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.§ * B. 3, p. 135. + p. 137. + p. 148. § p. 145. That I am not accusing them with more severity than the truth requires, may be collected from this, that when men are to be initiated at other mysteries, cryers make proclamation, promising sacred rites that will cleanse the conscience, and this is the subject and import of their proclamation, whoever is of pure hands and discreet language. And again in a varied phraseology, whoever is free from all crime, and whoever has a soul unconscious of any wickedness, and whoever has lived a good and honest life. Now, on the other hand, let us hear what is the proclamation among the adherents of Jesus; whoever is a sinner, whoever is foolish, whoever is childish, in short, whoever is a wretch, the kingdom of God will admit him. By mentioning sinners, are not you followers of Jesus inviting the knave, the robber, the poisoner, the pillagers of temples, house-breakers, and plunderers of tombs? If any one was collecting a gang to go on a freebooters' robbery, what other sort of men would he draw together? This is the way that Jesuism reprobates an honest pride, and with it of necessity honesty itself. If a knavish, dishonest man humbles himself suitably to the wretchedness of his morality, he is received by God into favour: but, on the contrary, the honest man, who embraceth probity from the first, and has persevered inflexibly in that course, if he but lift his eyes to him, he is rejected. up Whereas men, who preside laudably in a court of justice, forbid the guilty to give way in their presence, to wailings and lamentations, lest they should pronounce sentence more consonant with their sympathy and compassion, than with the rule of truth and equity: now God, on the other hand, in judging, is more moved by flatteries than by regard for the truth t But it is clearly evident, that vices that are innate, and confirmed by habit, are with difficulty eradicated even by chastisement, and still less by pitying them; for it is not an easy task to thoroughly change nature; but those who never sin in any respect are partakers of a better life. Like as some men are overcome by compassion, in the same manner, say the Jesuans, God, overpowered by his pity, encourages the wicked, but on the other hand, he spurns the upright from him.§ The Jesuans affirm, that the men of science and literature dislike their doctrine, being deceived by their own knowledge. This is a doctrine, in short, that is upon the look out for boobies.|| The Jesuan teachers are like the ignorant quack-doctor, who promises that his patient will recover, but charges him with threats not to consult physicians of eminence, lest his own want of skill should be discovered. I will take care of your health alone, says he, physicians warrant the recovery of their patients, but ruin their constitution. The Jesuan teachers are like a drunken man, who, in a company of drunkards, accuses the sober of drunkenness. These things are deserving of blame, as are others of that sort, that I may not go through the whole of them: nay, they even speak evil of God, by enticing men with a vain hope, by instructing men to despise good conduct, as if it were better to reject that course. BOOK IV. As for what both Jews and Jesuans maintain, the former that a God, or else a son of God, is to come down to the earth, and the latter that he + P. 149. P. 151. P. 147. P. 155. Physicians who have gone through a regular education, or who are educated according to established rules. § P. 154. ** P. 158. has come already, to rescue men living upon it, such an opinion is altogether so unfit, that it does not require many words to disprove it. Did not God know every thing? Did not he know the evils of mankind ? He did, you must admit, know of them: but he did not remove them; and was not able to remove them, even by a divine power. So then it was not practicable to remove these evils, even by a divine power, unless some person was born for that purpose. How could his birth contribute any thing towards it, if a divine power was inadequate? So the imbecility of infancy, it seems, was more efficacious than a divine power, according to the Jesuans. These religionists, both Jews and Jesuans, will have it, that God was to come down and reside among men; then, of course, he must abandon his throne. This is strange; for if he were to make but a small alteration, every thing would rush into confusion. The votaries of those two religions would persuade us, that God was not well enough known to man, and that it appeared to him to be a loss, and he wished also to make a trial of who would believe that it was him, and who would not, as that was of so much consequence to him, so that he is just like a man newly come into the possession of great affluence, and who likes to make a display of it; thus they give to him the ambition of a man, and make him God no longer. Oh now, I apprehend them, it was not any benefit to God, to be known by men, he wished to be known for our preservation, so that those who discovered who it was and received him in his true character were to be held to be the good people and were to obtain salvation; but those who had no suspicion that it was he and treated him with contempt and slight, they were to be reckoned the bad people and were to suffer punishment. And so, at length, after so many ages, God recollected the propriety of doing something for the improvement of man, that had not struck him before, throughout so long a period +. It is manifest, that, in these things, they speak of God, neither religiously nor rationally. There is nothing new or wonderful in what they say about a deluge and a conflagration. They collect no information from the Greeks on that head: nay, they are of such contracted minds and are so much the slaves of prejudice, that they will not pay attention to the Greeks, who could have told them, that, after long periods of time and many revolutions and conjunctions of the heavenly bodies, there happen conflagrations and deluges; that as the last of these momentous events was a deluge, the same that happened in the time of Deucalion, the next is to be a conflagration: and this is the reason, that, through mistake, they say that God is to come down with fire and to act the part of Jack Ketch‡. Let us go over our ground again and enter more at large into the subject. But nothing new will be adduced, and only what has been already admitted by every body. God is good, beautiful, happy and of the most pleasing and excellent form: if he comes down among mankind, he must be changed; and he will be changed from good to bad, from beautiful to ugly, from happy to wretched, and from being perfectly moral to be a downright scoundrel. Who would wish himself to be changed in such a way as that? Certainly, this kind of change is more suitable to a mortal man: but it is the property of an immortal being, to continue always the same. Therefore God could never undergo such a change§. Either God is really changed, as these religionists think, into a mortal body, which we have already shewn to be impossible; or he is not in P. 163. + p. 165. + p. 167. § 169. reality changed, but causes those who see him to think that he is changed, and imposes upon them by a lie. Now deception and falsehood are on other occasions bad, and then only are they of use when they are employed for a remedy to friends that are afflicted with some disease, or have contracted some vicious habit, or are mad, or whenever by means of them we elude danger from enemies. But no vicious or insane person is beloved by God, and he fears nobody so as to have need of deceit to escape from danger.. The Jews give their reasons on the one side, why they think that the Christ has not yet come; but they expect that he will arrive hereafter: the Jesuans on the other side maintain that the Son of God has already come and led the life of a man. The Jews say, that as life is filled with all sorts of vices, it has need that some one be sent by God to punish the wicked and rectify every thing in the same manner as was formerly done at the deluge; and the Jesuans admit all this; because they have added more of their own to it. The overthrow of the tower of Babel is a tale like that of the deluge. This story of the tower is nothing but the fable of the sons of Aloeus spoilt by Moses's clumsy way of telling it. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha is the fable of Phaeton hashed up t. In addition to this Jewish trumpery, the Jesuans must needs put in some of their own, as how that the Son of God has already come on account of the sins of the Jews, and as how on account of their hanging Jesus on a gallows, and his gulping down some gall by mistake, God was put in a passion. The Jews and Jesuans are like a troop of bats or ants issuing out of their holes, or like sanhedrims of frogs croaking in a marsh, or like worms collecting in assemblies, in their native mud, and disputing with one another about which of them is most defiled with sin, and saying that God indicates and foretells to them every thing that is to happen, and that he relinquishes the case of the whole world, and of the heavenly revolutions, and of the widely extended earth, that he may devote all his attention to the government of them alone, that he is perpetually upon treaty with them by means of diplomatists sent backwards and forwards. And these worms say, he is God to be sure, and we are next to him, and we are made by him in all respects like God, all things are subject to us, the earth, the water, the air, the stars, all things are created on our account, that they may be subservient to our use. Now, since some of us sin, God will come or will send his Son to consume the wicked, and the rest of us will enjoy eternal life with him. It would be less trying to patience, that such things should be said by worms and frogs, than by the Jews and Jesuans disputing with one another. The Jews are Egyptians who have left their original country, and are not remarkable for any exploits, nor have they been held in esteem for excellency in any way, nor have these favourites of God performed any thing memorable. Unlearned Jews, in a corner of Palestine, who had never heard that Hesiod, and other men of abilities had treated on that subject, laid their heads together, and composed an incredible and badly-told story of a certain man, formed by the hands of God, who puffed breath up the man's nose, and concerning a woman made out of his side, and certain injunc tions given by God, and a snake that was their enemy, and that the snake had more influence with them than God's precepts had an old woman's * B. 2, p. 171. + Ibid. P. 174. Ibid. p. 175. crazy invention, for it cannot, without the utmost impiety, be said that God was weak from the first, and that he had no authority with the man who was formed by him. So God blew into his face, and the man became a living soul. Add to these fictions, the deluge and the nonsensical ark, that held every thing in it, and the dove and crow that were sent as messengers, which show that these stories were altered much for the worse from that of Deucalion, and made it ridiculous. For we may be sure, they did not suppose, that these high diddle-diddles would ever attract the notice of men of education, but must have intended them for little children. Then there are the tricks of the mother Rebecca, and the comical manner in which Jacob acquired property at Laban's expence, and how God made his children a present of donkies, and tups, and ewes, and camels. And the conduct of Lot's daughters, which was worse than the Thyestean enormities. Then you have the hatred of Esau towards Jacob, the inexcusable perpetration by Levi and Simeon, in the affair of Sechem; the selling their brother Joseph for a slave; their imposition upon their father Jacob, who had no suspicion when they showed him Joseph's garment of many colours, as if the hardest of his bones could have been all eaten, how this man, so grossly imposed upon, lamented his son as if dead, when, in the mean while, he was a slave in Egypt; then the tale about the dreams of Pharaoh's butler and baker, and the interpretation of them by Joseph, which was the cause of his deliverance out of prison, and of his promotion to the second situation in the kingdom of Egypt. The more moderate, both among the Jews and Jesuans turn all these into an allegory, showing by this subterfuge, that they are ashamed of them; but they will not admit of being allegorized, for they are nothing but silly fables; but the allegories that have been attempted to be grounded on them are still more despicable than the fables themselves, and even more absurd; and endeavours have been employed to make to fit together things that are incapable of cohering. Would it not be ridiculous in man, if he were angry with the Jews, to slay all the males above the age of puberty, and set fire to their cities; but what must we think of the most high God, if, when exasperated, and moved to a high pitch of fury, he should threaten to send his Son to suffer such punishments as the Jesuans speak of? ON CHRISTIANITY. WHAT good has the Christian religion accomplished for the world? One thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven years have now passed away, and how small a portion of mankind are Christians! Why, when Christ came into the world, did he not teach men those arts and sciences, which have conferred so much benefit on us? Why, if he were all powerful with the great and beneficial Creator of the universe, did he not introduce the art of printing and of making paper, that all his benevolent acts and doctrines should have been handed down to us, and commissioned his apostles to transcribe them, and print them in every language under Heaven, that all men might know what to believe and what to reject? Or why not have formed one language complete in itself, fit for the whole world to learn and to speak, appointed teachers to proceed through every nation on the earth, making them acquainted with not only all the inventions and improvements of the present age, * Book 2, p. 187. |