monody on the death of a friend; but he mentions not the name of the person, nor gives any circumstance of him by which he can be personally known; and it is this silence, which is evidence of nothing, that Matthew has laid hold of to put the name of Christ to it; as if the chiefs of the Jews, whose sorrows were then great, and the times they lived in big with danger, were never thinking about their own affairs, nor the fate of their own friends, but were continually running a wild-goose chase into futurity.
To make a monody into a prophecy is an absurdity.
The characters and circumstances of men, even in different ages of the world, are so much alike, that what is said of one may with propriety be said of many; but this fitness does not make the passage into a prophecy; and none but an impostor or a bigot would call it so.
Isaiah, in deploring the hard fate and loss of his friend, mentions nothing of him but what the human lot of man is subject to.
All the cases he states of him, his persecutions, his imprisonment, his patience in suffering, and his perseverance in principle, are all within the line of nature: they belong exclusively to none, and may with justness be said of many.
But if Jesus Christ was the person the church represents him to be, that which would exclusively apply to him, must be something that could not apply to any other person; something beyond the line of nature; something beyond the lot of mortal man; and there are no such expressions in this chapter, nor any other chapter in the Old Testament.
It is no exclusive description to say of a person, as is said of the person Isaiah is lamenting in this chapter.
He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a Lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.
This may be said of thousands of persons, who have suffered oppressions and unjust death with patience, silence, and perfect resignation.
Grotius, whom the bishop esteems a most learned man, and who certainly was so, supposes that the person of whom Isaiah is speaking, is Jeremiah.
Grotius is led into this opinion, from the agreement there is between the description given by Isaiah, and the case of Jeremiah, as stated in the book that bears his name.
If Jeremiah was an innocent man, and not a traitor in the interest of Nebuchadnezzar, when Jerusalem was besieged his case was hard; he was accused by his countrymen, was persecuted, oppressed, and imprisoned, and he says of himself, (see Jeremiah, chap. ii. ver. 19,) "But as for me, I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter."
I should be inclined to the same opinion with Grotius, had Isaiah lived at the time when Jeremiah underwent the cruelties of which he speaks; but Isaiah died about fifty years before; and it is of a person of his own time, whose case Isaiah is lamenting in the chapter in question, and which imposition and bigotry, more than seven hundred years afterwards, perverted into a prophecy of a person they call Jesus Christ.
I pass on to the eighth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew, chap, xii. ver. 14. "Then the Pharisees went out and held a council against him, how they might destroy him — But when Jesus knew it he withdrew himself; and great numbers followed him and he healed them all — and he charged them that they should not make him known; That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias (Isaiah) the prophet, saying, 'Behold my servant whom I have chosen; my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased, I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall show judgment to the Gentiles — he shall not strive nor cry, neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets — a bruised reed shall he not break, and smoaking flax shall he not quench, till he sends forth judgment unto victory — and in his name shall the Gentiles trust.'"
In the first place, this passage hath not the least relation to the purpose for which it is quoted.
Matthew says, that the Pharisees held a council against Jesus to destroy him — that Jesus withdrew himself — that great numbers followed him — that he healed them — and that he charged them they should not make him known.
But the passage Matthew has quoted as being fulfilled by these circumstances, does not so much as apply to any one of them.
It has nothing to do with the Pharisees holding a council to destroy Jesus — with his withdrawing himself — with great numbers following him — with his healing them — nor with his charging them not to make him known.
The purpose for which the passage is quoted, and the passage itself, are as remote from each other, as nothing from something.
But the case is, that people have been so long in the habit of reading the books, called the Bible and Testament, with their eyes shut, and their senses locked up, that the most stupid inconsistencies have passed on them for truth, and imposition for prophecy.
The all-wise Creator has been dishonoured by being made the author of fable, and the human mind degraded by believing it.
In this passage as in that last mentioned, the name of the person of whom the passage speaks is not given, and we are left in the dark respecting him.
It is this defect in the history, that bigotry and imposition have laid hold of, to call it prophecy.
Had Isaiah lived in the time of Cyrus, the passage would descriptively apply to him.
As king of Persia, his authority was great among the Gentiles, and it is of such a character the passage speaks; and his friendship for the Jews whom he liberated from captivity, and who might then be compared to a bruised reed, was extensive.
But this description does not apply to Jesus Christ, who had no authority among the Gentiles; and as to his own countrymen, figuratively described by the bruised reed, it was they who crucified him.
Neither can it be said of him that he did not cry, and that his voice was not heard in the street.
As a preacher it was his business to be heard, and we are told that he travelled about the country for that purpose.
Matthew has given a long sermon, which (if his authority is good, but which is much to he doubted since he imposes so much,) Jesus preached to a multitude upon a mountain, and it would be a quibble to say that a mountain is not a street, since it is a place equally as public.
The last verse in the passage (the 4th) as it stands in Isaiah, and which Matthew has not quoted, says, "He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth and the isles shall wait for his law."
This also applies to Cyrus.
He was not discouraged, he did not fail, he conquered all Babylon, liberated the Jews, and established laws.
But this cannot be said of Jesus Christ, who in the passage before us, according to Matthew, withdrew himself for fear of the Pharisees, and charged the people that followed him not to make it known where he was; and who, according to other parts of the Testament, was continually moving from place to place to avoid being apprehended.*
* In the second part of the Age of Reason, I have shown that the book ascribed to Isaiah is not only miscellaneous as to matter, but as to authorship; that there are parts in it which could not be written by Isaiah, because they speak of things one hundred and fifty years after he was dead.
The instance I have given of this, in that work, corresponds with the subject I am upon, at least a tittle better than Matthew's introduction and his quotation.
Isaiah lived, the latter part of his life, in the time of Hezekiah, and it was about one hundred and fifty years, from the death of Hezekiah to the first year of the reign of Cyrus, when Cyrus published a proclamation, which is given in the first chapter of the book of Ezra, for the return of the Jews to Jerusalem.
It cannot be doubted, at least it ought not to be doubted, that the Jews would feel an affectionate gratitude for this act of benevolent Justice, and it is natural they would express that gratitude in the customary style, bombastical and hyperbolical as it was, which they used on extraordinary occasions, and which was, and still is in practice with all the eastern nations.
The instance to which I refer, and which is given in the second part of the Age of Reason, is the last verse of the 14th chapter, and the beginning of the 45th — in these words: "That saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem thou shall be built, and to the Temple, thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut."
This complementary address is in the present tense, which shows that the things of which it speaks were in existence at the time of writing it; and consequently that the author must have been at least one hundred and fifty years later than Isaiah, and that the book which bears his name is a compilation.
The Proverbs called Solomon's, and the Psalms called David's, are of the same kind.
The two last verses of the second book of Chronicles, and the three first verses of the first chapter of Ezra, are word for word the same; which show that the compilers of the Bible mixed the writings of different authors together, and put them under some common head.
As we have here an instance in the 44th and 45th chapters of the introduction of the name of Cyrus into a book to which it cannot belong, it affords good ground to conclude, that the passage in the 42d chapter, in which the character of Cyrus is given without his name, has been introduced in like manner, and that the person there spoken of is Cyrus.
But it is immaterial to us, at this distance of time, to know who the person was: it is sufficient to the purpose I am upon, that of detecting fraud and falsehood, to know who it was not, and to show it was not the person called Jesus Christ.
I pass on to the ninth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew, chap. xxi. v. 1. "And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethpage, unto the mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying unto them, go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her, loose them and bring them unto me — and if any man say ought to you, ye shall say, the Lord hath need of them, and straitway he will send them."
"All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Sion, behold thy king cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass."
Poor ass!
Let it be some consolation amidst all thy sufferings, that if the heathen world erected a bear into a constellation, the Christian world has elevated thee into a prophecy.
This passage is in Zechariah, chap. ix. ver 9, and is one of the whims of friend Zechariah to congratulate his countrymen, who were then returning from captivity in Babylon, and himself with them, to Jerusalem.
It has no concern with any other subject.
It is strange that apostles, priests, and commentators, never permit, or never suppose, the Jews to be speaking of their own affairs.
Every thing in the Jewish books is perverted and distorted into meanings never intended by the writers.
Even the poor ass must not be a Jew-ass but a Christian-ass.
I wonder they did not make an apostle of him, or a bishop, or at least make him speak and prophecy.
He could have lifted up his voice as loud as any of them.
Zechariah, in the first chapter of his book, indulges himself in several whims on the joy of getting back to Jerusalem.
He says at the 8th verse, "I saw by night (Zechariah was a sharp-sighted seer) and behold a man setting on a red horse, (yes, reader, a red horse,) and he stood among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom, and behind him were red horses speckled and white."
He says nothing about green horses, nor blue horses, perhaps because it is difficult to distinguish green from blue by night, but a Christian can have no doubt they were there, because "faith is the evidence of things not seen."
Zechariah then introduces an angel among his horses, but he does not tell us what colour the angel was of, whether black or white, nor whether he came to buy horses, or only to look at them as curiosities, for certainly they were of that kind.
Be this however as it may, he enters into conversation with this angel, on the joyful affair of getting back to Jerusalem, and he saith at the 16th verse, "Therefore, thus saith the Lord, I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies; my house shall be built in it saith the Lord of hosts, and a line shall be stretched forth upon Jerusalem."
An expression signifying the rebuilding the city.
All this, whimsical and imaginary as it is, sufficiently proves that it was the entry of the Jews into Jerusalem from captivity, and not the entry of Jesus Christ, seven hundred years afterwards, that is the subject upon which Zechariah is always speaking.
As to the expression of riding upon an ass, which commentators represent as a sign of humility in Jesus Christ, the case is, he never was so well mounted before.
The asses of those countries are large and well-proportioned, and were anciently the chief of riding animals.
Their beasts of burden, and which served also for the conveyance of the poor, were camels and dromedaries.
We read in judges, chap. x. ver. 4, that "Jair, (one of the Judges of Israel,) had thirty sons that rode on thirty ass-colts, and they had thirty cities."
But commentators distort every thing.
There is besides very reasonable grounds to conclude that this story of Jesus riding publicly into Jerusalem, accompanied, as it is said at the 8th and 9th verses, by a great multitude, shouting and rejoicing, and spreading their garments by the way, is altogether a story destitute of truth.
TO BE CONTINUED ...