But since you acknowledge all executed scamps to be gods, are there not many that have died game, and shown as much courage as he?

It is for this reason, you will tell me, that we believe him to be the Son of God, because he cured the lame and blind, and raised the dead to life. And so you seriously believe that he did all these things?*

O light and truth, that is a good one; so he tells, with his own mouth, and confesses it himself, as your own writings received among you acknowledge, that there will come to you other good-for-nothing fellows of jugglers, with other conjuring hocus pocus tricks of just the same sort, and he calls every one a devil that practises such arts: and he himself does not deny that there is nothing of a supernatural power or agency in these performances, and that they are only the exhibitions of idle vagabonds; and as murder will out, he lets the cat out of the bag, and discovers the impositions of himself and others. Is not this a most wretched way of talking, and enough to put any body in a passion, that from precisely the same performances, the one should be held to be a god, and the rest conjurors? You see he has confessed that these tricks are not the indications of supernatural agency, or of a super-human nature, but of worthless and wicked men. For why, if we form an opinion from these performances, should we deem those others to be bad men, and not him too, even by his own avowal? What has brought you over to believe in him? is it because he foretold that he should rise again after he was dead ? Well, come now, admitting that this was foretold by him, yet how many others have employed deceptious arts, and conjuring tricks to impose upon a foolish audience? Zamolxis, a slave of Pythagoras, among the Scythians; and Pythagoras himself, in Italy; and Rampsinitus, in Egypt, who is even said to have played at dice with Ceres in the infernal regions, and to have brought back a golden bracelet as a present from her: such travellers to the shades below were Orpheus, among the Odrysæ, Protesilaus, among the Thessalians; Hercules and Theseus, in Tenarus. But this ought to be submitted to examination, whether any man that was really dead ever did rise with his body; unless you hold that every story of this kind, told by foreigners, is a fiction, but that your own catastrophe of a man breathing his last with a loud and strong voice on the cross, and the earthquake and the darkness were very pretty, and credible; then he, who when he was alive was not able to help and extricate himself, when he came to life a second time, showed the marks of his punishment, his hands just as they had been pierced through; and this was seen by a mad woman, as you yourselves confess, and some one besides, who was a practiser of that conjuring nonsense, or else, that was a dreamer, and of a propensity to be deluded by such sort of spectres, or rather some man who wished to astonish others with such prodigies, and to furnish to other conjurors a subject to tell lies about.§

If Jesus had really been in earnest to make it known that he possessed the power of a God, he ought to have shewn himself to those who had insulted him, and to the judge himself who pronounced sentence of death on him, and in short to all the rest. Of course, he could have nothing to fear any longer from any body, in the first place, because he had died once; and in the next place, he was now a God as you pretend: and to be sure, he could not have been sent on purpose to keep himself out of view and unseen: or if to be unseen was with a design to make his godhead evident, he ought to have disappeared from the cross in an instant.||

*B. 2, p. 87. + The Greek is, "O phos kae aletheia."-O light and truth ! + Ibid. p. 69. § Ibid. v. 94. || Ibid. p. 102.

What the plague could possess him, that he should not choose to disappear before he was crucified; and so have saved himself from crucifixion, instead of delaying his disappearance till afterwards?

Who ever, that was sent as a messenger, at the time when he ought to be delivering his message, sought a place to conceal himself?

When he was in the body, he obtruded his preaching upon every body, and yet nobody believed him; and now, when there was a fine opportu nity to obtain belief, because he had risen from the dead, he only just shows himself in private to one silly woman and to his own companions.

If he wished to be concealed, why was there a voice heard from heaven declaring, that he was the Son of God: and on the other hand, if he did not wish to be concealed, why did he suffer a capital infliction and die?

I have brought forward these arguments, drawn from your own books, and I need not seek elsewhere for proofs; for you are pierced with your

own weapons.

Lord bless us! what God ever came down from heaven, and yet could not obtain belief: and especially as his arrival was expected? And what could be the reason that he should not be recognized even though he was expected †?

Your Jesus has a way of threatening and blackguarding people, and is unmindful of decorum, when he bawls out God damn you [woe unto you] and I insist upon it; because he is not able to convince by argument: which is so far from being worthy of a God, that it is hardly language fit for a man of a tolerable understanding.

And did Jesus come down from heaven on purpose, that we might incur the charge of not having believed in him? An absurd idea.

And we may conclude that he was merely a man, and such a one as words and circumstances point him out to have been ‡.

The Christians and Jews contend foolishly with one another; and their dispute about the Christ strongly resembles the well-known contention about the ass's shadow: and this question has nothing in it that deserves serious attention: both parties believe that prophets foretold by divine inspiration that a saviour of mankind was to come; but they disagree about whether he that is described has already come or not.

The Jews originated from the Egyptians, and were a part of that nation. And having on some occasion risen in insurrection, they emigrated from Egypt, and came to a determination to treat the Egyptian religious rites with contempt. The same treatment that they offered to the Egyptians, they met with in their turn from those who went over from them to Jesus and held the belief that he is the Christ. The origin of each of their innovated religions was a sedition and a falling off §. If all people were willing to become christians, these religionists would not allow it. For, at the first institution of their culte, when they were few in number, they lived in harmony; but when, from a great accession to their numbers, they became dispersed in various places, they were divided and subdivided, and they all like to belong to some separate party: and this is a point of common agreement among all of them.

After they had spread far, they divided themselves repeatedly, and invented some pretence for separation, and cast blame upon each other; insomuch that nothing remained in common to them but the name: that they all retained for shame's sake; but their institutions were totally different in all other respects.

Their general institution is the more wonderful, inasmuch as it collected

p. 101.

+ B. 2, p. 106.

p. 110.

B. 3, p. 11.

itself from a beginning of the most trifling kind, if it were not that separation, with the consolatory pride of peculiarity, and the apprehension from those of a contrary sentiment, knitted them together in the close bonds of sectarian affiance. Their pastors attracted the common people to them by ingenious contrivances and unfounded terrors. Far be it from me, or any other mortal, to give credit to such an opinion as is held by these religionists, in regard to the punishments of the wicked and the rewards of the righteous. For they frame over again, in an altered shape, the ancient fables taken in a different sense, and stun people with these as with the noises of the priests of Cybele. To those who are skilled in the interpretation of mysteries, they give out that their sacred rites have allusion to real truths *.

All men versed in science and philosophy are excluded from the faith; none are admitted but the insane and those who have the mind and dispo sition of slaves: they foolishly laugh at the Egyptians, although these latter communicate important truths under an enigmatical form, as for example, the understanding of eternal ideas; not teaching, as is commonly supposed, the worship of short-lived brute animals; whereas the followers of Jesus, in their narratives respecting that man, introduce nothing more entitled to veneration, than are the Egyptian goats and dogs.

Castor and Pollux, Hercules, Esculapius, and Bacchus, from being men, were elevated to the rank of gods, as the Greeks think: but Jesus's followers will not allow them to be accounted gods; because they were formerly men though they excelled others and deserved well of mankind; yet these religionists maintain that Jesus, who was capitally executed, was afterwards seen by his companions.t

There was quite as good reason to account Aristeus a god: for this Aristeus, the Proconnesian, who was exempted from the condition and lot of men, in so divine a manner, and shewed himself to be seen again manifestly; who, after he had for a long while travelled about to various parts of the world, brought back an account of the most wonderful things, even after Apollo had commanded that he should be worshipped by the Metapontines, with a threat in case of non-compliance, yet nobody now thinks him to be a god. ‡

Abaris, the Hyperborean, is not held to be a god by any body, though his strength was so great, that he was carried along in the air by an arrow, that he had shot from a bow.

Do not some people say of Hermotinus, the Clazomenian, that his soul often left his body and wandered about naked? yet even he has not been classed among the gods. §

Cleomedes also, the Astipalean, got into a chest and held the lid fast within side, and yet was not found within it; but by some supernatural assistance had flown away; when his enemies wishing to take the man broke the chest. ||

And there are many more examples that any body might adduce.

These Jesuans, who worship a man apprehended and executed, do the same as the Getæ, who worship Zamolxis; and as the Cilicians who worship Mopsus; and as the Acarnanians who worship Amphilochus; and as the Thebans who worship Amphiaraus; and the Lebadians who worship Trophonius.

I may name also the loves of Adrian towards the young man Antinous ; and the divine honors that were paid him at Antinoupolis, a town of

Egypt, named after him: he also had his miracles as well as Jesus; and the worship offered to him resembles that to Jesus; and the people of that town would not endure to have Apollo or Jupiter compared to him.

But what reasonableness is there in a persuasion that is founded on prejudice? an esteem for Jesus has pre-occupied the minds of these people, to the total exclusion and rejection of every thing that can be advanced to his discredit or disparagement; and they will maintain that Jesus was a god though his body was mortal; and they regard it as an act of piety to think so.

If they will have it, that he laid aside weaknesses and imperfections, and then became a god; why should we not the rather say the same of Esculapius, and Bacchus, and Hercules?

The Jesuans deride the worshippers of Jupiter, because his tomb is shown by the Cretans; nevertheless, they themselves worship a man, who died and was buried, and whose resurrection from the dead is a mere fable. †

No man well educated, no man of science, and no man of sound understanding becomes a convert to the faith of Jesus; for these are regarded among them as bad qualities; but if any one is unlearned, or silly, or young and inexperienced, he is at full liberty to join them. For only such are worthy of their god and they declare openly, that none but the silly and idiots, and the ignoble, and slaves, and foolish women and children, could either be willing or able to become converts. But I wish to ask those religionists, what harm is it to be learned, or well educated, or to have a sound and acute understanding: what hindrance do these qualities oppose to acquiring a knowledge of God? are they not helps to the acquisition of truths?

We see that those vagabonds that frequent markets and fairs give out such things as are boasted of among the common people, not among assemblies of the sensible; for that they dare not do: but wherever they see a crowd of youngsters and foolish people, there they display their eloquence.‡

You may see the preachers of Jesuism, who are low mechanics, such as weavers, shoemakers, and fullers, all of the most illiterate and clownish description, do not venture to utter any thing in the presence of people of mature age and fathers of families; but when they have gotten apart their stripling sons and ignorant women, they will discourse with them about wonderful things, that their parents and tutors are not to hear of; but they are to believe them themselves, for their parents and tutors, say they, are insane and deluded, and neither know nor can practise any thing that is good, taken up as they are with attention to useless trifles. But Jesus's preachers on the other hand alone know the method of living in the best manner, and if the boys hear them, they will be happy, and their whole family on their account. But if in the mean time, they see any of the more prudent tutors or the father himself coming, then, if they are of the more timid sort, they are frightened; but if they are of the fiercer sort, they advise the boys to throw off the reins: whispering that just at present they neither will or dare say any thing that is good, for fear of the caprice and savageness of the father and tutor, who are in every respect depraved and thoroughly abandoned to wickedness, and who would punish those that give good advice; but if the boys wish to learn any thing, they must slip away from their fathers and tutors, and come with young women and boys, their play-mates, into the women's apartments, or the shoemakers' or fullers' shop, that they may attain, to perfection, by complying with useful injunctions.§

+ p. 148.

§ p. 145.

sepa

itself from a beginning of the most trifling kind, if it were not that ration, with the consolatory pride of peculiarity, and the apprehension from those of a contrary sentiment, knitted them together in the close bonds of sectarian affiance. Their pastors attracted the common people to them by ingenious contrivances and unfounded terrors. Far be it from me, or any other mortal, to give credit to such an opinion as is held by these religionists, in regard to the punishments of the wicked and the rewards of the righteous. For they frame over again, in an altered shape, the ancient fables taken in a different sense, and stun people with these as with the noises of the priests of Cybele. To those who are skilled in the interpretation of mysteries, they give out that their sacred rites have allusion to real truths *.

All men versed in science and philosophy are excluded from the faith; none are admitted but the insane and those who have the mind and disposition of slaves: they foolishly laugh at the Egyptians, although these latter communicate important truths under an enigmatical form, as for example, the understanding of eternal ideas; not teaching, as is commonly supposed, the worship of short-lived brute animals; whereas the followers of Jesus, in their narratives respecting that man, introduce nothing more entitled to veneration, than are the Egyptian goats and dogs.

Castor and Pollux, Hercules, Esculapius, and Bacchus, from being men, were elevated to the rank of gods, as the Greeks think: but Jesus's followers will not allow them to be accounted gods; because they were formerly men though they excelled others and deserved well of mankind; yet these religionists maintain that Jesus, who was capitally executed, was afterwards seen by his companions.†

There was quite as good reason to account Aristeus a god: for this Aristeus, the Proconnesian, who was exempted from the condition and lot of men, in so divine a manner, and shewed himself to be seen again manifestly; who, after he had for a long while travelled about to various parts of the world, brought back an account of the most wonderful things, even after Apollo had commanded that he should be worshipped by the Metapontines, with a threat in case of non-compliance, yet nobody now thinks him to be a god.

Abaris, the Hyperborean, is not held to be a god by any body, though his strength was so great, that he was carried along in the air by an arrow, that he had shot from a bow.

Do not some people say of Hermotinus, the Clazomenian, that his soul often left his body and wandered about naked? yet even he has not been classed among the gods. §

Cleomedes also, the Astipalean, got into a chest and held the lid fast within side, and yet was not found within it; but by some supernatural assistance had flown away; when his enemies wishing to take the man broke the chest. ||

And there are many more examples that any body might adduce.

These Jesuans, who worship a man apprehended and executed, do the same as the Getæ, who worship Zamolxis; and as the Cilicians who worship Mopsus; and as the Acarnanians who worship Amphilochus ; and as the Thebans who worship Amphiaraus; and the Lebadians who worship Trophonius.

I may name also the loves of Adrian towards the young man Antinous ; and the divine honors that were paid him at Antinoupolis, a town of