 This is the LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Steve Brown. The Age of Reason by Thomas Payne, Part 2, Section 13. Ezekiel begins his books by speaking of a vision of cherubim's and of a wheel within a wheel, which he says he saw by the river Chabar in the land of his captivity. Is it not reasonable to suppose that by the cherubim's he meant the temple at Jerusalem, where they had figures of cherubim's and by a wheel within a wheel, which, as a figure, has always been understood to signify political contrivance, the project or means of recovering Jerusalem? In the latter part of this book, he supposes himself transported to Jerusalem and into the temple, and he refers back to the vision on the river Chabar and says, Chapter 48, Verse 3, that this last vision was like the vision on the river Chabar, which indicates that those pretended dreams and visions had for their object the recovery of Jerusalem and nothing further. As to the romantic interpretations and applications, wild as the dreams and visions they undertake to explain, which commentators and priests have made of those books, that of converting them into things which they call prophecies and making them bend to times and circumstances as far remote even as the present day, it shows the fraud or the extreme folly to which credulity or priestcraft can go. Scarcely anything can be more absurd than to suppose that men situated as Ezekiel and Daniel were, whose country was overrun and in the possession of the enemy, all their friends and relations in captivity abroad or in slavery at home or massacred or in continual danger of it. Scarcely anything, I say, can be more absurd than to suppose that such men should find nothing to do but that of employing their time and their thoughts about what was to happen to other nations a thousand or two thousand years after they were dead. At the same time, nothing is more natural than that they should meditate the recovery of Jerusalem and their own deliverance and that this was the sole object of all the obscure and apparently frantic writings contained in these books. In this sense, the mode of writing used in those two books being forced by necessity and not adopted by choice is not irrational, but if we are to use the books as prophecies, they are false. In the 29th chapter of Ezekiel, speaking of Egypt, it is said, verse 2, No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited for forty years. This is what never came to pass and consequently, it is false. As all the books I have already reviewed are, I here close this part of the subject. In the foreign part of the Age of Reason, I have spoken of Jonah and of the story of him and the whale, a fit story for ridicule if it was written to be believed, or of laughter if it was intended to try what credulity could swallow, for if it could swallow Jonah and the whale, it could swallow anything. But as is already shown in the observations on the book of Job and of Proverbs, it is not always certain which of the books in the Bible are originally Hebrew, or only translations from the books of the Gentiles into Hebrew. And as the book of Jonah, so far from treating of the affairs of the Jews, says nothing upon that subject, but treats altogether of the Gentiles, it is more probable that it is a book of the Gentiles than of the Jews, and that it has been written as a fable to expose the nonsense and satirize the vicious and malignant character of a Bible prophet or a predicting priest. Jonah is represented first as a disobedient prophet running away from his mission and taking shelter aboard a vessel of the Gentiles bound from Joppa to Tarshish, as if he ignorantly supposed by some paltry contrivance he could hide himself where God could not find him. The vessel is overtaken by a storm at sea, and the mariners, all of whom are Gentiles, believing it to be a judgment, an account of someone on board who had committed a crime, agreed to cast lots to discover the offender, and the lot fell upon Jonah. But before this, they had cast all their wares and merchandise overboard to lighten the vessel, while Jonah, like a stupid fellow, was fast asleep in the hold. After the lot had designated Jonah to be the offender, they questioned him to know who and what he was, and he told them he was a Hebrew, and the story implies that he confessed himself to be guilty. But these Gentiles, instead of sacrificing him at once, without pity or mercy, as a company of Bible prophets or priests would have done by a Gentile in the same case, and as it is related Samuel had done by Agag and Moses by the women and children, they endeavored to save him, though at risk of their own lives, for the account says, nevertheless, that is, though Jonah was a Jew and a foreigner, and the cause of all their misfortunes and the loss of their cargo, the men rode hard to bring it, the boat, to land, but they could not for the sea wrought and was tempestuous against them. Still, they were unwilling to put the fate of the lot into execution, and they cried, says the account, unto the Lord saying, verse 14, We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood, for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee. Meaning thereby, that they did not presume to judge Jonah guilty, since that he might be innocent, but that they considered the lot that had fallen to him as a decree of God, or as it pleased God. The address of this prayer shows that the Gentiles worshiped one supreme being, and that they were not idolaters, as the Jews represented them to be. But the storms still continuing, and the danger increasing, they put the fate of the lot into execution, and cast Jonah into the sea, where, according to the story, a great fish swallowed him up whole and alive. We have now to consider Jonah securely housed from the storm in the fish's belly. Here we are told that he prayed, but the prayer is a made-up prayer, taken from various parts of the Psalms, without any connection or consistency, and adapted to the distress, but not at all to the condition that Jonah was in. It is such a prayer as a Gentile, who might know something of the Psalms, could copy out for him. This circumstance alone, where there are no other, is sufficient to indicate that the whole is a made-up story. The prayer, however, is supposed to have answered the purpose, and the story goes on, taking up at the same time the Kant language of a Bible prophet, saying, chapter 2 verse 10, and the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. Jonah then received a second mission to Nineveh, with which he sets out, and we have now to consider him as a preacher. The distress he is represented to have suffered, the remembrance of his own disobedience as the cause of it, and the miraculous escape he is supposed to have had, were sufficient one would conceive, to have impressed him with sympathy and benevolence in the execution of his mission. But instead of this, he enters the city with denunciation and maldiction in his mouth, crying, chapter 3 verse 4, yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. We have now to consider this supposed missionary in the last act of his mission, and here it is that the malevolent spirit of a Bible prophet, or of a predicting priest, appears in all that blackness of character that men ascribe to the being they call the devil. Having published his predictions, he withdrew, says the story, to the east side of the city, but for what? Not to contemplate, in retirement, the mercy of his creator to himself or to others, but to wait, with malignant impatience, the destruction of Nineveh. It came to pass, however, as the story relates that the Ninevites reformed, and that God, according to the Bible phrase, repented him of the evil he had said he would do unto them, and did it not. This, saith the first verse of the last chapter, displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. His obdurate heart would rather that all Nineveh should be destroyed, and every soul, young and old, perish in its ruins, than that his predictions should not be fulfilled. To expose the character of a prophet still more, a gourd is made to grow up in the night, that promised him an agreeable shelter from the heat of the sun, in the place to which he had retired, and the next morning it dies. Here the rage of the prophet becomes excessive, and he is ready to destroy himself. It is better, said he, for me to die than to live. This brings on a supposed expostulation between the Almighty and the Prophet, in which the former says, does thou well to be angry for the gourd? And Jonah said, I do well to be angry even unto death. Then, said the Lord, thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not labored, neither made it to grow, which came up in a night, and perished in a night, and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand. Here is both the winding up of the sad tire and the moral of the fable. As a sad tire, it strikes against the character of all the Bible prophets, and against all the indiscriminate judgments upon men, women, and children, with which this lying book, the Bible, is crowded, such as Noah's flood, the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the extirpation of the Canaanites, even to the sucking infants and women with child, because the same reflection, that there are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, meaning young children, applies to all their cases. It satirizes also the supposed partiality of the Creator for one nation more than for another. As a moral, it preaches against the malvalent spirit of prediction, for as certainly as a man predicts ill, he becomes inclined to wish it. The pride of having his judgment right hardens his heart, till at last he beholds with satisfaction, or sees with disappointment, the accomplishment or the failure of his predictions. This book ends with the same kind of strong and well-directed point against prophets, prophecies, and indiscriminate judgment, as the chapter that Benjamin Franklin made for the Bible about Abraham and the stranger ends against the intolerant spirit of religious persecution, thus much for the Book of Jonah. Of the poetical parts of the Bible that are called prophecies, I have spoken in the former part of the age of reason, and already in this, where I have said that the word prophet is the Bible word for poet, and that the flights and metaphors of these poets, many of which have become obscure by the lapse of time and the change of circumstances, have been ridiculously erected into things called prophecies, and applied to the purposes the writers never thought of. When a priest quotes any of those passages, he unriddles it agreeably to his own values, and imposes that explanation upon his congregation as the meaning of the writer. The whore of Babylon has been the common whore of all the priests, and each has accused the other of keeping the trumpet. So well do they agree in their explanations. There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets, and as I have already shown that the greater are imposters, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together. I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie, and the priests, if they can, may replant them. They may perhaps stick them in the ground, but they will never make them grow. I pass on to the books of the New Testament. End of section 13. This is the Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Recording by Steve Brown. The New Testament. The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the old. If so, it must follow the fate of its foundation. As it is nothing extraordinary that a woman should be with child before she was married, and that the son she might bring forth should be executed, even unjustly, I see no reason for not believing that such a woman is married, and such a man as Joseph and Jesus existed. Their mere existence is a matter of indifference about which there is no ground, either to believe or to disbelieve, and which comes under the common head of, it may be so. And what then? The probability, however, is that there were such persons, or at least such as resembled them in part of the circumstances, because almost all romantic stories have been suggested by some actual circumstance. As the adventures of Robinson Caruso, not a word of which is true, were suggested by the case of Alexander Selkirk. It is not the existence, or non-existence, of the persons that I trouble myself about. It is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young woman engaged to be married, and while under this engagement, she is, to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost, under the empires pretense, Luke chapter 1 verse 35, that the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee, not withstanding which Joseph afterward marries her, cohabits with her as his wife, and in his turn rivals the ghost. This is putting the story into intelligible language, and when told in this manner, there is not a priest, but must be ashamed to own it. Footnote Mary, the supposed virgin mother of Jesus, had several other children, sons and daughters. See Matthew chapter 13 verses 55, 56. End of footnote. Obscenity in matters of faith, however wrapped up, is always a token of fable and imposture, for it is necessary to our serious belief in God that we do not connect it with stories that run, as this does, into ludicrous interpretations. This story is upon the face of it, the same kind of story as that of Jupiter and Leda, or Jupiter and Europa, or any of the amorous adventures of Jupiter, and shows, as it is already stated in the former part of the Age of Reason, that the Christian faith is built upon the heathen mythology. As the historical parts of the New Testament, so far as concerns Jesus Christ, are confined to a very short space of time, less than two years, and all within the same country, and nearly to the same spot, the discordance of time, place, and circumstance, which detects the fallacy of the books of the Old Testament, and proves them to be in positions, cannot be expected to be found here in the same abundance. The New Testament, compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act, in which there is not room for very numerous violations of the Unities. There are, however, some glaring contradictions which, exclusive of the fallacy of the pretended prophecies, are sufficient to show the story of Jesus Christ to be false. I lay it down as a position which cannot be controverted. First, that the agreement of all the parts of a story does not prove that story to be true, because the parts may agree, and the whole may be false. Secondly, that the disagreement of the parts of a story proves the whole cannot be true. The agreement does not prove true, but the disagreement proves falsehood positively. The history of Jesus Christ is contained in the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The first chapter of Matthew begins with giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ, and in the third chapter of Luke, there is also given a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Did those two agree, it would not prove the genealogy to be true, because it might, nevertheless, be a fabrication? But as they contradict each other in every particular, it proves falsehood absolutely. If Matthew speaks truth, Luke speaks falsehood, and if Luke speaks truth, Matthew speaks falsehood. And as there is no authority for believing one more than the other, there is no authority for believing either. And if they cannot be believed, even in the very first thing they say and set out to prove, they are not entitled to be believed in anything they say afterward. Truth is a uniform thing, and as to inspiration and revelation, were we to admit it, it is impossible to suppose it can be contradictory. Either, then, the men called apostles are imposters, or the books ascribed to them have been written by other persons and fathered upon them, as is the case with the Old Testament. The book of Matthew gives, chapter 1, verse 6, a genealogy by name from David up through Joseph, the husband of Mary, to Christ, and makes there to be 28 generations. The book of Luke gives also a genealogy by name from Christ through Joseph, the husband of Mary, down to David, and makes there to be 43 generations, besides which there are only the two names of David and Joseph that are alike in the two lists. I here insert both genealogical lists, and for the sake of purposequity and comparison, have placed them both in the same direction. That is, from Joseph down to David. Genealogy according to Matthew. Christ, Joseph, Jacob, Methan, Eleazar, Eliud, Achim, Sadak, Azor, Eliakim, Abiyud, Zorah Babel, Salah Thiel, Jecanias, Josiahs, Ammon, Manassas, Ezekius, Akaz, Oatham, Josiahs, Horam, Hosaphat, Asa, Abiyah, Roboam, Solomon, David, Seafootnote, Genealogy according to Luke. Christ, Joseph, Heli, Mathat, Lev, Melchie, Hanna, Hosaph, Matathias, Amos, Naam, Esli, Nagi, Moth, Matathias, Samia, Joseph, Judah, Joana, Risa, Zorah Babi, Salah Thiel, Mary, Melchie, Adi, Kassam, Elmedam, Ur, Jose, Eleazar, Horim, Mothat, Levi, Simeon, Judah, Joseph, Jonan, Eliakim, Melia, Manan, Matatha, Nathan, David, Footnote. From the birth of David to the birth of Christ is upwards of 1,080 years, and as the lifetime of Christ is not included, there are 27 full generations. To find, therefore, the average age of each person mentioned in the list, at the time his first son was born, it is only necessary to divide 1,080 by 27, which gives 40 years of each person. As the lifetime of man was then of the same extent it is now, it is an absurdity to suppose that 27 following generations should all be old bachelors before they married. And the more so when we are told that Solomon, the next in succession to David, had a house full of wives and mistresses before he was 21 years of age. So far from this genealogy being a solemn truth, it is not even a reasonable lie. The list of Luke gives about 26 years for the average age, and this is too much. End of footnote. Now if these men, Matthew and Luke, set out with a falsehood between them as these two accounts show they do, in the very commencement of their history of Jesus Christ, and of whom and of what he was, what authority, as I have before asked, is there left for believing the strange things they tell us afterward? If they cannot be believed in their account of his natural genealogy, how are we to believe them when they tell us he was the Son of God begotten by a ghost, and that an angel announced this in secret to his mother? If they lied in one genealogy, why are we to believe them in the other? If his natural genealogy be manufactured, which it certainly is, why are we not to suppose that his celestial genealogy is manufactured also, and that the whole is fabulous? Can any man of serious reflection hazard his future happiness upon the belief of a story naturally impossible, repugnant to every idea of decency and related by persons already detected of falsehood? Is it not more safe that we stop ourselves at the plain, pure, and unmixed belief of one God, which is deism, than that we commit ourselves on an ocean of improbable, irrational, and indecent and contradictory tales? The first question, however, upon the books of the New Testament, as upon those of the old, is, are they genuine? Were they written by the persons of whom they are ascribed? For it is upon this ground only that the strange things related therein have been credited. Upon this point, there is no direct proof for or against, and all that this state of a case proves is doubtfulness. And doubtfulness is the opposite of belief. The state, therefore, that the books are in, proves against themselves as far as this kind of proof can go. But exclusive of this, the presumption is that the books called the evangelists, and described it to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and that they are in positions. The disordered state of history in those four books, the silence of one book upon matters related to the other, and the disagreement that is to be found among them implies that they are the production of some unconnected individuals, many years after the things they pretend to relate, each of whom made his own legend and not the writings of men living intimately together, as the men called the apostles are supposed to have done, in fine that they have been manufactured, as the books of the Old Testament have been, by other persons than those whose names they bear. The story of the angel announcing what the church calls the immaculate conception is not so much as mentioned in the books ascribed to Mark and John, and is differently related in Matthew and Luke. The former says the angel appeared to Joseph, the latter says it was to Mary, but either Joseph or Mary was the worst evidence that could have been thought of, for it was others that should have testified for them, and not they for themselves, were any girl that is now with child to say, and even to swear it, that she was gotten with child by a ghost, and that an angel told her so, would she be believed? Certainly, she would not. Why, then, are we to believe the same thing of another girl whom we never saw, told by nobody knows who, nor when, nor where? How strange and inconsistent it is that the same circumstance that would weaken the belief even of a probable story should be given as a motive for believing this one that has upon the face of it every token of absolute impossibility and imposture? End of section 14. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Steve Brown. The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. Part 2, section 15. The story of Herod destroying all the children under two years old belongs altogether to the book of Matthew. Not one of the rest mentions anything about it. Had such a circumstance been true, the universality of it must have made it known to all the writers, and the thing would have been too striking to have been omitted by any. This writer tells us that Jesus escaped this slaughter because Joseph and Mary were warned by an angel to flee with him unto Egypt. But he forgot to make any provision for John, who was then under two years of age. John, however, who stayed behind, fared as well as Jesus, who fled, and therefore the story circumstantially belies itself. Not any two of these writers agree in reciting, exactly in the same words, the written inscription, short as it is, which they tell us was put over Christ when he was crucified. And besides this, Mark says he was crucified at the third hour, nine in the morning. And John says it was the sixth hour, 12 noon. Footnote, according to John, the sentence was not passed till about the sixth hour, noon. And consequently, the execution could not be till the afternoon. But Mark says expressly that he was crucified at the third hour, nine in the morning. Chapter 15, verse 25. John, chapter 19, verse 14. End of footnote. The inscription is thus stated in these books. Matthew, this is Jesus, the king of the Jews. Mark, the king of the Jews. Luke, this is the king of the Jews. John, Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews. We may infer from these circumstances, trivial as they are, that those writers, whoever they were, and in whatever time they lived, were not present at the scene. The only one of the men, called apostles, who appears to have been near the spot was Peter. And when he was accused of being one of Jesus' followers, it is said, Matthew, chapter 26, verse 74. Then he, Peter, began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. Yet we are now called upon to believe the same Peter, convicted by their own account of perjury. For what reason or on what authority shall we do this? The accounts that are given of the circumstances that they tell us attended the crucifixion are differently related in these four books. The book ascribed to Matthew says, chapter 27, verse 45. Now from the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. Verse 51, 52, 53. And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. Such is the account which this dashing writer of the book of Matthew gives, but in which he is not supported by the writers of the other books. The writer of the book ascribed to Mark in detailing the circumstances of the crucifixion makes no mention of any earthquake, nor of the rocks rending, nor of the graves opening, nor of the dead men walking out. The writer of the book of Luke is silent also upon the same points. And as to the writer of the book of John, though he details all the circumstances of the crucifixion down to the burial of Christ, he says nothing about either the darkness, the veil of the temple, the earthquake, the rocks, the graves, nor the dead men. Now if it had been true that those things had happened, and if the writers of those books had lived at the time they did happen, and had been the persons they are said to be, namely the four men called apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it was not possible for them as true historians, even without the aid of inspiration, not to have recorded them. The things, supposing them to have been facts, were of too much notoriety not to have been known, and of too much importance not to have been told. All these supposed apostles must have been witnesses to the earthquake, if there had been any, for it was not possible for them to have been absent from it. The opening of the graves and the resurrection of the dead men, and their walking about the city, is of greater importance than the earthquake. An earthquake is always possible and natural, improves nothing, but this opening of the graves is supernatural, and directly in point to their doctrine, their cause, and their apostleship. Had it been true, it would have filled up whole chapters of those books, and been the chosen theme and general chorus of all the writers. But instead of this, little and trivial things, and mere praddling conversations of, he said this, and he said that, are often tediously detailed, while this, most important of all, had it been true, is passed off in a slovenly manner by a single dash of the pen, and that by one writer alone, and not so much as hinted at by the rest. It is an easy thing to tell a lie, but it is difficult to support the lie after it is told. The writer of the book of Matthew should have told us who the saints were that came to life again, and went into the city, and what became of them afterward, and who it was that saw them. For he is not hardy enough to say he saw them himself. Whether they came out naked, and all in natural buff, he saints and she saints, or whether they came full dressed, and where they got their dresses, whether they went to their former habitations, and reclaimed their wives, their husbands, and their property, and how they were received, whether they entered ejectments for the recovery of their possessions, or brought actions of crime, con, against the rival interlopers, whether they remained on earth, and followed their former occupation of preaching or working, or whether they died again, and went back to their graves alive, and buried themselves. Strange indeed that an army of saints should return to life, and nobody know who they were, nor who it was that saw them, and that not a word more should be set up on the subject, nor these saints have anything to tell us. Had it been the prophets who, as we are told, had formally prophesied of these things, they must have had a great deal to say. They could have told us everything, and we should have had posthumous prophecies with notes and commentaries upon the first. A little better at least than we have now. Had it been Moses, and Aaron, and Joshua, and Samuel, and David, not an unconverted Jew had remained in all Jerusalem. Had it been John the Baptist, and the saints of the time then present, everybody would have known them, and they would have out preached and out famed all the other apostles. But instead of this, these saints were made to pop up, like Jonah's gourd in the night, for no purpose at all, but to wither in the morning. Thus much for this part of the story. The tale of the resurrection follows that of the crucifixion, and in this as well as in that, the writers, whoever they were, disagree so much as to make it evident that none of them were there. The book of Matthew states that when Christ was put in a sepulcher, the Jews applied to pilot for a watch or a guard to be placed over the sepulcher. To prevent the body being stolen by the disciples, and that in consequence of this request, the sepulcher was made sure, sealing the stone that covered the mouth and setting a watch. But the other books say nothing about this application, nor about the sealing, nor the guard, nor the watch, and according to their accounts, there were none. Matthew, however, follows up this part of the story of the guard or the watch with a second part that I shall notice in the conclusion as it serves to detect the fallacy of these books. The book of Matthew continues its account and says, chapter 28 verse 1, that at the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher. Mark says it was sun rising, and John says it was dark. Luke says it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary, the mother of James, and other women that came to the sepulcher. And John states that Mary Magdalene came alone. So well do they agree about their first evidence. They all, however, appear to have known most about Mary Magdalene. She was a woman of large acquaintance, and it was not an ill conjecture that she might be upon the stroll. The book of Matthew goes on to say, verse 2, and behold, there was a great earthquake, for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it. But the other books say nothing about any earthquake, nor about the angel rolling back the stone and sitting upon it. And according to their account, there was no angel sitting there. Mark says the angel was within the sepulcher, sitting on the right side. Luke says there were two, and they were both standing up. And John says they were both sitting down, one at the head and the other at the feet. Matthew says that the angel that was sitting upon the stone on the outside of the sepulcher told the two Marys that Christ was risen, and that the women went away quickly. Mark says that the women, upon seeing the stone rolled away and wondered at it, went into the sepulcher, and that it was the angel that was sitting within on the right side that told them so. Luke says it was the two angels that were standing up, and John says it was Jesus Christ himself that told it to Mary Magdalene, and that she did not go into the sepulcher, but only stooped down and looked in. Now if the writer of those four books had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely the absence of a dead body by supernatural means. And had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears cropped for perjury and would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration and as the unchangeable word of God. The writer of the book of Matthew after giving this account relates a story that is not to be found in any of the other books, in which is the same I have just before alluded to. Now, says he, that is, after the conversation the women had with the angels sitting upon the stone. Behold, some of the watch, meaning the watch that he had said, had been placed over the sepulcher, came into the city, showed unto the chief priests all the things that were done, and when they were assembled with the elders and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, Say ye, his disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept. And if his come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him and secure you. So they took the money and did as they were taught, and this saying that his disciples stole him away is commonly reported among the Jews until this day. The expression until this day is an evidence that the book ascribed to Matthew was not written by Matthew and that it had been manufactured long after the time and things of which it pretends to treat. For the expression implies a great length of intervening time. It would be inconsistent in us to speak in this manner of anything happening in our own time. To give therefore intelligible meaning to the expression, we must suppose a lapse of some generations at least. For this manner of speaking carries the mind back to ancient time. The absurdity also of the story is worth noticing, for it shows the writer of the book of Matthew to have been an exceedingly weak and foolish man. He tells a story that contradicts itself in point of possibility. For though to guard, if there were any, might be made to say that the body was taken away while they were asleep. And to give that as a reason for their not having prevented it, that same sleep must also have prevented their knowing how and by whom it was done. And yet they are made to say that it was the disciples who did it. Were a man to tender this evidence of something that he should say was done and of the manner of doing it and of the person who did it while he was asleep and could know nothing of the matter, such evidence could not be received. It will do well enough for testament evidence, but not for anything where truth is concerned. End of section 15. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Steve Brown. The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. Part two, section 16. I come now to that part of the evidence in those books that respects the pretended appearance of Christ after this pretended resurrection. The writer of the book Matthew relates that the angel that was sitting on the stone at the mouth of the sepulcher said to the two Marys. Chapter 28 verse 7. Behold, Christ has gone before you into Galilee. There shall ye see him. Lo, I have told you. And the same writer at the next two verses, eight and nine, makes Christ himself to speak to the same purpose to these women immediately after the angel had told it to them. And that they ran quickly to tell it to the disciples. And at the sixteenth verse it is said, Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him. But the writer of the book of John tells us a story very different to this. For he says, Chapter 20 verse 19. Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, that is, the same day that Christ is said to have risen. When the doors were shut, where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews came Jesus and stood in the midst of them. According to Matthew, the eleven were marching to Galilee to meet Jesus in a mountain by his own appointment at the very time when, according to John, they were assembled in another place, and that not by appointment, but in secret, for fear of the Jews. The writer of the book of Luke contradicts that of Matthew more pointedly than John does. For he says expressly that the meeting was in Jerusalem the evening of the same day that he, Christ, rose, and that the eleven were there. See Luke chapter 24 verse 13 33. Now it is not possible, unless we admit the supposed disciples the right of willful lying, that the writer of those books could be any of the eleven persons called disciples. For if, according to Matthew, the eleven went into Galilee to meet Jesus in a mountain by his own appointment on the same day that he is said to have risen, Luke and John must have been two of that eleven. Yet the writer of Luke says expressly, and John implies as much, that the meeting was that same day in a house in Jerusalem and, on the other hand, if, according to Luke and John, the eleven were assembled in a house in Jerusalem, Matthew must have been one of that eleven. Yet Matthew says the meeting was in a mountain in Galilee, and consequently the evidence given in those books destroys each other. The writer of the book of Mark says nothing about any meeting in Galilee, but he says chapter 16 verse 12, that Christ, after his resurrection, appeared in another form to two of them, as they walked into the country, and that these two told it to the residue who would not believe them. Luke also tells a story in which he keeps Christ employed the whole of the day of this pretended resurrection until the evening in which totally invalidates the account of going to the mountain in Galilee. He says that the two of them, without saying which two, went that same day to a village called Amwas. Three score furlongs, seven miles and a half, from Jerusalem and that Christ in disguise went with them, and stayed with them until the evening and subbed with them, and then vanished out of their sight, and reappeared that same evening at the meeting of the 11 in Jerusalem. This is the contradictory manner in which the evidence of this pretended reappearance of Christ is stated. The only point in which the writers agree is the skulking privacy of that reappearance. For whether it was in the recess of a mountain in Galilee, or a shut-up house in Jerusalem, it was still skulking. To what cause, then, are we to assign this skulking? On the one hand, it is directly repugnant to the supposed or pretended end, that of convincing the world that Christ had risen, and on the other hand, to have asserted the publicity of it would have exposed the writers of those books to public detection, and therefore, they have been under the necessity of making it a private affair. As to the account of Christ being seen by more than 500 at once, it is Paul only who says it, and not the 500 who say it for themselves. It is therefore the testimony of but one man, and that, too, of a man who did not, according to the same account, believe a word of the matter himself at the time it is said to have happened. His evidence, supposing him to have been the writer of the 15th chapter of Corinthians, where his account is given, is like that of a man who comes into a court of justice to swear that what he had sworn before is false. A man may often see reason, and he has, too, always the right of changing his opinion, but this liberty does not extend to matters of fact. I now come to the last scene, that of the ascension into heaven. Here, all fear of the Jews, and of everything else, must necessarily have been out of the question. It was that which, if true, was to seal the whole, and upon which the reality of the future mission of the disciples was to rest for proof. Words, whether declarations or promises that passed in private, either in the recess of a mountain, in Galilee, or in a shut-up house in Jerusalem, even supposing them to have been spoken, could not be evidence in public. It was therefore necessary that this last scene should preclude the possibility of denial and dispute, and that it should be, as I have stated in the former part of The Age of Reason, as public and as visible as the sun at noon day. At least it ought to have been as public as the crucifixion is reported to have been, but to come to the point. In the first place, the writer of the book of Matthew does not say a syllable about it. Neither does the writer of the book of John. This being the case, is it possible to suppose that those writers, who effect to be even minute in other matters, would have been silent upon this, had it been true. The writer of the book of Mark passes it off in a careless, slovenly manner, with a single dash of the pen, as if he was tired of romancing, or ashamed of the story. So also does the writer of Luke, and even between these two, there is not an apparent agreement as to the place where this final parting is said to have been. The book of Mark says that Christ appeared to the eleven as they sat at meat. Alluding to the meeting of the eleven at Jerusalem, he then states the conversation that he says passed at that meeting, and immediately after says, as a school boy would finish a dull story. So then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. But the writer of Luke says that the ascension was from Bethany, that he, Christ, led them out as far as Bethany, and was parted from them, and was carried up into the heaven. So also was Muhammad. And as to Moses, the apostle Jude says, verse 9, that Michael and the devil disputed about his body. While we believe such fables as these, or either of them, we believe unworthily of the Almighty. I have now gone through the examination of the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and when it is considered that the whole space of time, from the crucifixion to what is called the ascension, is but a few days, apparently not more than three or four, and that all the circumstances are said to have happened nearly about the same spot, Jerusalem. It is, I believe, impossible to find in any story upon record so many and such glaring absurdities, contradictions and falsehoods, as are in those books. They are more numerous and striking than I had any expectation of finding when I began this examination, and far more so than I had any idea of when I wrote the former part of The Age of Reason. I had then neither Bible nor Testament to refer to, nor could I procure any. My own situation, even as to existence, was becoming every day more precarious, and as I was willing to leave something behind me on the subject, I was obliged to be quick and concise. The quotations I then made were from memory only, but they are correct. And the opinions I have advanced in that work are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction that the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world, that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty, that the only true religion is deism, by which I then meant, and mean now, the belief of one God and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues, and that it was upon this only, so far as religion is concerned, that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now, and so help me God. But to return to the subject, though it is impossible at this distance of time to asserting as a fact who were the writers of those four books, and this alone is sufficient to hold them in doubt, and where we doubt we do not believe. It is not difficult to ascertain negatively that they were not written by the persons to whom they are ascribed. The contradictions in those books demonstrate two things. First, that the writers could not have been eyewitnesses and ear witnesses of the matters they relate, or they would have related them without those contradictions. And consequently, that the books have not been written by the persons called apostles, who are supposed to have been witnesses of this kind. Secondly, that the writers, whoever they were, have not acted in concerted imposition, but each writer separately and individually for himself and without the knowledge of the other. The same evidence that applies to prove the one applies equally to prove both cases. That is, that the books were not written by the men called apostles, and also that they are not in concerted imposition. As to inspiration, it is altogether out of the question. We may as well attempt to unite truth and falsehood as inspiration and contradiction. If four men are eyewitnesses and ear witnesses to a scene, they will, without any concert between them, agree as to time and place when and where that scene happened. Their individual knowledge of the thing, each one knowing it for himself, renders concert totally unnecessary. The one will not say it was in a mountain in the country, and the other at a house in town. The one will not say it was at sunrise, and the other that it was dark. For in whatever place it was, at whatever time it was, they know it equally alike. And on the other hand, if four men consert a story, they will make their separate relations of that story agree and cooperate with each other to support the whole. That concert supplies the want of fact in the one case, as the knowledge of the fact supersedes, in the other case, the necessity of a concert. The same contradictions, therefore, that prove there has been no concert, prove also that the reporters had no knowledge of the fact, or rather of that which they were late as a fact, and detect also the falsehood of their reports. These books, therefore, have neither been written by the men called apostles, nor by imposters in concert. How then have they been written? End of section 16. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Steve Brown. The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. Part two, section 17. I am not one of those who are fond of believing there is much of that which is called willful lying, or lying originally, except in the case of men setting up to be prophets, as in the Old Testament. For prophesying is lying professionally. In almost all other cases, it is not difficult to discover the progress by which even simple supposition with the aid of credulity will in time grow into a lie, and at last be told as a fact. And whenever we can find a charitable reason for a thing of this kind, we ought not to indulge a severe one. The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create envision and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar not many years before, and they generally have their origin in violent deaths or in the execution of innocent persons. In cases of this kind, compassion lends its aid and benevolently stretches the story. It goes on a little and a little further, till it becomes a most certain truth. One started ghost and credulity fills up the history of its life and assigns the cause of its appearance. One tells it one way, another another way, till there are as many stories about the ghost and about the proprietor of the ghost as there are about Jesus Christ in these four books. The story of the appearance of Jesus Christ is told with that strange mixture of the natural and impossible that distinguishes legendary tale from fact. He is represented as suddenly coming in and going out when the doors were shut and vanishing out of sight and appearing again. As one would conceive of an unsubstantial vision, then again he is hungry, sits down to meet, and eats his supper. But as those who tell stories of this kind never provide for all the cases, so it is here. They have told us that when he arose he left his grave closed behind him, but they have forgotten to provide of the clothes for him to appear in afterward, or to tell us what he did with them when he ascended. Whether he stripped all off or went up clothes and all, in the case of Elijah they have been careful enough to make him throw down his mantle, how it happened not to be burned in the chariot of fire they also have not told us. But as imagination supplies all deficiencies of this kind, we may suppose, if we please, that it was made of Salamander's wool. Those who are not much acquainted with ecclesiastical history may suppose that the book called the New Testament has existed ever since the time of Jesus Christ, as they suppose that the books described in Moses have existed ever since the time of Moses. But the fact is historically otherwise. There was no such book as the New Testament, till more than 300 years after the time that Christ is said to have lived. At what time the books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John began to appear is altogether a matter of uncertainty. There is not the least shadow of evidence of who the persons were that wrote them, nor at what time they were written. And they might as well have been called by the names of any of the other supposed apostles, as by the names they are now called. The originals are not in the possession of any Christian church existing, any more than the two tables of stone written on. They pretend by the finger of God upon Mount Sinai and given to Moses are in the possession of the Jews. And even if they were, there is no possibility of proving the handwriting in either case. At the time those books were written, there was no printing, and consequently there could be no publication, otherwise than by written copies, which any man might make or alter at pleasure and call them originals. Footnote. The former part of the Age of Reason has not been published in two years, and there is already an expression in it that is not mine. The expression is, the Book of Luke was carried by a majority of one voice only. It may be true, but it is not that I have said it. Some person who might know of the circumstance has added it in a note at the bottom of the page of some of the editions, printed either in England or in America, and the printers after that have placed it into the body of the work and made me the author of it. If this has happened within such a short space of time, not withstanding the Age of Printing, which prevents the alteration of copies individually, what may have not happened in a much greater length of time when there was no printing and when any man who could write could make a written copy and call it an original by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. End of footnote. Can we suppose it is consistent with the wisdom of the Almighty to commit himself and his will to man upon such precarious means as these, or that it is consistent we should pin our faith upon such uncertainties? We cannot make nor alter nor even imitate so much as one blade of grass that he has made, and yet we can make or alter words of God as easily as words of man. About 350 years after the time that Christ has said to have lived, several writings of the kind I am speaking of were scattered in the hands of diverse individuals, and as the church had began to form itself into a hierarchy, or church government, with temporal powers, it set itself about collecting them into a code, as we now see them called the New Testament. They decided by vote, as I have before said in the former part of the age of reason, which of these writings, out of the collection they had made, should be the word of God, and which should not. The rabbins of the Jews had decided by vote upon the books of the Bible before. As the object of the church, as is the case in all national establishments of churches, was power and revenue, and terror the means it used, it is consistent to suppose that the most miraculous and wonderful of the writings they had collected stood the best chance of being voted. And as to the authenticity of the books, the vote stands in the place of it, for it can be traced no higher. Disputes however, ran high among the people then calling themselves Christians, not only as to points of doctrine, but as to the authenticity of the books. In the contest between the persons called St. Augustine and Faust, about the year 400, the latter says, the books called the evangelists have been composed long after the times of the apostles by some obscure men, who, fearing that the word would not give credit to the relation of matters of which they could not be informed, have published them under the names of the apostles, and which are so full of sodishness and discordant relations that there is neither agreement nor connection between them. And in another place, addressing himself to the advocates of those books as being the word of God, he says, it is thus that your predecessors have inserted in the scriptures of our Lord many things, which, though they carry his name, agrees not with his doctrines. This is not surprising, since that we have often proved that these things have not been written by himself, nor by his apostles, but that for the greater part they are founded upon tales, upon vague reports, and put together by I know not what, half Jews, but with little agreement between them, in which they have nevertheless published under the names of the apostles of our Lord, and have thus attributed to them their own errors and their lies. Footnote, I have these two extracts from Bollinger's Life of Paul written in French. Bollinger has quoted them from the writings of Augustine against Faust, to which he refers. And footnote. The reader will see by these extracts that the authenticity of the books of the New Testament was denied, and the books treated as tales, forgeries, and lies, at the time they were voted to be the word of God. See footnote. But the interest of the Church, with the assistance of the faggot, bore down the opposition, and at last suppressed all investigation. Miracles followed upon miracles, if we will believe them, and the men were taught to say they believed whether they believed or not. But, by way of throwing it in a thought, the French Revolution has excommunicated the Church from the power of working miracles. She has not been able, with the assistance of all her saints, to work one miracle since the Revolution began. And as she never stood in greater need than now, we may, without the aid of divination, conclude that all her former miracles were tricks and lies. When we consider the lapse of more than 300 years intervening between the time that Christ is said to have lived, and the time the New Testament was formed into a book, we must see, even without the assistance of historical evidence, the exceeding uncertainty there is of its authenticity. The authenticity of the book of Homer, so far as regards the authorship, is much better established than that of the New Testament, though Homer is a thousand years the more ancient. It is only an exceedingly good poet that could have written the book of Homer, and therefore a few men only could have attempted it, and a man capable of doing it would not have thrown away his own fame by giving it to another. In like manner, there were but a few that could have composed Euclid's elements, because none but an exceedingly good geometrician could have been the author of that work. Footnote, Bollinger in his life of Paul has collected from the ecclesiastical histories and from the writings of fathers as they are called. Several matters would show the opinions that prevailed among the different sex of Christians at the time the Testament, as we now see it, was voted to be the word of God. The following extracts are from the second chapter of that work. The Marchionists, a Christian sect, assumed that the evangelists were filled with falsities. The Manichians, who formed a very numerous sect at the commencement of Christianity, rejected as false all the New Testament, and showed other writings quite different that they gave for authentic. The Sorenthians, like the Marchionists, admitted not the Acts of the Apostles. The Incritides and the Severians adopted neither the Acts nor the Epistles of Paul, Chrysostom, and a homily which he made upon the Acts of the Apostles says that in his time, about the year 400, many people knew nothing either of the author of the book. St. Irene, who lived before that time, reports that the Valentinians, like several other sects of Christians, accused the scriptures of being filled with imperfections, errors, and contradictions. The Ebonites or Nazarenes, who were the first Christians, rejected all the Epistles of Paul and regarded him as an imposter. They report, among other things, that he was originally a pagan, that he came to Jerusalem, where he lived some time, and that having a mind to marry the daughter of the High Priest, he caused himself to be circumcised. But that, not being able to obtain her, he quarreled with the Jews and wrote against circumcision and against the observance of the Sabbath, and against all the legal ordinances. End of Footnote. End of Section 17. This is LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Steve Brown. The Age of Reason by Thomas Payne. Part 2, Section 18. But with respect to the books of the New Testament, particularly such parts as tell us of the resurrection and ascension of Christ, any person who could tell a story of an apparition or of a man's walking could have made such books, for the story is most wretchedly told. The chance, therefore, of forgery in the New Testament is millions to one greater than in the case of Homer or Euclid. Of the numerous priests or Parsons of the present day, bishops in all, every one of them can make a sermon or translate a scrap of Latin, especially if it had been translated a thousand times before. But is there any among them that can write poetry like Homer or science like Euclid? The sum total of a person's learning, with very few exceptions, is A, B, A, B, and Hick, Heck, Hock, and their knowledge of science is three times one is three, and this is more than sufficient to have enabled them, had they lived at the time to have written all books of the New Testament. As the opportunities of four trees were greater, so also was the inducement. A man could gain no advantage by writing under the name of Homer or Euclid. If he could write equal to them, it would be better that he wrote under his own name. If inferior, he could not succeed. Pride would prevent the former and impossibility the latter. But with respect to such books as compose the New Testament, all the inducements were on the side of forgery. The best imagined history that could have been made at the distance of two or three hundred years after the time could not have passed for an original under the name of the real writer. The only chance of success lay in forgery, for the church wanted pretense for its new doctrine, and truths and talents were out of the question. But as is not uncommon, as before observed, to relate stories of persons walking after they are dead, and of ghosts and apparitions of such as have fallen by some violent or extraordinary means. And as the people of that day were in the habit of believing such things, and of the appearance of angels and also of devils, and of their getting into people's insides and shaking them like a fit on an egg, and of their being cast out again as if by an immediate. Mary Magdalene, the book of Mark tells us, has brought up or been brought to bed of seven devils. It was nothing extraordinary that some story of this kind should get abroad of the person called Jesus Christ, and become afterward the foundation of the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each writer told the tale as he heard it, or thereabouts, and gave to his book the name of the saint or the apostle whom tradition had given as the eyewitness. It is only upon this ground that the contradiction in those books can be accounted for, and if this be not the case, they are downright impositions, lies and forgeries, without even the apology of credulity, that they have been written by a sort of half-Jews, as the foregoing quotations mention, is discernible enough. The frequent references made to that chief assassin and imposter, Moses, and to the men called prophets, established this point. And on the other hand, the church has complimented the fraud by admitting the Bible and the testament to reply to each other. Between the Christian Jew and the Christian Gentile, the thing called a prophecy and the thing prophesied, the type and the thing typified, the sign and the thing signified, have been industriously rummaged up and fitted together, like old locks and picklocked keys. The story foolishly enough told of Eve and the serpent, and naturally enough as to the enmity between men and serpents, for the serpent always bites about the heel, because it cannot reach higher, and the man always knocks the serpent about the head, as the most effectual way to prevent its biting. Footnote, it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Genesis chapter 3, verse 15. And footnote, this foolish story, I say, has been made into a prophecy, a type and a promise to begin with, and the lying imposition of Isaiah to Ahaz, that a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, as a sign that Ahaz should conquer, when the event was that he was defeated, as already noticed in the observations on the book of Isaiah, has been perverted and made to serve as a winder up. Jonah and the whale are also made into a sign or a type. Jonah is Jesus, and the whale is the grave, for it is said, and they have made Christ to say it of himself. Matthew chapter 12, verse 40. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. But it happens awkwardly enough that Christ, according to their own account, was but one day and two nights in the grave, about 36 hours, instead of 72. That is, the Friday night, the Saturday, and the Saturday night, for they say he was up on the Sunday morning by sunrise, or before. But as this fits quite well as the bite and the kick in Genesis, or the virgin and her son in Isaiah, it will pass in the lump of orthodox things. Thus much for the historical part of the testament and its evidences. Epistles of Paul. The epistles ascribed to Paul being 14 in number almost fill up the remaining part of the testament. Whether those epistles were written by the person to whom they are ascribed is a matter of no great importance since the writer, whoever he was, attempts to prove his doctrine by argument. He does not pretend to have been witness to any of the scenes told of the resurrection and the ascension, and he declares that he had not believed them. The story of his being struck to the ground as he was journeying to Damascus has nothing in it miraculous or extraordinary. He escaped with life and that is more than many others have done, who have been struck with lightning, and that he should lose his sight for three days and be unable to eat or drink during that time is nothing more than is common in such conditions. His companions that were with him appear not to have suffered in the same manner, for they were well enough to lead him the remainder of the journey. Neither did they pretend to have seen any vision. The character of the person called Paul, according to the accounts given of him, has in it a great deal of violence and fanaticism. He had persecuted with as much heat as he preached afterward. The stroke he had received had changed his thinking without altering his constitution and either as a Jew or a Christian he was the same zealot. Such men are never good moral evidences of any doctrine they preach. They are always in extremes as well of actions as of belief. The doctrine he sets out to prove by argument is the resurrection of the same body and he advances this as an evidence of immortality. But so much will men differ in their manner of thinking and in the conclusions they draw from the same premises that this doctrine of the resurrection of the same body so far from being an evidence of immortality appears to me to furnish an evidence against it. For if I have already died in this body and am raised again in the same body in which I have lived it is a presumptive evidence that I shall die again. That resurrection no more secures me against the repetition of dying than an egg you fit when past secures me against another. To believe therefore in immortality I must have a more elevated idea than is contained in the gloomy doctrine of the resurrection. Besides as a matter of choice as well as of hope I had rather have a better body in a more convenient form than the present. Every animal in the creation excels us in something. The winged insects without mentioning doves or eagles can pass over more space and with greater ease in a few minutes than man can in an hour. The glide of the smallest fish in proportion to its bulk exceeds us in motion almost beyond comparison and without weariness. Even the sluggish snail can ascend from the bottom of a dungeon where a man by the want of that ability would perish and a spider can launch itself from the top as a playful amusement. The personal powers of man are so limited and his heavy frame so little constructed to extensive enjoyment that there is nothing to induce us to wish the opinion of Paul to be true. It is too little for the magnitude of the scene too mean for the sublimity of the subject. But all other arguments apart the consciousness of existence is the only conceivable idea we can have of another life and the continuance of that consciousness is immortality. The consciousness of existence or the knowing that we exist is not necessarily confined to the same form nor to the same matter even in this life. We have not in all cases the same form nor in any case the same matter that composed our bodies 20 or 30 years ago and yet we are conscious of being the same persons. Even legs and arms which make up almost half the human frame are not necessary to the consciousness of existence. These may be lost or taken away and the full consciousness of existence remain and were there plays supplied by wings or other appendages we cannot conceive that it would alter our consciousness of existence. In short we know not how much or rather how little of our composition it is and how exquisitely fine that little is that creates in us this consciousness of existence and all beyond that is like the pulp of a peach distinct and separate from the vegetative spec in the kernel who can say by what exceedingly fine action of fine matter it is that a thought is produced in what we call the mind. And yet that thought when produced as I now produce the thought I am writing is capable of becoming immortal and is the only production of man that has that capacity. Statues of brass or marble will perish and statues made in imitation of them are not the same statues nor the same workmanship any more than the copy of a picture is the same picture but print and reprint a thought a thousand times over and that with materials of any kind carve it in wood or engrave it on stone the thought is eternally and identically the same thought in every case it has a capacity of unimpaired existence unaffected by change of matter and is essentially distinct and of a nature different from everything else that we know or can conceive if then the thing produced has in itself a capacity of being immortal it is more than a token that the power that produced it which is the self same thing as consciousness of existence can be immortal also and that as independently of the matter it was first connected with as the thought is of the printing or writing it first appeared in the one idea is not more difficult to believe than the other and we can see that one is true that the consciousness of existence is not dependent on the same form or the same matter is demonstrated to our senses in the works of the creation as far as our senses are capable of receiving that demonstration a very numerous part of the animal creation preaches to us far better than paul the belief of a life hereafter their little life resembles an earth and a heaven a present and a future state and comprises if it may be so expressed immortality in miniature and of section 18 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Steve Brown the age of reason by Thomas Payne part 2 section 19 the most beautiful parts of the creation to our eye are the winged insects and they are not so originally they acquire that form and that inimitable brilliance by progressive changes the slow and creeping caterpillar worm of the day passes in a few days to a torpid figure and a state resembling death and in the next change comes forth in all the miniature magnificence of life a splendid butterfly no resemblance of the former creature remains everything is changed all his powers are new and life is to him another thing we cannot conceive that the consciousness of existence is not the same in this state of the animal as before why then must I believe that the resurrection of the same body is necessary to continue to meet a consciousness of existence hereafter in the former part of the age of reason I have called the creation the only true and real word of God in this instance or this text in the book of creation not only shows to us that this thing may be so but that it is so and that the belief of a future state is a rational belief founded upon facts visible in the creation for it is not more difficult to believe that we shall exist hereafter in a better state informed than at present then that a worm should become a butterfly and quit the dung hill for the atmosphere if we did not know it is a fact as to the doubtful jargon ascribed to paul in the 15th chapter of one caranthians which makes part of the burial service of some christian sectaries it is as destitute of meaning as the tolling of a bell at a funeral it explains nothing to the understanding it illustrates nothing to the imagination but leaves the reader to find any meaning if he can all flesh says he is not the same flesh there is one flesh of men another of beasts another of fishes and another of birds and what then nothing a cook could have said as much there are also says he bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is another and what then nothing and what is the difference nothing that he is told there is says he one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars and what then nothing except that he says that one star differeth from another star in glory instead of distance and he might as well have told us that the moon did not shine so bright as the sun all this is nothing better than the jargon of a conjurer who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who have come to have their fortunes told priests and conjurers are of the same trade 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 as 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 arc 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 it 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 ethanasia's lived at the time the new testament was formed footnote ethanasia's died according to the church chronology in the year 371 end of footnote 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 ethanasia's 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 hear 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 the evidence convicts him of perjury and equally destroys reputation should the bible and the new testament hereafter fall it is not that i 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 end of section 19 this is a liber vox recording all liber vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit liber vox.org recording by steve brown the age of reason by thomas pain part two 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 set 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 the 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 things so revealed if anything ever was revealed and which by the by 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 imposter 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 motive speech in any language or by any kind of vision or appearance or by any means which our senses are capable of receiving otherwise damned by the universal display of himself in the works of the creation and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves too 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 the 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 then that we permitted one such imposter and monster as moses joshua samuel and the bible prophets to come with a 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 was 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 revelation 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 12 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 faggot to and mohammed could not do it sooner by the same spirit that peter cut off the ear of the high priest 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 preached 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 they 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 repine cruelty and murder what is it that the testament teaches us to believe that the almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married and the belief of his 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 25 verse 21 if thine enemy be hungry give him bread to eat and if he be thirsty give him water to drink see footnote 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 men into a spaniel 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 its 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 the stake 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 us and it contributes also to our own tranquility that we put the best construction upon a thing that it will bear but even this erroneous motive in him it 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 forebearing with each other for he forebears 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 imposter 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 our belief would have no merit and our best actions no virtue footnote 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 solin on the question which is the most perfectly popular government has never been exceeded by anyone since his time as containing a maximum of political morality that says he where the last injury done to the meanest individual is considered as an insult