proposal, and said, that he would tell every vendor of his Powder to take mine also. Soon afterwards he took his leave, and I never had a second interview. That very day, or rather the evening of that very day, I sent to Mrs. C. to know if she was in want of a fresh supply, and you, yourself Sir, may conceive my astonishment, my amazement, when she informed my messenger, that Mr. Hunt had told her, that if she sold any more of my Powder she should never have another grain of his. I could not, indeed I did not, suppose that Mrs. Carlile had said what was not strictly true, but if any doubt had remained upon my mind, it would have been removed, by the fact, that two other vendors informed me, that they had received a similar intimation from Mr. Hunt. One of them with a very proper degree of spirit, returned Mr. Hunt his Powder resolving not to be dictated to, as to what she chose to sell in her own shop. Her spirit had the desired result. Mr. H. again sent it without the interdiction. I will make no comment on this, Sir: I feel no sort of enmity to Mr. Hunt: but I am unable to afford him my esteem; neither should I have ever troubled myself to write a line respecting him, had it not been to explain to you that it was to his conduct i attributed Mrs. Carlile's refusal to sell my Powder, and not to any disinclination on her part to serve me. One word more before I close the subject. Mr. H. in his Memoirs, or Mr. Wilde for him (I forget which) said that Mrs. C. sold other people's manufacture under his name, for which she paid a less price than for his. Whether this is meant as an allusion to mine, I know not, but Mrs. C. paid me more than she paid Mr. Hunt, and she could not have sold mine for his, because mine was all stamped with my name, a precaution adopted by me owing to the general estimation it was held in, and a wish that it should not lose its character by having others substituted for it. Having now, Sir, disposed of this business, I have another to speak of to you, which to me is of much more importance. On Saturday, the 29th of June, I shall publish a sceptical Essay on the Eternity of the World, Price 1s. which I wished to have advertised in your Republican, but Mr. Jones informed me that you never admitted advertisements. If such is your invariable rule I will not ask you to break it, but for such a work as that, and the Manuel of the Society of Theophilanthropists of Paris, Price 6d. which I shall publish about the week following, I should think you could have but little objection. If, however, you do not like to admit an advertisement, perhaps, you would be kind enough to notice their appearance in some other manner in the pages of your Repub

lican.

With best respects to Mrs. C. and the most sincere wishes for your future health and welfare,

I remain, Dear Sir, yours sincerely, JAMES GRIFFIN. P. S. I hope your Sister's health is now re-established. Mrs. Griffin, requests that you will remember her to Mrs. and Miss C. I hope they will not suffer their spirits to sink under their sufferings.

TO THE MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY DENOMINATED FREETHINKING CHRISTIANS.

Leeds, June 1, 1822.

GENTLEMEN, HAVING myself been a member of your society, I take the liberty of presenting the following address to your consideration. I presume that you are all aware that in consequence of my not attending the meetings of that branch of your church established at Dewsbury in Yorkshire, my name was struck off from the list of members, several months before I was aware of any thing of the kind being done. When I became acquainted with the circumstance I promised to bring forward reasons which should fully justify my conduct, but as the reasons, arising out of peculiar circumstances, which prevented my attendance, continued to exist until such times as my enquiries led me to a total rejection of Christianity, I shall not trouble you at any great length upon that subject. I will briefly pass it over by observing that my non-attendance arose from my aversion to making religion an affair of pecuniary advantage. It is my motto, whether wise or foolish, that my friends shall hear from me, when I am in a state of prosperity, but not when I am in a state of adversity.

As my enquiries have led me to relinquish every system of religion; of course I have now no desire to be a member of any religious association. My object in addressing you in this way on the present occasion, is, to point out some of the reasons which have induced me to relinquish the various species of superstition which obtain the name of Religion.

In addressing you, a love of truth, is, I believe my only actuating motive, and it is a firm conviction on my mind that all systems of religious belief are injurious to the happiness of mankind, that induces me thus to publish my sentiments, I shall briefly notice some observations on revealed religion contained in your magazines, but my principle observations shall be confined to the Bible itself. Christophilus, in his preliminary essay on the evidence of revealed religion, says, "On revealed religion must depend all our means of knowing that there is one, and only one self-existent being, the benevolent Creator, and universal Governor of all things, and from that alone can we derive any solid ground on which to rest our hopes of a future state of existence, the book of nature being either silent on the subject, or by a fair analogy and inference, absolutely forbidding such an expectation." Now I am perfectly ready with you to admit, that if we have any knowledge of one self-existent being, the Creator and the Governor of the universe, or of a future state of conscious existence, this knowledge cannot be obtained from the book of nature, but must be derived from some other source, because the book of nature by every kind of fair analogy absolutely forbids us to entertain any such ideas. I know that in giving expression to these sentiments Vol. VI. No. 4.

I am coming in direct contact with the prejudices of the greatest part of mankind, in all ages and in all nations of the world of which we have any records, and I will assure you, that nothing but the most decided conviction that all the ideas that have ever prevailed respecting Gods, and that every species of religious worship addressed to those imaginary beings are founded upon delusion, and are injurious to the welfare and happiness of the human species, could prevail upon me thus publicly to attack those ideas which are considered to be sacred by the greater part of my most respected friends.

My intention is to show, not only that nature never teaches us to believe in the existence of one, and only one self-existent God, but likewise that the Jewish and the Christian Religions, the sources whence this notion has received its principle support, are founded in ignorance, credulity, and barbarism. I know that the ground I have taken will be liable to excite clamour, and many will be ready to exclaim, "Why will you endeavour to deprive us of the consolations of religion when you have nothing but atheism to give us in its stead." To such I say, that my object is truth, and if religion be a delusion, which I certainly believe to be the case, the sooner the delusion is destroyed the better, even though that dreaded thing called atheism should be the only thing left in its place.

The reasoning generally employed to prove the existence of a God, by the the principles of nature, is weak and inconclusive, its very foundation is rotten. As a specimen of the best natural reasoning in favour of the existence of a God, take the following: "I know that I exist, I could not make myself; I see order, harmony, and design in the creation; and I know that no effect can exist without a cause, the same as when I see a house, a clock, or other machine, I know they could not make themselves, there must have been a maker; that is to say, there must have been an adequate cause to produce these effects, and for the same reason I conclude there must have been an intelligent Creator, of all I behold in nature, and he it is I call God." Pretty reasoning indeed, to convince us that there is one and only one self-existent God! Make the best of such an analogy, I behold a house, there must have been a builder; yes, but how do I know that there has not been more than one? We well know that in the building of a house, or in the making of any piece of machinery more than one artist is generally employed, and if we follow up the analogy on these principles we must come to the conclusion that there had been more than one God at work in making the universe. All reasoning upon this topic is incapable of proving the existence of any such a being as your God. When you are unable to account for any thing by the principles of nature, you attribute it to your God. You think you have an unanswerable argument in support of your system by saying, "if there be no God, how came this world and all the other things that we behold to exist?" May not I with an equal degree of propriety ask you how your God came into existence? If the existence of your God be necessary to account for the existence of the matter of which the world is composed, I may in return ask you if you can tell me

how it is possible to create something out of nothing. If you allow that matter is eternal, where is the occasion for your God? Is it not equally rational to suppose that motion has eternally been a property of matter, as to seek out some fanciful being called a God to put matter into a state of motion. If I ask you for a cause for the existence of your God, I know the only answer you can give me will be, that be is self-existent and eternal. You allow a self-existent and eternal being of whom you know nothing, am I more unreasonable if I come to the conclusion that nature, of which I know something, is self-existent and eternal. We are acquainted with many of the properties of matter, we see that every particle is in a state of continual motion, and that nothing stands still for a single moment, why then shall we not conclude that their motion is an eternal property of matter. We see that by peculiar arrangements of matter, animation and vegetation exist, and are preserved in existence, is it not equally reasonable to suppose that these combinations arise from the eternal properties of matter, as to suppose that they were communicated to it by some fanciful being who has nothing in common with what we are acquainted with in nature?

Nothing is more common in controversy, than for men who have been beat off one ground, to put their invention on the rack to find out other grounds that are tenable. Such has been the case in attempting to prove the existence of an ideal being called God. Those who have found themselves unable to prove his existence by the principles of nature, have had recourse to what they call the internal evidences of revealed religion, but I think I shall shew clearly, that what is called revealed religion, proves nothing more than that it is the work of a knave, a tyrant, an enemy to the happiness of mankind. One of the correspondents in the Magazine, Vol. 4, Page 486, in treating on the character of Moses, says: "The character of Moses as a lawgiver has never been surpassed-the various shades of criminality; the weight which is given to every circumstance connected with it; the variation of punishment suited to every species of crimes, are all so many beauties that whenever any of them are discovered in modern codes of law, they immediately excite the admiration of the benevolent and virtuous man." With all due deference to the opinions of the above writer, and such persons as may agree with him in sentiment, I must say that I am altogether of a contrary opinion. I acknowledge that there are some parts of the law which are unobjectionable, and even a few scraps which are valuable, yet I think it requires only a slight knowledge of human nature to discover that the Mosaic law, taken as a whole or aggregate, is a composition tending to debase the mind, to enslave and demoralize mankind. The greatest part of its injunctions are evidently framed with the sole intention of increasing the power of a tyrannical priesthood, and reducing the great body of the people to a state of the most abject slavery.

What I would ask can be more detestable than the law for the trial of jealousy, contained in the fifth chapter of the book of Numbers ?

Read the account in your Bibles then tell me if this law be founded on justice and humanity. The following are the words of the book: "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, if a man's wife go and commit trespass against him, and a man lie with her carnally, and it be hid from the eyes of her husband and be kept close and she be defiled, and there be no witness against her, neither she be taken with the man; and the spirit of jealousy come upon him and he is jealous of his wife and she be defiled; or, if the spirit of jealousy come upon him and he be jealous of his wife and she be not defiled; then shall the man bring his wife unto the priest, and he shall bring her offering for her, the tenth part of an ephah of barley meal: he shall put no oil upon it nor put frankincense thereon, for it is an offering of jealousy, an offering of memorial bringing iniquity to remembrance. And the priest shall bring her near, and set her before the Lord; and the priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel, and of the dust that is in the floor of the tabernacle, the priest shall take and put it into the water; and the priest shall set the woman before the Lord, and uncover the woman's head and put the offering of memorial in her hand, which is the jealousy offering; and the priest shall have in his hand the bitter water that causeth the curse; and the priest shall charge her by an oath, and say unto the woman, if no man have lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone and done uncleanness with another instead of thy husband, be thou free from this bitter water that causeth the curse : But, if thou hast gone aside to another instead of thy husband, and if thou be defiled and some man have lain with thee beside thine husband: then the priest shall charge the woman with an oath of cursing, and the priest shall say unto the woman the Lord make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the Lord doth make thy thigh to rot and thy belly to swell; and this water that curseth the curse shall go into thy bowels to make thy belly to swell and thy thigh to rot. And the woman shall say, Amen, Amen. And the priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall blot them out with the bitter water and he shall cause the woman to drink the bitter water that causeth the curse: and the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her and become bitter. Then the priest shall take the jealousy offering out of the woman's hands, and shall wave the offering before the Lord and offer it upon the altar; and the priest shall take a handful of the offering, even the memorial thereof, and burn it upon the altar, and afterwards THE WOMAN SHALL DRINK THE WATER. And when he hath made her to drink the water, their it shall come to pass that if she be defiled and have done trespass against her husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her and become bitter, and her belly shall swell and her thigh shall rot, and the woman shall be a curse among her people. And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean, then she shall be free and shall conceive seed. This is the law of jealousies, when a wife goeth aside to another instead of her husband, and is defiled: or, when the spirit of jealousy cometh upon him, and he be jealous over his wife, and shall