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PART SECOND. Excerpts.
IT has often been said, that anything may be proved from the Bible,
but before anything can be admitted as proved by the Bible, the
Bible itself must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be not
true, or the truth of it be doubtful, it ceases to have authority,
and cannot be admitted as proof of anything.
There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express
command of God, that are as shocking to humanity and to every idea
we have of moral justice as anything done by Robespierre, by Carrier,
by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East
Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read
in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites)
came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as history itself
shows, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations
to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they
utterly destroyed men, women, and children; that they left not
a soul to breathe-
To charge the commission of acts upon the Almighty, which, in
their own nature, and by every rule of moral justice, are crimes,
as all assassination is, and more especially the assassination
of infants, is matter of serious concern. The Bible tells us, that
those assassinations were done by the express command of God. To
believe, therefore, the Bible to be true, we must unbelieve all
our belief in the moral justice of God; for wherein could crying
or smiling infants offend?
But if it should be found that the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua,
and Samuel, were not written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, every
part of the authority and authenticity of those books is gone at
once; for there can be no such thing as forged or invented testimony;
neither can there be anonymous testimony, more especially as to
things naturally incredible, such as that of talking with God face
to face, or that of the sun and moon standing still at the command
of a man.
. As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we
credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible,
and no farther; for if we do, we must believe the two miracles
which Tacitus relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing
a lame man and a blind man, in just the same manner as the same
things are told of Jesus Christ by his historians. We must also
believe the miracle cited by Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia
opening to let Alexander and his army pass, as is related of the
Red Sea in Exodus. These miracles are quite as well authenticated
as the Bible miracles, and yet we do not believe them; consequently
the degree of evidence necessary to establish our belief of things
naturally incredible, whether in the Bible or elsewhere, is far
greater than that which obtains our belief to natural and probable
things; and therefore the advocates for the Bible have no claim
to our belief of the Bible, because that we believe things stated
in other ancient writings; since we believe the things stated in
these writings no further than they are probable and credible,
or because they are self-evident, like Euclid; or admire them because
they are elegant, like Homer; or approve of them because they are
sedate, like Plato or judicious, like Aristotle.
People in general do not know what wickedness there is in this
pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they
take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good;
they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas
they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which
they have been taught to believe was written by his authority.
Good heavens! it is quite another thing; it is a book of lies,
wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy than
to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty?
The evidence I have produced, and shall produce in the course
of this work, to prove that the Bible is without authority, will,
while it wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve and tranquilize
the minds of millions; it will free them from all those hard thoughts
of the Almighty which priestcraft and the Bible had infused into
their minds, and which stood in everlasting opposition to all their
ideas of his moral justice and benevolence. "
Tomas Paine speaking of the passage in Isaiah about a virgin conceiving
and the story in Matthew:
"Here, then, is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this
child and this virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion
of this story, that the book of Matthew, and the impudence and
sordid interests of priests in later times, have founded a theory
which they call the Gospel; and have applied this story to signify
the person they call Jesus Christ, begotten, they say, by a ghost,
whom they call holy, on the body of a woman, engaged in marriage,
and afterward married, whom they call a virgin, 700 years after
this foolish story was told; a theory which, speaking for myself,
I hesitate not to disbelieve, and to say, is as fabulous and as
false as God is true.*
*In the 14th verse of the 7th chapter of Isaiah, it is said that
the child should be called Immanuel; but this name was not given
to either of the children otherwise than as a character which the
word signifies. That of the prophetess was called Maher-shalal-hash-baz,
and that of Mary was called Jesus.
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 impious
pretence (Luke, chap. i., ver. 35), that "the Holy Ghost shall
come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee." Notwithstanding
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.
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!
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.
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 those 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 purposes the writers never thought of.
When a priest quotes any of those passages, he unriddles it agreeably
to his own views, 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 strumpet; so well do they agree in their explanations.
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 as Mary, 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 Crusoe,
not a word of which is true, were suggested by the case of Alexander
Selkirk.
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 is already stated in the former part of the Age of
Reason, that the Christian faith is built upon the heathen mythology.
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, indecent and contradictory
tales?
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 of 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, and proves
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
prattling 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 only, 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 crim.
con. against the rival interlopers; whether they remained on earth,
and followed their former occupation of preaching or working; or
whether they died again, or 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 said upon the subject, nor these
saints have anything to tell us! Had it been the prophets who (as
we are told) had formerly 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"
Writing about the first part of "The Age of Reason" that
he wrote in prison without a Bible, and so from memory and found
later to be accurate:
…."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. "
"First, that the writers could not have been eye-witnesses
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.
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
ascribed to 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 three hundred 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 person.
…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.* But the interest of the
church, with the assistance of the fagot, bore down the opposition,
and at last suppressed all investigation. Miracles followed upon
miracles, if we will believe them, and men were taught to say they
believed whether they believed or not. But (by way of throwing
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.
In the former part of the Age of Reason I have called the creation
the only true and real word of God; and 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 and form than at present, than that a worm should
become a butterfly, and quit the dunghill for the atmosphere, if
we did not know it as a fact.
The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the
only reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists
than Christians. They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and
they call the scriptures a dead letter. Had they called them by
a worse name, they had been nearer the truth.
It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the
Creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial miseries,
and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among mankind,
to expel all ideas of revealed religion, as a dangerous heresy
and an impious fraud. What is that we have learned from this pretended
thing called revealed religion? Nothing that is useful to man,
and everything that is dishonorable to his maker. What is it the
Bible (the Old Testament) teaches us?- rapine, cruelty, and murder.
What is it the (New) Testament teaches us?- to believe that the
Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married,
and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly
scattered in these books, they make no part of this pretended thing,
revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience,
and the bonds by which society is held together, and without which
it cannot exist, and are nearly the same in all religions and in
all societies. The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject,
and where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous.
The doctrine of not retaliating injuries is much better expressed
in Proverbs, which is a collection as well from the Gentiles as
the Jews, than it is in the Testament. It is there said, Proverbs
xxv, ver. 21, "If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to
eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink;"* but
when it is said, as in the Testament, "If a man smite thee
on the right cheek, turn to him the other also;" it is assassinating
the dignity of forbearance, and sinking man into a spaniel.
The answer of Solon on the question, Which is the most perfect
popular government? has never been exceeded by any one since
his time, as containing a maxim of political morality. "That," says
he, "where the least injury done to the meanest individual,
is considered as an insult on the whole constitution." Solon
lived about 500 years before Christ.
. We imitate the moral character of the Creator by forbearing
with each other, for he forbears with all; but this doctrine would
imply that he loved man, not in proportion as he was good, but
as he was bad.
If we consider the nature of our condition here, we must see there
is no occasion for such a thing as revealed religion. What is it
we want to know? Does not the creation, the universe we behold,
preach to us the existence of an Almighty Power that governs and
regulates the whole? And is not the evidence that this creation
holds out to our senses infinitely stronger than anything we can
read in a book that any impostor might make and call the word of
God? As for morality, the knowledge of it exists in every man's
conscience.
Deism, then, teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived,
all that is necessary or proper to be known. The creation is the
Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator
himself, the certainty of his existence and the immutability of
his power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries.
The probability that we may be called to account hereafter will,
to a reflecting mind, have the influence of belief; for it is not
our belief or disbelief that can make or unmake the fact. As this
is the state we are in, and which it is proper we should be in,
as free agents, it is the fool only, and not the philosopher, or
even the prudent man, that would live as if there were no God.
But the belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the
strange fable of the Christian creed, and with the wild adventures
related in the Bible, and of the obscurity and obscene nonsense
of the Testament, that the mind of man is bewildered as in a fog.
Viewing all these things in a confused mass, he confounds fact
with fable; and as he cannot believe all, he feels a disposition
to reject all. But the belief of a God is a belief distinct from
all other things, and ought not to be confounded with any. The
notion of a Trinity of Gods has enfeebled the belief of one God.
A multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief; and in
proportion as anything is divided it is weakened.
Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form, instead of fact-
of notion, instead of principles; morality is banished to make
room for an imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its
origin in a supposed debauchery; a man is preached instead of God;
an execution is an object for gratitude; the preachers daub themselves
with the blood, like a troop of assassins, and pretend to admire
the brilliancy it gives them; they preach a humdrum sermon on the
merits of the execution; then praise Jesus Christ for being executed,
and condemn the Jews for doing it. A man, by hearing all this nonsense
lumped and preached together, confounds the God of the creation
with the imagined God of the Christians, and lives as if there
were none.
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there
is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man,
more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than
this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible
to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the
heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine
of power it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of
wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good
of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.
The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in
it every evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple Deism.
It must have been the first, and will probably be the last, that
man believes. But pure and simple Deism does not answer the purpose
of despotic governments. They cannot lay hold of religion as an
engine, but by mixing it with human inventions, and making their
own authority a part; neither does it answer the avarice of priests,
but by incorporating themselves and their functions with it, and
becoming, like the government, a party in the system. It is this
that forms the otherwise mysterious connection of church and state;
the church humane, and the state tyrannic.
Were man impressed as fully and as strongly as he ought to be
with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by
the force of that belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself,
and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either.
To give this belief the full opportunity of force, it is necessary
that it acts alone. This is Deism. But when, according to the Christian
Trinitarian scheme, one part of God is represented by a dying man,
and another part called the Holy Ghost, by a flying pigeon, it
is impossible that belief can attach itself to such wild conceits.*
We can know God only through his works. We cannot have a conception
of any one attribute but by following some principle that leads
to it. We have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not
the means of comprehending something of its immensity. We can have
no idea of his wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which
it acts. The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for
the Creator of man is the Creator of science; and it is through
that medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face.
The Bible of the creation is inexhaustible in texts. Every part
of science, whether connected with the geometry of the universe,
with the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties
of inanimate matter, is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy-
for gratitude as for human improvement. It will perhaps be said,
that if such a revolution in the system of religion takes place,
every preacher ought to be a philosopher. Most certainly; and every
house of devotion a school of science.
It has been by wandering from the immutable laws of science, and
the right use of reason, and setting up an invented thing called
revealed religion, that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have
been formed of the Almighty. The Jews have made him the assassin
of the human species to make room for the religion of the Jews.
The Christians have made him the murderer of himself and the founder
of a new religion, to supersede and expel the Jewish religion.
And to find pretence and admission for these things, they must
have supposed his power or his wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable;
and the changeableness of the will is imperfection of the judgement.
The philosopher knows that the laws of the Creator have never changed
with respect either to the principles of science, or the properties
of matter. Why, then, is it supposed they have changed with respect
to man? "
The authors of this web site have now come to agree with Thomas
Paine's views, after three years of searching and researching
for the truth.
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