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THE AGE OF REASON - First Part
by Thomas Paine
TO MY FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
I PUT the following work under your protection. It contains my opinions upon Religion. You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who
denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall. Your affectionate friend and fellow-citizen,
THOMAS PAINE
Luxembourg, 8th Pluvoise,
Second Year of the French Republic, one and indivisible.
January 27, O. S. 1794.
PART FIRST.
THE AGE OF REASON — PART I
CHAPTER I.
THE AUTHOR’S PROFESSION OF FAITH.
It has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my
thoughts upon religion; I am well aware of the difficulties that attend
the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to a more
advanced period of life. I intended it to be the last offering I should
make to my fellow-citizens of all nations, and that at a time when the
purity of the motive that induced me to it could not admit of a
question, even by those who might disapprove the work.
The circumstance that has now taken place in France, of the total
abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of everything
appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles
of faith, has not only precipitated my intention, but rendered a work
of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest, in the general wreck of
superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology, we
lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true.
As several of my colleagues, and others of my fellow-citizens of
France, have given me the example of making their voluntary and
individual profession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do this
with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man
communicates with itself.
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this
life.
I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties
consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our
fellow-creatures happy.
But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in
addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the
things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the
Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the
Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my
own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or
Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify
and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe
otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine.
But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally
faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in
disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not
believe.
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express
it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far
corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his
professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared
himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade
of a priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify himself for
that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive anything more
destructive to morality than this?
Soon after I had published the pamphlet COMMON SENSE, in America, I saw
the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government
would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. The
adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it had taken place,
whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited,
by pains and penalties, every discussion upon established creeds, and
upon first principles of religion, that until the system of government
should be changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and
openly before the world; but that whenever this should be done, a
revolution in the system of religion would follow. Human inventions and
priest-craft would be detected; and man would return to the pure,
unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God, and no more.
CHAPTER II.
OF MISSIONS AND REVELATIONS.
Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending
some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The
Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their
apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God
was not open to every man alike.
Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation,
or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by
God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God
came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God
(the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches
accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them
all.
As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I
proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word
‘revelation.’ Revelation when applied to religion, means something
communicated immediately from God to man.
No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a
communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case,
that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed
to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he
tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth,
and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is
revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and,
consequently, they are not obliged to believe it.
It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation
that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing.
Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After
this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a
revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to
believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same
manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his
word for it that it was made to him.
When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables
of the commandments from the hand of God, they were not obliged to
believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his
telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some
historian telling me so, the commandments carrying no internal evidence
of divinity with them. They contain some good moral precepts such as
any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could produce
himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention. [NOTE:
It is, however, necessary to except the declamation which says that God
‘visits the sins of the fathers upon the children’. This is contrary to
every principle of moral justice.—Author.]
When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven, and brought to
Mahomet by an angel, the account comes to near the same kind of hearsay
evidence and second hand authority as the former. I did not see the
angel myself, and therefore I have a right not to believe it.
When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave
out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and
that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I
have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a
much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not
even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter
themselves. It is only reported by others that they said so. It is
hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such
evidence.
It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given
to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born when the
heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and
that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story.
Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology
were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new
thing at that time to believe a man to have been celestially begotten;
the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar
opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with
hundreds; the story therefore had nothing in it either new, wonderful,
or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed
among the people called Gentiles, or mythologists, and it was those
people only that believed it. The Jews, who had kept strictly to the
belief of one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen
mythology, never credited the story.
It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian
Church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct
incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed
founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then
followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which
was about twenty or thirty thousand. The statue of Mary succeeded the
statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes changed into the
canonization of saints. The Mythologists had gods for everything; the
Christian Mythologists had saints for everything. The church became as
crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome
was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the
idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of
power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to
abolish the amphibious fraud.
CHAPTER III.
CONCERNING THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST, AND HIS HISTORY.
Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant
disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous
and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practiced was of
the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality had
been preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many
years before, by the Quakers since, and by many good men in all ages,
it has not been exceeded by any.
Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or
anything else. Not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his
writing. The history of him is altogether the work of other people; and
as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the
necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. His historians, having
brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to
take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story
must have fallen to the ground.
The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told, exceeds
everything that went before it. The first part, that of the miraculous
conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and therefore
the tellers of this part of the story had this advantage, that though
they might not be credited, they could not be detected. They could not
be expected to prove it, because it was not one of those things that
admitted of proof, and it was impossible that the person of whom it was
told could prove it himself.
But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension
through the air, is a thing very different, as to the evidence it
admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. The
resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place,
admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension
of a balloon, or the sun at noon day, to all Jerusalem at least. A
thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof
and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as the
public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence that
could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the
ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small
number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as
proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of
the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did
not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe
without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will
I; and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other
person, as for Thomas.
It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The
story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of
fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it. Who were the authors
of it is as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us to be
assured that the books in which the account is related were written by
the persons whose names they bear. The best surviving evidence we now
have respecting this affair is the Jews. They are regularly descended
from the people who lived in the time this resurrection and ascension
is said to have happened, and they say ‘it is not true.’ It has long
appeared to me a strange inconsistency to cite the Jews as a proof of
the truth of the story. It is just the same as if a man were to say, I
will prove the truth of what I have told you, by producing the people
who say it is false.
That such a person as Jesus Christ existed, and that he was crucified,
which was the mode of execution at that day, are historical relations
strictly within the limits of probability. He preached most excellent
morality, and the equality of man; but he preached also against the
corruptions and avarice of the Jewish priests, and this brought upon
him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of priest-hood. The
accusation which those priests brought against him was that of sedition
and conspiracy against the Roman government, to which the Jews were
then subject and tributary; and it is not improbable that the Roman
government might have some secret apprehension of the effects of his
doctrine as well as the Jewish priests; neither is it improbable that
Jesus Christ had in contemplation the delivery of the Jewish nation
from the bondage of the Romans. Between the two, however, this virtuous
reformer and revolutionist lost his life.
CHAPTER IV.
OF THE BASES OF CHRISTIANITY.
It is upon this plain narrative of facts, together with another case I
am going to mention, that the Christian mythologists, calling
themselves the Christian Church, have erected their fable, which for
absurdity and extravagance is not exceeded by anything that is to be
found in the mythology of the ancients.
The ancient mythologists tell us that the race of Giants made war
against Jupiter, and that one of them threw a hundred rocks against him
at one throw; that Jupiter defeated him with thunder, and confined him
afterwards under Mount Etna; and that every time the Giant turns
himself, Mount Etna belches fire. It is here easy to see that the
circumstance of the mountain, that of its being a volcano, suggested
the idea of the fable; and that the fable is made to fit and wind
itself up with that circumstance.
The Christian mythologists tell that their Satan made war against the
Almighty, who defeated him, and confined him afterwards, not under a
mountain, but in a pit. It is here easy to see that the first fable
suggested the idea of the second; for the fable of Jupiter and the
Giants was told many hundred years before that of Satan.
Thus far the ancient and the Christian mythologists differ very little
from each other. But the latter have contrived to carry the matter much
farther. They have contrived to connect the fabulous part of the story
of Jesus Christ with the fable originating from Mount Etna; and, in
order to make all the parts of the story tie together, they have taken
to their aid the traditions of the Jews; for the Christian mythology is
made up partly from the ancient mythology, and partly from the Jewish
traditions.
The Christian mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit, were
obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is
then introduced into the garden of Eden in the shape of a snake, or a
serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar conversation with
Eve, who is no ways surprised to hear a snake talk; and the issue of
this tete-a-tate is, that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the
eating of that apple damns all mankind.
After giving Satan this triumph over the whole creation, one would have
supposed that the church mythologists would have been kind enough to
send him back again to the pit, or, if they had not done this, that
they would have put a mountain upon him, (for they say that their faith
can remove a mountain) or have put him under a mountain, as the former
mythologists had done, to prevent his getting again among the women,
and doing more mischief. But instead of this, they leave him at large,
without even obliging him to give his parole. The secret of which is,
that they could not do without him; and after being at the trouble of
making him, they bribed him to stay. They promised him ALL the Jews,
ALL the Turks by anticipation, nine-tenths of the world beside, and
Mahomet into the bargain. After this, who can doubt the bountifulness
of the Christian Mythology?
Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in heaven, in which none
of the combatants could be either killed or wounded—put Satan into the
pit—let him out again—given him a triumph over the whole
creation—damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, there Christian
mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together. They represent
this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both God and
man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on purpose to be
sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing had eaten an
apple.
CHAPTER V.
EXAMINATION IN DETAIL OF THE PRECEDING BASES.
Putting aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity,
or detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to an
examination of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a story more
derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom, more
contradictory to his power, than this story is.
In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the inventors were
under the necessity of giving to the being whom they call Satan a power
equally as great, if not greater, than they attribute to the Almighty.
They have not only given him the power of liberating himself from the
pit, after what they call his fall, but they have made that power
increase afterwards to infinity. Before this fall they represent him
only as an angel of limited existence, as they represent the rest.
After his fall, he becomes, by their account, omnipresent. He exists
everywhere, and at the same time. He occupies the whole immensity of
space.
Not content with this deification of Satan, they represent him as
defeating by stratagem, in the shape of an animal of the creation, all
the power and wisdom of the Almighty. They represent him as having
compelled the Almighty to the direct necessity either of surrendering
the whole of the creation to the government and sovereignty of this
Satan, or of capitulating for its redemption by coming down upon earth,
and exhibiting himself upon a cross in the shape of a man.
Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is, had
they represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit himself on
a cross in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his new
transgression, the story would have been less absurd, less
contradictory. But, instead of this they make the transgressor triumph,
and the Almighty fall.
That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived very
good lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime) is what I
have no doubt of. In the first place, they were educated to believe it,
and they would have believed anything else in the same manner. There
are also many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they
conceived to be the infinite love of God to man, in making a sacrifice
of himself, that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred
them from examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the story.
The more unnatural anything is, the more is it capable of becoming the
object of dismal admiration. [NOTE: The French work has “blind and”
preceding dismal.—Editor.]
CHAPTER VI.
OF THE TRUE THEOLOGY.
But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not
present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair
creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born—a world
furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up
the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance?
Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes
on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future,
nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects
than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so
intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the
Creator?
I know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it would be
paying too great a compliment to their credulity to forbear it on that
account. The times and the subject demand it to be done. The suspicion
that the theory of what is called the Christian church is fabulous, is
becoming very extensive in all countries; and it will be a consolation
to men staggering under that suspicion, and doubting what to believe
and what to disbelieve, to see the subject freely investigated. I
therefore pass on to an examination of the books called the Old and the
New Testament.
CHAPTER VII.
EXAMINATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
These books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelations,
(which, by the bye, is a book of riddles that requires a revelation to
explain it) are, we are told, the word of God. It is, therefore, proper
for us to know who told us so, that we may know what credit to give to
the report. The answer to this question is, that nobody can tell,
except that we tell one another so. The case, however, historically
appears to be as follows:
When the church mythologists established their system, they collected
all the writings they could find, and managed them as they pleased. It
is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the
writings as now appear under the name of the Old and the New Testament,
are in the same state in which those collectors say they found them; or
whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up.
Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of the
collection they had made, should be the WORD OF GOD, and which should
not. They rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful, such as
the books called the Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority of
votes, were voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all
the people since calling themselves Christians had believed otherwise;
for the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other. Who the
people were that did all this, we know nothing of. They call themselves
by the general name of the Church; and this is all we know of the
matter.
As we have no other external evidence or authority for believing these
books to be the word of God, than what I have mentioned, which is no
evidence or authority at all, I come, in the next place, to examine the
internal evidence contained in the books themselves.
In the former part of this essay, I have spoken of revelation. I now
proceed further with that subject, for the purpose of applying it to
the books in question.
Revelation is a communication of something, which the person, to whom
that thing is revealed, did not know before. For if I have done a
thing, or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have done
it, or seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it.
Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth of
which man is himself the actor or the witness; and consequently all the
historical and anecdotal part of the Bible, which is almost the whole
of it, is not within the meaning and compass of the word revelation,
and, therefore, is not the word of God.
When Samson ran off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did so,
(and whether he did or not is nothing to us,) or when he visited his
Delilah, or caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has revelation
to do with these things? If they were facts, he could tell them
himself; or his secretary, if he kept one, could write them, if they
were worth either telling or writing; and if they were fictions,
revelation could not make them true; and whether true or not, we are
neither the better nor the wiser for knowing them. When we contemplate
the immensity of that Being, who directs and governs the
incomprehensible WHOLE, of which the utmost ken of human sight can
discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry
stories the word of God.
As to the account of the creation, with which the book of Genesis
opens, it has all the appearance of being a tradition which the
Israelites had among them before they came into Egypt; and after their
departure from that country, they put it at the head of their history,
without telling, as it is most probable that they did not know, how
they came by it. The manner in which the account opens, shows it to be
traditionary. It begins abruptly. It is nobody that speaks. It is
nobody that hears. It is addressed to nobody. It has neither first,
second, nor third person. It has every criterion of being a tradition.
It has no voucher. Moses does not take it upon himself by introducing
it with the formality that he uses on other occasions, such as that of
saying, “The Lords spake unto Moses, saying.”
Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the creation, I am at a
loss to conceive. Moses, I believe, was too good a judge of such
subjects to put his name to that account. He had been educated among
the Egyptians, who were a people as well skilled in science, and
particularly in astronomy, as any people of their day; and the silence
and caution that Moses observes, in not authenticating the account, is
a good negative evidence that he neither told it nor believed it.—The
case is, that every nation of people has been world-makers, and the
Israelites had as much right to set up the trade of world-making as any
of the rest; and as Moses was not an Israelite, he might not chose to
contradict the tradition. The account, however, is harmless; and this
is more than can be said for many other parts of the Bible.
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the
cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with
which more than half the Bible [NOTE: It must be borne in mind that by
the “Bible” Paine always means the Old Testament alone.—Editor.] is
filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a
demon, than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has
served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I
sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.
We scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but what
deserves either our abhorrence or our contempt, till we come to the
miscellaneous parts of the Bible. In the anonymous publications, the
Psalms, and the Book of Job, more particularly in the latter, we find a
great deal of elevated sentiment reverentially expressed of the power
and benignity of the Almighty; but they stand on no higher rank than
many other compositions on similar subjects, as well before that time
as since.
The Proverbs which are said to be Solomon’s, though most probably a
collection, (because they discover a knowledge of life, which his
situation excluded him from knowing) are an instructive table of
ethics. They are inferior in keenness to the proverbs of the Spaniards,
and not more wise and economical than those of the American Franklin.
All the remaining parts of the Bible, generally known by the name of
the Prophets, are the works of the Jewish poets and itinerant
preachers, who mixed poetry, anecdote, and devotion together—and those
works still retain the air and style of poetry, though in translation.
[NOTE: As there are many readers who do not see that a composition is
poetry, unless it be in rhyme, it is for their information that I add
this note.
Poetry consists principally in two things—imagery and composition. The
composition of poetry differs from that of prose in the manner of
mixing long and short syllables together. Take a long syllable out of a
line of poetry, and put a short one in the room of it, or put a long
syllable where a short one should be, and that line will lose its
poetical harmony. It will have an effect upon the line like that of
misplacing a note in a song.
The imagery in those books called the Prophets appertains altogether to
poetry. It is fictitious, and often extravagant, and not admissible in
any other kind of writing than poetry.
To show that these writings are composed in poetical numbers, I will
take ten syllables, as they stand in the book, and make a line of the
same number of syllables, (heroic measure) that shall rhyme with the
last word. It will then be seen that the composition of those books is
poetical measure. The instance I shall first produce is from Isaiah:—
“Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth
’T is God himself that calls attention forth.
Another instance I shall quote is from the mournful Jeremiah, to which
I shall add two other lines, for the purpose of carrying out the
figure, and showing the intention of the poet.
“O, that mine head were waters and mine eyes
Were fountains flowing like the liquid skies;
Then would I give the mighty flood release
And weep a deluge for the human race.”—Author.]
There is not, throughout the whole book called the Bible, any word that
describes to us what we call a poet, nor any word that describes what
we call poetry. The case is, that the word prophet, to which a later
times have affixed a new idea, was the Bible word for poet, and the
word ‘propesying’ meant the art of making poetry. It also meant the art
of playing poetry to a tune upon any instrument of music.
We read of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns—of prophesying
with harps, with psalteries, with cymbals, and with every other
instrument of music then in fashion. Were we now to speak of
prophesying with a fiddle, or with a pipe and tabor, the expression
would have no meaning, or would appear ridiculous, and to some people
contemptuous, because we have changed the meaning of the word.
We are told of Saul being among the prophets, and also that he
prophesied; but we are not told what they prophesied, nor what he
prophesied. The case is, there was nothing to tell; for these prophets
were a company of musicians and poets, and Saul joined in the concert,
and this was called prophesying.
The account given of this affair in the book called Samuel, is, that
Saul met a company of prophets; a whole company of them! coming down
with a psaltery, a tabret, a pipe, and a harp, and that they
prophesied, and that he prophesied with them. But it appears
afterwards, that Saul prophesied badly, that is, he performed his part
badly; for it is said that an “evil spirit from God [NOTE: As those men
who call themselves divines and commentators are very fond of puzzling
one another, I leave them to contest the meaning of the first part of
the phrase, that of an evil spirit of God. I keep to my text. I keep to
the meaning of the word prophesy.—Author.] came upon Saul, and he
prophesied.”
Now, were there no other passage in the book called the Bible, than
this, to demonstrate to us that we have lost the original meaning of
the word prophesy, and substituted another meaning in its place, this
alone would be sufficient; for it is impossible to use and apply the
word prophesy, in the place it is here used and applied, if we give to
it the sense which later times have affixed to it. The manner in which
it is here used strips it of all religious meaning, and shews that a
man might then be a prophet, or he might Prophesy, as he may now be a
poet or a musician, without any regard to the morality or the
immorality of his character. The word was originally a term of science,
promiscuously applied to poetry and to music, and not restricted to any
subject upon which poetry and music might be exercised.
Deborah and Barak are called prophets, not because they predicted
anything, but because they composed the poem or song that bears their
name, in celebration of an act already done. David is ranked among the
prophets, for he was a musician, and was also reputed to be (though
perhaps very erroneously) the author of the Psalms. But Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob are not called prophets; it does not appear from any accounts
we have, that they could either sing, play music, or make poetry.
We are told of the greater and the lesser prophets. They might as well
tell us of the greater and the lesser God; for there cannot be degrees
in prophesying consistently with its modern sense. But there are
degrees in poetry, and there-fore the phrase is reconcilable to the
case, when we understand by it the greater and the lesser poets.
It is altogether unnecessary, after this, to offer any observations
upon what those men, styled prophets, have written. The axe goes at
once to the root, by showing that the original meaning of the word has
been mistaken, and consequently all the inferences that have been drawn
from those books, the devotional respect that has been paid to them,
and the laboured commentaries that have been written upon them, under
that mistaken meaning, are not worth disputing about.—In many things,
however, the writings of the Jewish poets deserve a better fate than
that of being bound up, as they now are, with the trash that
accompanies them, under the abused name of the Word of God.
If we permit ourselves to conceive right ideas of things, we must
necessarily affix the idea, not only of unchangeableness, but of the
utter impossibility of any change taking place, by any means or
accident whatever, in that which we would honour with the name of the
Word of God; and therefore the Word of God cannot exist in any written
or human language.
The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is
subject, the want of an universal language which renders translation
necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the
mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of
wilful alteration, are of themselves evidences that human language,
whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of
God.—The Word of God exists in something else.
Did the book called the Bible excel in purity of ideas and expression
all the books now extant in the world, I would not take it for my rule
of faith, as being the Word of God; because the possibility would
nevertheless exist of my being imposed upon. But when I see throughout
the greatest part of this book scarcely anything but a history of the
grossest vices, and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible
tales, I cannot dishonour my Creator by calling it by his name.
CHAPTER VIII.
OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
Thus much for the Bible; I now go on to the book called the New
Testament. The new Testament! that is, the ‘new’ Will, as if there
could be two wills of the Creator.
Had it been the object or the intention of Jesus Christ to establish a
new religion, he would undoubtedly have written the system himself, or
procured it to be written in his life time. But there is no publication
extant authenticated with his name. All the books called the New
Testament were written after his death. He was a Jew by birth and by
profession; and he was the son of God in like manner that every other
person is; for the Creator is the Father of All.
The first four books, called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, do not give
a history of the life of Jesus Christ, but only detached anecdotes of
him. It appears from these books, that the whole time of his being a
preacher was not more than eighteen months; and it was only during this
short time that those men became acquainted with him. They make mention
of him at the age of twelve years, sitting, they say, among the Jewish
doctors, asking and answering them questions. As this was several years
before their acquaintance with him began, it is most probable they had
this anecdote from his parents. From this time there is no account of
him for about sixteen years. Where he lived, or how he employed himself
during this interval, is not known. Most probably he was working at his
father’s trade, which was that of a carpenter. It does not appear that
he had any school education, and the probability is, that he could not
write, for his parents were extremely poor, as appears from their not
being able to pay for a bed when he was born. [NOTE: One of the few
errors traceable to Paine’s not having a Bible at hand while writing
Part I. There is no indication that the family was poor, but the
reverse may in fact be inferred.—Editor.]
It is somewhat curious that the three persons whose names are the most
universally recorded were of very obscure parentage. Moses was a
foundling; Jesus Christ was born in a stable; and Mahomet was a mule
driver. The first and the last of these men were founders of different
systems of religion; but Jesus Christ founded no new system. He called
men to the practice of moral virtues, and the belief of one God. The
great trait in his character is philanthropy.
The manner in which he was apprehended shows that he was not much
known, at that time; and it shows also that the meetings he then held
with his followers were in secret; and that he had given over or
suspended preaching publicly. Judas could no otherways betray him than
by giving information where he was, and pointing him out to the
officers that went to arrest him; and the reason for employing and
paying Judas to do this could arise only from the causes already
mentioned, that of his not being much known, and living concealed.
The idea of his concealment, not only agrees very ill with his reputed
divinity, but associates with it something of pusillanimity; and his
being betrayed, or in other words, his being apprehended, on the
information of one of his followers, shows that he did not intend to be
apprehended, and consequently that he did not intend to be crucified.
The Christian mythologists tell us that Christ died for the sins of the
world, and that he came on Purpose to die. Would it not then have been
the same if he had died of a fever or of the small pox, of old age, or
of anything else?
The declaratory sentence which, they say, was passed upon Adam, in case
he ate of the apple, was not, that thou shalt surely be crucified, but,
thou shale surely die. The sentence was death, and not the manner of
dying. Crucifixion, therefore, or any other particular manner of dying,
made no part of the sentence that Adam was to suffer, and consequently,
even upon their own tactic, it could make no part of the sentence that
Christ was to suffer in the room of Adam. A fever would have done as
well as a cross, if there was any occasion for either.
This sentence of death, which, they tell us, was thus passed upon Adam,
must either have meant dying naturally, that is, ceasing to live, or
have meant what these mythologists call damnation; and consequently,
the act of dying on the part of Jesus Christ, must, according to their
system, apply as a prevention to one or other of these two things
happening to Adam and to us.
That it does not prevent our dying is evident, because we all die; and
if their accounts of longevity be true, men die faster since the
crucifixion than before: and with respect to the second explanation,
(including with it the natural death of Jesus Christ as a substitute
for the eternal death or damnation of all mankind,) it is impertinently
representing the Creator as coming off, or revoking the sentence, by a
pun or a quibble upon the word death. That manufacturer of, quibbles,
St. Paul, if he wrote the books that bear his name, has helped this
quibble on by making another quibble upon the word Adam. He makes there
to be two Adams; the one who sins in fact, and suffers by proxy; the
other who sins by proxy, and suffers in fact. A religion thus
interlarded with quibble, subterfuge, and pun, has a tendency to
instruct its professors in the practice of these arts. They acquire the
habit without being aware of the cause.
If Jesus Christ was the being which those mythologists tell us he was,
and that he came into this world to suffer, which is a word they
sometimes use instead of ‘to die,’ the only real suffering he could
have endured would have been ‘to live.’ His existence here was a state
of exilement or transportation from heaven, and the way back to his
original country was to die.—In fine, everything in this strange system
is the reverse of what it pretends to be. It is the reverse of truth,
and I become so tired of examining into its inconsistencies and
absurdities, that I hasten to the conclusion of it, in order to proceed
to something better.
How much, or what parts of the books called the New Testament, were
written by the persons whose names they bear, is what we can know
nothing of, neither are we certain in what language they were
originally written. The matters they now contain may be classed under
two heads: anecdote, and epistolary correspondence.
The four books already mentioned, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are
altogether anecdotal. They relate events after they had taken place.
They tell what Jesus Christ did and said, and what others did and said
to him; and in several instances they relate the same event
differently. Revelation is necessarily out of the question with respect
to those books; not only because of the disagreement of the writers,
but because revelation cannot be applied to the relating of facts by
the persons who saw them done, nor to the relating or recording of any
discourse or conversation by those who heard it. The book called the
Acts of the Apostles (an anonymous work) belongs also to the anecdotal
part.
All the other parts of the New Testament, except the book of enigmas,
called the Revelations, are a collection of letters under the name of
epistles; and the forgery of letters has been such a common practice in
the world, that the probability is at least equal, whether they are
genuine or forged. One thing, however, is much less equivocal, which
is, that out of the matters contained in those books, together with the
assistance of some old stories, the church has set up a system of
religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name
it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended
imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.
The invention of a purgatory, and of the releasing of souls therefrom,
by prayers, bought of the church with money; the selling of pardons,
dispensations, and indulgences, are revenue laws, without bearing that
name or carrying that appearance. But the case nevertheless is, that
those things derive their origin from the proxysm of the crucifixion,
and the theory deduced therefrom, which was, that one person could
stand in the place of another, and could perform meritorious services
for him. The probability, therefore, is, that the whole theory or
doctrine of what is called the redemption (which is said to have been
accomplished by the act of one person in the room of another) was
originally fabricated on purpose to bring forward and build all those
secondary and pecuniary redemptions upon; and that the passages in the
books upon which the idea of theory of redemption is built, have been
manufactured and fabricated for that purpose. Why are we to give this
church credit, when she tells us that those books are genuine in every
part, any more than we give her credit for everything else she has told
us; or for the miracles she says she has performed? That she could
fabricate writings is certain, because she could write; and the
composition of the writings in question, is of that kind that anybody
might do it; and that she did fabricate them is not more inconsistent
with probability, than that she should tell us, as she has done, that
she could and did work miracles.
Since, then, no external evidence can, at this long distance of time,
be produced to prove whether the church fabricated the doctrine called
redemption or not, (for such evidence, whether for or against, would be
subject to the same suspicion of being fabricated,) the case can only
be referred to the internal evidence which the thing carries of itself;
and this affords a very strong presumption of its being a fabrication.
For the internal evidence is, that the theory or doctrine of redemption
has for its basis an idea of pecuniary justice, and not that of moral
justice.
If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me
in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it
for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case
is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even
if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is
to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself.
It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.
This single reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is
founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which
another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again
with the system of second redemptions, obtained through the means of
money given to the church for pardons, the probability is that the same
persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories; and
that, in truth, there is no such thing as redemption; that it is
fabulous; and that man stands in the same relative condition with his
Maker he ever did stand, since man existed; and that it is his greatest
consolation to think so.
Let him believe this, and he will live more consistently and morally,
than by any other system. It is by his being taught to contemplate
himself as an out-law, as an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as one
thrown as it were on a dunghill, at an immense distance from his
Creator, and who must make his approaches by creeping, and cringing to
intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous disregard
for everything under the name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or
turns what he calls devout. In the latter case, he consumes his life in
grief, or the affectation of it. His prayers are reproaches. His
humility is ingratitude. He calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth
a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name of
vanities. He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF
REASON; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a
system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human
reason, as if man could give reason to himself.
Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility, and this contempt
for human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions. He finds
fault with everything. His selfishness is never satisfied; his
ingratitude is never at an end. He takes on himself to direct the
Almighty what to do, even in the govemment of the universe. He prays
dictatorially. When it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is
rain, he prays for sunshine. He follows the same idea in everything
that he prays for; for what is the amount of all his prayers, but an
attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he
does? It is as if he were to say—thou knowest not so well as I.
CHAPTER IX.
IN WHAT THE TRUE REVELATION CONSISTS.
But some perhaps will say—Are we to have no word of God—no revelation?
I answer yes. There is a Word of God; there is a revelation.
THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word,
which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh
universally to man.
Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of
being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information. The
idea that God sent Jesus Christ to publish, as they say, the glad
tidings to all nations, from one end of the earth unto the other, is
consistent only with the ignorance of those who know nothing of the
extent of the world, and who believed, as those world-saviours
believed, and continued to believe for several centuries, (and that in
contradiction to the discoveries of philosophers and the experience of
navigators,) that the earth was flat like a trencher; and that a man
might walk to the end of it.
But how was Jesus Christ to make anything known to all nations? He
could speak but one language, which was Hebrew; and there are in the
world several hundred languages. Scarcely any two nations speak the
same language, or understand each other; and as to translations, every
man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to
translate from one language into another, not only without losing a
great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense; and
besides all this, the art of printing was wholly unknown at the time
Christ lived.
It is always necessary that the means that are to accomplish any end be
equal to the accomplishment of that end, or the end cannot be
accomplished. It is in this that the difference between finite and
infinite power and wisdom discovers itself. Man frequently fails in
accomplishing his end, from a natural inability of the power to the
purpose; and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power
properly. But it is impossible for infinite power and wisdom to fail as
man faileth. The means it useth are always equal to the end: but human
language, more especially as there is not an universal language, is
incapable of being used as an universal means of unchangeable and
uniform information; and therefore it is not the means that God useth
in manifesting himself universally to man.
It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word
of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language,
independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various
as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read.
It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it
cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the
will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself
from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and
to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is
necessary for man to know of God.
Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the
creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the
unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do
we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with
which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see
it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In
fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the
scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called
the Creation.
CHAPTER X.
CONCERNING GOD, AND THE LIGHTS CAST ON HIS EXISTENCE AND ATTRIBUTES BY
THE BIBLE.
The only idea man can affix to the name of God, is that of a first
cause, the cause of all things. And, incomprehensibly difficult as it
is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the
belief of it, from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it.
It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no
end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult
beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call
time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be
no time.
In like manner of reasoning, everything we behold carries in itself the
internal evidence that it did not make itself. Every man is an evidence
to himself, that he did not make himself; neither could his father make
himself, nor his grandfather, nor any of his race; neither could any
tree, plant, or animal make itself; and it is the conviction arising
from this evidence, that carries us on, as it were, by necessity, to
the belief of a first cause eternally existing, of a nature totally
different to any material existence we know of, and by the power of
which all things exist; and this first cause, man calls God.
It is only by the exercise of reason, that man can discover God. Take
away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything;
and in this case it would be just as consistent to read even the book
called the Bible to a horse as to a man. How then is it that those
people pretend to reject reason?
Almost the only parts in the book called the Bible, that convey to us
any idea of God, are some chapters in Job, and the 19th Psalm; I
recollect no other. Those parts are true deistical compositions; for
they treat of the Deity through his works. They take the book of
Creation as the word of God; they refer to no other book; and all the
inferences they make are drawn from that volume.
I insert in this place the 19th Psalm, as paraphrased into English
verse by Addison. I recollect not the prose, and where I write this I
have not the opportunity of seeing it:
The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue etherial sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great original proclaim.
The unwearied sun, from day to day,
Does his Creator’s power display,
And publishes to every land
The work of an Almighty hand.
Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the list’ning earth
Repeats the story of her birth;
Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets, in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.
What though in solemn silence all
Move round this dark terrestrial ball
What though no real voice, nor sound,
Amidst their radiant orbs be found,
In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine,
THE HAND THAT MADE US IS DIVINE.
What more does man want to know, than that the hand or power that made
these things is divine, is omnipotent? Let him believe this, with the
force it is impossible to repel if he permits his reason to act, and
his rule of moral life will follow of course.
The allusions in Job have all of them the same tendency with this
Psalm; that of deducing or proving a truth that would be otherwise
unknown, from truths already known.
I recollect not enough of the passages in Job to insert them correctly;
but there is one that occurs to me that is applicable to the subject I
am speaking upon. “Canst thou by searching find out God; canst thou
find out the Almighty to perfection?”
I know not how the printers have pointed this passage, for I keep no
Bible; but it contains two distinct questions that admit of distinct
answers.
First, Canst thou by searching find out God? Yes. Because, in the first
place, I know I did not make myself, and yet I have existence; and by
searching into the nature of other things, I find that no other thing
could make itself; and yet millions of other things exist; therefore it
is, that I know, by positive conclusion resulting from this search,
that there is a power superior to all those things, and that power is
God.
Secondly, Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? No. Not only
because the power and wisdom He has manifested in the structure of the
Creation that I behold is to me incomprehensible; but because even this
manifestation, great as it is is probably but a small display of that
immensity of power and wisdom, by which millions of other worlds, to me
invisible by their distance, were created and continue to exist.
It is evident that both of these questions were put to the reason of
the person to whom they are supposed to have been addressed; and it is
only by admitting the first question to be answered affirmatively, that
the second could follow. It would have been unnecessary, and even
absurd, to have put a second question, more difficult than the first,
if the first question had been answered negatively. The two questions
have different objects; the first refers to the existence of God, the
second to his attributes. Reason can discover the one, but it falls
infinitely short in discovering the whole of the other.
I recollect not a single passage in all the writings ascribed to the
men called apostles, that conveys any idea of what God is. Those
writings are chiefly controversial; and the gloominess of the subject
they dwell upon, that of a man dying in agony on a cross, is better
suited to the gloomy genius of a monk in a cell, by whom it is not
impossible they were written, than to any man breathing the open air of
the Creation. The only passage that occurs to me, that has any
reference to the works of God, by which only his power and wisdom can
be known, is related to have been spoken by Jesus Christ, as a remedy
against distrustful care. “Behold the lilies of the field, they toil
not, neither do they spin.” This, however, is far inferior to the
allusions in Job and in the 19th Psalm; but it is similar in idea, and
the modesty of the imagery is correspondent to the modesty of the man.
CHAPTER XI.
OF THE THEOLOGY OF THE CHRISTIANS; AND THE TRUE THEOLOGY.
As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of
atheism; a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in
a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of man-ism
with but little deism, and is as near to atheism as twilight is to
darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which
it calls a redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the
earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious or an
irreligious eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into
shade.
The effect of this obscurity has been that of turning everything upside
down, and representing it in reverse; and among the revolutions it has
thus magically produced, it has made a revolution in Theology.
That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle
of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study
of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works,
and is the true theology.
As to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the study of
human opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is not the study
of God himself in the works that he has made, but in the works or
writings that man has made; and it is not among the least of the
mischiefs that the Christian system has done to the world, that it has
abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a
beautiful innocent, to distress and reproach, to make room for the hag
of superstition.
The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the church admits to be
more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the
book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the
original system of theology. The internal evidence of those orations
proves to a demonstration that the study and contemplation of the works
of creation, and of the power and wisdom of God revealed and manifested
in those works, made a great part of the religious devotion of the
times in which they were written; and it was this devotional study and
contemplation that led to the discovery of the principles upon which
what are now called Sciences are established; and it is to the
discovery of these principles that almost all the Arts that contribute
to the convenience of human life owe their existence. Every principal
art has some science for its parent, though the person who mechanically
performs the work does not always, and but very seldom, perceive the
connection.
It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences ‘human
inventions;’ it is only the application of them that is human. Every
science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and
unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed.
Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.
For example: Every person who looks at an almanack sees an account when
an eclipse will take place, and he sees also that it never fails to
take place according to the account there given. This shows that man is
acquainted with the laws by which the heavenly bodies move. But it
would be something worse than ignorance, were any church on earth to
say that those laws are an human invention.
It would also be ignorance, or something worse, to say that the
scientific principles, by the aid of which man is enabled to calculate
and foreknow when an eclipse will take place, are an human invention.
Man cannot invent any thing that is eternal and immutable; and the
scientific principles he employs for this purpose must, and are, of
necessity, as eternal and immutable as the laws by which the heavenly
bodies move, or they could not be used as they are to ascertain the
time when, and the manner how, an eclipse will take place.
The scientific principles that man employs to obtain the foreknowledge
of an eclipse, or of any thing else relating to the motion of the
heavenly bodies, are contained chiefly in that part of science that is
called trigonometry, or the properties of a triangle, which, when
applied to the study of the heavenly bodies, is called astronomy; when
applied to direct the course of a ship on the ocean, it is called
navigation; when applied to the construction of figures drawn by a rule
and compass, it is called geometry; when applied to the construction of
plans of edifices, it is called architecture; when applied to the
measurement of any portion of the surface of the earth, it is called
land-surveying. In fine, it is the soul of science. It is an eternal
truth: it contains the mathematical demonstration of which man speaks,
and the extent of its uses are unknown.
It may be said, that man can make or draw a triangle, and therefore a
triangle is an human invention.
But the triangle, when drawn, is no other than the image of the
principle: it is a delineation to the eye, and from thence to the mind,
of a principle that would otherwise be imperceptible. The triangle does
not make the principle, any more than a candle taken into a room that
was dark, makes the chairs and tables that before were invisible. All
the properties of a triangle exist independently of the figure, and
existed before any triangle was drawn or thought of by man. Man had no
more to do in the formation of those properties or principles, than he
had to do in making the laws by which the heavenly bodies move; and
therefore the one must have the same divine origin as the other.
In the same manner as, it may be said, that man can make a triangle, so
also, may it be said, he can make the mechanical instrument called a
lever. But the principle by which the lever acts, is a thing distinct
from the instrument, and would exist if the instrument did not; it
attaches itself to the instrument after it is made; the instrument,
therefore, can act no otherwise than it does act; neither can all the
efforts of human invention make it act otherwise. That which, in all
such cases, man calls the effect, is no other than the principle itself
rendered perceptible to the senses.
Since, then, man cannot make principles, from whence did he gain a
knowledge of them, so as to be able to apply them, not only to things
on earth, but to ascertain the motion of bodies so immensely distant
from him as all the heavenly bodies are? From whence, I ask, could he
gain that knowledge, but from the study of the true theology?
It is the structure of the universe that has taught this knowledge to
man. That structure is an ever-existing exhibition of every principle
upon which every part of mathematical science is founded. The offspring
of this science is mechanics; for mechanics is no other than the
principles of science applied practically. The man who proportions the
several parts of a mill uses the same scientific principles as if he
had the power of constructing an universe, but as he cannot give to
matter that invisible agency by which all the component parts of the
immense machine of the universe have influence upon each other, and act
in motional unison together, without any apparent contact, and to which
man has given the name of attraction, gravitation, and repulsion, he
supplies the place of that agency by the humble imitation of teeth and
cogs. All the parts of man’s microcosm must visibly touch. But could he
gain a knowledge of that agency, so as to be able to apply it in
practice, we might then say that another canonical book of the word of
God had been discovered.
If man could alter the properties of the lever, so also could he alter
the properties of the triangle: for a lever (taking that sort of lever
which is called a steel-yard, for the sake of explanation) forms, when
in motion, a triangle. The line it descends from, (one point of that
line being in the fulcrum,) the line it descends to, and the chord of
the arc, which the end of the lever describes in the air, are the three
sides of a triangle. The other arm of the lever describes also a
triangle; and the corresponding sides of those two triangles,
calculated scientifically, or measured geometrically,—and also the
sines, tangents, and secants generated from the angles, and
geometrically measured,—have the same proportions to each other as the
different weights have that will balance each other on the lever,
leaving the weight of the lever out of the case.
It may also be said, that man can make a wheel and axis; that he can
put wheels of different magnitudes together, and produce a mill. Still
the case comes back to the same point, which is, that he did not make
the principle that gives the wheels those powers. This principle is as
unalterable as in the former cases, or rather it is the same principle
under a different appearance to the eye.
The power that two wheels of different magnitudes have upon each other
is in the same proportion as if the semi-diameter of the two wheels
were joined together and made into that kind of lever I have described,
suspended at the part where the semi-diameters join; for the two
wheels, scientifically considered, are no other than the two circles
generated by the motion of the compound lever.
It is from the study of the true theology that all our knowledge of
science is derived; and it is from that knowledge that all the arts
have originated.
The Almighty lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the
structure of the universe, has invited man to study and to imitation.
It is as if he had said to the inhabitants of this globe that we call
ours, “I have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and I have rendered
the starry heavens visible, to teach him science and the arts. He can
now provide for his own comfort, AND LEARN FROM MY MUNIFICENCE TO ALL,
TO BE KIND TO EACH OTHER.”
Of what use is it, unless it be to teach man something, that his eye is
endowed with the power of beholding, to an incomprehensible distance,
an immensity of worlds revolving in the ocean of space? Or of what use
is it that this immensity of worlds is visible to man? What has man to
do with the Pleiades, with Orion, with Sirius, with the star he calls
the north star, with the moving orbs he has named Saturn, Jupiter,
Mars, Venus, and Mercury, if no uses are to follow from their being
visible? A less power of vision would have been sufficient for man, if
the immensity he now possesses were given only to waste itself, as it
were, on an immense desert of space glittering with shows.
It is only by contemplating what he calls the starry heavens, as the
book and school of science, that he discovers any use in their being
visible to him, or any advantage resulting from his immensity of
vision. But when he contemplates the subject in this light, he sees an
additional motive for saying, that nothing was made in vain; for in
vain would be this power of vision if it taught man nothing.
CHAPTER XII.
THE EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANISM ON EDUCATION; PROPOSED REFORMS
As the Christian system of faith has made a revolution in theology, so
also has it made a revolution in the state of learning. That which is
now called learning, was not learning originally. Learning does not
consist, as the schools now make it consist, in the knowledge of
languages, but in the knowledge of things to which language gives
names.
The Greeks were a learned people, but learning with them did not
consist in speaking Greek, any more than in a Roman’s speaking Latin,
or a Frenchman’s speaking French, or an Englishman’s speaking English.
From what we know of the Greeks, it does not appear that they knew or
studied any language but their own, and this was one cause of their
becoming so learned; it afforded them more time to apply themselves to
better studies. The schools of the Greeks were schools of science and
philosophy, and not of languages; and it is in the knowledge of the
things that science and philosophy teach that learning consists.
Almost all the scientific learning that now exists, came to us from the
Greeks, or the people who spoke the Greek language. It therefore became
necessary to the people of other nations, who spoke a different
language, that some among them should learn the Greek language, in
order that the learning the Greeks had might be made known in those
nations, by translating the Greek books of science and philosophy into
the mother tongue of each nation.
The study, therefore, of the Greek language (and in the same manner for
the Latin) was no other than the drudgery business of a linguist; and
the language thus obtained, was no other than the means, or as it were
the tools, employed to obtain the learning the Greeks had. It made no
part of the learning itself; and was so distinct from it as to make it
exceedingly probable that the persons who had studied Greek
sufficiently to translate those works, such for instance as Euclid’s
Elements, did not understand any of the learning the works contained.
As there is now nothing new to be learned from the dead languages, all
the useful books being already translated, the languages are become
useless, and the time expended in teaching and in learning them is
wasted. So far as the study of languages may contribute to the progress
and communication of knowledge (for it has nothing to do with the
creation of knowledge) it is only in the living languages that new
knowledge is to be found; and certain it is, that, in general, a youth
will learn more of a living language in one year, than of a dead
language in seven; and it is but seldom that the teacher knows much of
it himself. The difficulty of learning the dead languages does not
arise from any superior abstruseness in the languages themselves, but
in their being dead, and the pronunciation entirely lost. It would be
the same thing with any other language when it becomes dead. The best
Greek linguist that now exists does not understand Greek so well as a
Grecian plowman did, or a Grecian milkmaid; and the same for the Latin,
compared with a plowman or a milkmaid of the Romans; and with respect
to pronunciation and idiom, not so well as the cows that she milked. It
would therefore be advantageous to the state of learning to abolish the
study of the dead languages, and to make learning consist, as it
originally did, in scientific knowledge.
The apology that is sometimes made for continuing to teach the dead
languages is, that they are taught at a time when a child is not
capable of exerting any other mental faculty than that of memory. But
this is altogether erroneous. The human mind has a natural disposition
to scientific knowledge, and to the things connected with it. The first
and favourite amusement of a child, even before it begins to play, is
that of imitating the works of man. It builds houses with cards or
sticks; it navigates the little ocean of a bowl of water with a paper
boat; or dams the stream of a gutter, and contrives something which it
calls a mill; and it interests itself in the fate of its works with a
care that resembles affection. It afterwards goes to school, where its
genius is killed by the barren study of a dead language, and the
philosopher is lost in the linguist.
But the apology that is now made for continuing to teach the dead
languages, could not be the cause at first of cutting down learning to
the narrow and humble sphere of linguistry; the cause therefore must be
sought for elsewhere. In all researches of this kind, the best evidence
that can be produced, is the internal evidence the thing carries with
itself, and the evidence of circumstances that unites with it; both of
which, in this case, are not difficult to be discovered.
Putting then aside, as matter of distinct consideration, the outrage
offered to the moral justice of God, by supposing him to make the
innocent suffer for the guilty, and also the loose morality and low
contrivance of supposing him to change himself into the shape of a man,
in order to make an excuse to himself for not executing his supposed
sentence upon Adam; putting, I say, those things aside as matter of
distinct consideration, it is certain that what is called the christian
system of faith, including in it the whimsical account of the
creation—the strange story of Eve, the snake, and the apple—the
amphibious idea of a man-god—the corporeal idea of the death of a
god—the mythological idea of a family of gods, and the christian system
of arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three, are all
irreconcilable, not only to the divine gift of reason, that God has
given to man, but to the knowledge that man gains of the power and
wisdom of God by the aid of the sciences, and by studying the structure
of the universe that God has made.
The setters up, therefore, and the advocates of the Christian system of
faith, could not but foresee that the continually progressive knowledge
that man would gain by the aid of science, of the power and wisdom of
God, manifested in the structure of the universe, and in all the works
of creation, would militate against, and call into question, the truth
of their system of faith; and therefore it became necessary to their
purpose to cut learning down to a size less dangerous to their project,
and this they effected by restricting the idea of learning to the dead
study of dead languages.
They not only rejected the study of science out of the christian
schools, but they persecuted it; and it is only within about the last
two centuries that the study has been revived. So late as 1610,
Galileo, a Florentine, discovered and introduced the use of telescopes,
and by applying them to observe the motions and appearances of the
heavenly bodies, afforded additional means for ascertaining the true
structure of the universe. Instead of being esteemed for these
discoveries, he was sentenced to renounce them, or the opinions
resulting from them, as a damnable heresy. And prior to that time
Virgilius was condemned to be burned for asserting the antipodes, or in
other words, that the earth was a globe, and habitable in every part
where there was land; yet the truth of this is now too well known even
to be told. [NOTE: I cannot discover the source of this statement
concerning the ancient author whose Irish name Feirghill was Latinized
into Virgilius. The British Museum possesses a copy of the work
(Decalogiunt) which was the pretext of the charge of heresy made by
Boniface, Archbishop of Mayence, against Virgilius, Abbot—bishop of
Salzburg, These were leaders of the rival “British” and “Roman parties,
and the British champion made a countercharge against Boniface of
irreligious practices.” Boniface had to express a “regret,” but none
the less pursued his rival. The Pope, Zachary II., decided that if his
alleged “doctrine, against God and his soul, that beneath the earth
there is another world, other men, or sun and moon,” should be
acknowledged by Virgilius, he should be excommunicated by a Council and
condemned with canonical sanctions. Whatever may have been the fate
involved by condemnation with “canonicis sanctionibus,” in the middle
of the eighth century, it did not fall on Virgilius. His accuser,
Boniface, was martyred, 755, and it is probable that Virgilius
harmonied his Antipodes with orthodoxy. The gravamen of the heresy
seems to have been the suggestion that there were men not of the
progeny of Adam. Virgilius was made Bishop of Salzburg in 768. He bore
until his death, 789, the curious title, “Geometer and Solitary,” or
“lone wayfarer” (Solivagus). A suspicion of heresy clung to his memory
until 1233, when he was raised by Gregory IX, to sainthood beside his
accuser, St. Boniface.—Editor. (Conway)]
If the belief of errors not morally bad did no mischief, it would make
no part of the moral duty of man to oppose and remove them. There was
no moral ill in believing the earth was flat like a trencher, any more
than there was moral virtue in believing it was round like a globe;
neither was there any moral ill in believing that the Creator made no
other world than this, any more than there was moral virtue in
believing that he made millions, and that the infinity of space is
filled with worlds. But when a system of religion is made to grow out
of a supposed system of creation that is not true, and to unite itself
therewith in a manner almost inseparable therefrom, the case assumes an
entirely different ground. It is then that errors, not morally bad,
become fraught with the same mischiefs as if they were. It is then that
the truth, though otherwise indifferent itself, becomes an essential,
by becoming the criterion that either confirms by corresponding
evidence, or denies by contradictory evidence, the reality of the
religion itself. In this view of the case it is the moral duty of man
to obtain every possible evidence that the structure of the heavens, or
any other part of creation affords, with respect to systems of
religion. But this, the supporters or partizans of the christian
system, as if dreading the result, incessantly opposed, and not only
rejected the sciences, but persecuted the professors. Had Newton or
Descartes lived three or four hundred years ago, and pursued their
studies as they did, it is most probable they would not have lived to
finish them; and had Franklin drawn lightning from the clouds at the
same time, it would have been at the hazard of expiring for it in
flames.
Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals, but,
however unwilling the partizans of the Christian system may be to
believe or to acknowledge it, it is nevertheless true, that the age of
ignorance commenced with the Christian system. There was more knowledge
in the world before that period, than for many centuries afterwards;
and as to religious knowledge, the Christian system, as already said,
was only another species of mythology; and the mythology to which it
succeeded, was a corruption of an ancient system of theism. [NOTE by
Paine: It is impossible for us now to know at what time the heathen
mythology began; but it is certain, from the internal evidence that it
carries, that it did not begin in the same state or condition in which
it ended. All the gods of that mythology, except Saturn, were of modern
invention. The supposed reign of Saturn was prior to that which is
called the heathen mythology, and was so far a species of theism that
it admitted the belief of only one God. Saturn is supposed to have
abdicated the govemment in favour of his three sons and one daughter,
Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune, and Juno; after this, thousands of other gods
and demigods were imaginarily created, and the calendar of gods
increased as fast as the calendar of saints and the calendar of courts
have increased since.
All the corruptions that have taken place, in theology and in religion
have been produced by admitting of what man calls ‘revealed religion.’
The mythologists pretended to more revealed religion than the
christians do. They had their oracles and their priests, who were
supposed to receive and deliver the word of God verbally on almost all
occasions.
Since then all corruptions down from Moloch to modern
predestinarianism, and the human sacrifices of the heathens to the
christian sacrifice of the Creator, have been produced by admitting of
what is called revealed religion, the most effectual means to prevent
all such evils and impositions is, not to admit of any other revelation
than that which is manifested in the book of Creation., and to
contemplate the Creation as the only true and real word of God that
ever did or ever will exist; and every thing else called the word of
God is fable and imposition.—Author.]
It is owing to this long interregnum of science, and to no other cause,
that we have now to look back through a vast chasm of many hundred
years to the respectable characters we call the Ancients. Had the
progression of knowledge gone on proportionably with the stock that
before existed, that chasm would have been filled up with characters
rising superior in knowledge to each other; and those Ancients we now
so much admire would have appeared respectably in the background of the
scene. But the christian system laid all waste; and if we take our
stand about the beginning of the sixteenth century, we look back
through that long chasm, to the times of the Ancients, as over a vast
sandy desert, in which not a shrub appears to intercept the vision to
the fertile hills beyond.
It is an inconsistency scarcely possible to be credited, that any thing
should exist, under the name of a religion, that held it to be
irreligious to study and contemplate the structure of the universe that
God had made. But the fact is too well established to be denied. The
event that served more than any other to break the first link in this
long chain of despotic ignorance, is that known by the name of the
Reformation by Luther. From that time, though it does not appear to
have made any part of the intention of Luther, or of those who are
called Reformers, the Sciences began to revive, and Liberality, their
natural associate, began to appear. This was the only public good the
Reformation did; for, with respect to religious good, it might as well
not have taken place. The mythology still continued the same; and a
multiplicity of National Popes grew out of the downfall of the Pope of
Christendom.
CHAPTER XIII.
COMPARISON OF CHRISTIANISM WITH THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS INSPIRED BY NATURE
Having thus shewn, from the internal evidence of things, the cause that
produced a change in the state of learning, and the motive for
substituting the study of the dead languages, in the place of the
Sciences, I proceed, in addition to the several observations already
made in the former part of this work, to compare, or rather to
confront, the evidence that the structure of the universe affords, with
the christian system of religion. But as I cannot begin this part
better than by referring to the ideas that occurred to me at an early
part of life, and which I doubt not have occurred in some degree to
almost every other person at one time or other, I shall state what
those ideas were, and add thereto such other matter as shall arise out
of the subject, giving to the whole, by way of preface, a short
introduction.
My father being of the quaker profession, it was my good fortune to
have an exceedingly good moral education, and a tolerable stock of
useful learning. Though I went to the grammar school, I did not learn
Latin, not only because I had no inclination to learn languages, but
because of the objection the quakers have against the books in which
the language is taught. But this did not prevent me from being
acquainted with the subjects of all the Latin books used in the school.
The natural bent of my mind was to science. I had some turn, and I
believe some talent for poetry; but this I rather repressed than
encouraged, as leading too much into the field of imagination. As soon
as I was able, I purchased a pair of globes, and attended the
philosophical lectures of Martin and Ferguson, and became afterwards
acquainted with Dr. Bevis, of the society called the Royal Society,
then living in the Temple, and an excellent astronomer.
I had no disposition for what was called politics. It presented to my
mind no other idea than is contained in the word jockeyship. When,
therefore, I turned my thoughts towards matters of government, I had to
form a system for myself, that accorded with the moral and philosophic
principles in which I had been educated. I saw, or at least I thought I
saw, a vast scene opening itself to the world in the affairs of
America; and it appeared to me, that unless the Americans changed the
plan they were then pursuing, with respect to the government of
England, and declared themselves independent, they would not only
involve themselves in a multiplicity of new difficulties, but shut out
the prospect that was then offering itself to mankind through their
means. It was from these motives that I published the work known by the
name of Common Sense, which is the first work I ever did publish, and
so far as I can judge of myself, I believe I should never have been
known in the world as an author on any subject whatever, had it not
been for the affairs of America. I wrote Common Sense the latter end of
the year 1775, and published it the first of January, 1776.
Independence was declared the fourth of July following.
Any person, who has made observations on the state and progress of the
human mind, by observing his own, can not but have observed, that there
are two distinct classes of what are called Thoughts; those that we
produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking, and those
that bolt into the mind of their own accord. I have always made it a
rule to treat those voluntary visitors with civility, taking care to
examine, as well as I was able, if they were worth entertaining; and it
is from them I have acquired almost all the knowledge that I have. As
to the learning that any person gains from school education, it serves
only, like a small capital, to put him in the way of beginning learning
for himself afterwards. Every person of learning is finally his own
teacher; the reason of which is, that principles, being of a distinct
quality to circumstances, cannot be impressed upon the memory; their
place of mental residence is the understanding, and they are never so
lasting as when they begin by conception. Thus much for the
introductory part.
From the time I was capable of conceiving an idea, and acting upon it
by reflection, I either doubted the truth of the christian system, or
thought it to be a strange affair; I scarcely knew which it was: but I
well remember, when about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon
read by a relation of mine, who was a great devotee of the church, upon
the subject of what is called Redemption by the death of the Son of
God. After the sermon was ended, I went into the garden, and as I was
going down the garden steps (for I perfectly recollect the spot) I
revolted at the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to myself
that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man, that killed
his son, when he could not revenge himself any other way; and as I was
sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, I could not see for
what purpose they preached such sermons. This was not one of those kind
of thoughts that had any thing in it of childish levity; it was to me a
serious reflection, arising from the idea I had that God was too good
to do such an action, and also too almighty to be under any necessity
of doing it. I believe in the same manner to this moment; and I
moreover believe, that any system of religion that has anything in it
that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.
It seems as if parents of the christian profession were ashamed to tell
their children any thing about the principles of their religion. They
sometimes instruct them in morals, and talk to them of the goodness of
what they call Providence; for the Christian mythology has five
deities: there is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the
God Providence, and the Goddess Nature. But the christian story of God
the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it, (for
that is the plain language of the story,) cannot be told by a parent to
a child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and
better, is making the story still worse; as if mankind could be
improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a
mystery, is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it.
How different is this to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The
true deist has but one Deity; and his religion consists in
contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his
works, and in endeavouring to imitate him in every thing moral,
scientifical, and mechanical.
The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true Deism,
in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the quakers:
but they have contracted themselves too much by leaving the works of
God out of their system. Though I reverence their philanthropy, I can
not help smiling at the conceit, that if the taste of a quaker could
have been consulted at the creation, what a silent and drab-colored
creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its
gaieties, nor a bird been permitted to sing.
Quitting these reflections, I proceed to other matters. After I had
made myself master of the use of the globes, and of the orrery, [NOTE
by Paine: As this book may fall into the bands of persons who do not
know what an orrery is, it is for their information I add this note, as
the name gives no idea of the uses of the thing. The orrery has its
name from the person who invented it. It is a machinery of clock-work,
representing the universe in miniature: and in which the revolution of
the earth round itself and round the sun, the revolution of the moon
round the earth, the revolution of the planets round the sun, their
relative distances from the sun, as the center of the whole system,
their relative distances from each other, and their different
magnitudes, are represented as they really exist in what we call the
heavens.—Author.] and conceived an idea of the infinity of space, and
of the eternal divisibility of matter, and obtained, at least, a
general knowledge of what was called natural philosophy, I began to
compare, or, as I have before said, to confront, the internal evidence
those things afford with the christian system of faith.
Though it is not a direct article of the christian system that this
world that we inhabit is the whole of the habitable creation, yet it is
so worked up therewith, from what is called the Mosaic account of the
creation, the story of Eve and the apple, and the counterpart of that
story, the death of the Son of God, that to believe otherwise, that is,
to believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous
as what we call stars, renders the christian system of faith at once
little and ridiculous; and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the
air. The two beliefs can not be held together in the same mind; and he
who thinks that he believes both, has thought but little of either.
Though the belief of a plurality of worlds was familiar to the
ancients, it is only within the last three centuries that the extent
and dimensions of this globe that we inhabit have been ascertained.
Several vessels, following the tract of the ocean, have sailed entirely
round the world, as a man may march in a circle, and come round by the
contrary side of the circle to the spot he set out from. The circular
dimensions of our world, in the widest part, as a man would measure the
widest round of an apple, or a ball, is only twenty-five thousand and
twenty English miles, reckoning sixty-nine miles and an half to an
equatorial degree, and may be sailed round in the space of about three
years.
A world of this extent may, at first thought, appear to us to be great;
but if we compare it with the immensity of space in which it is
suspended, like a bubble or a balloon in the air, it is infinitely less
in proportion than the smallest grain of sand is to the size of the
world, or the finest particle of dew to the whole ocean, and is
therefore but small; and, as will be hereafter shown, is only one of a
system of worlds, of which the universal creation is composed.
It is not difficult to gain some faint idea of the immensity of space
in which this and all the other worlds are suspended, if we follow a
progression of ideas. When we think of the size or dimensions of, a
room, our ideas limit themselves to the walls, and there they stop. But
when our eye, or our imagination darts into space, that is, when it
looks upward into what we call the open air, we cannot conceive any
walls or boundaries it can have; and if for the sake of resting our
ideas we suppose a boundary, the question immediately renews itself,
and asks, what is beyond that boundary? and in the same manner, what
beyond the next boundary? and so on till the fatigued imagination
returns and says, there is no end. Certainly, then, the Creator was not
pent for room when he made this world no larger than it is; and we have
to seek the reason in something else.
If we take a survey of our own world, or rather of this, of which the
Creator has given us the use as our portion in the immense system of
creation, we find every part of it, the earth, the waters, and the air
that surround it, filled, and as it were crowded with life, down from
the largest animals that we know of to the smallest insects the naked
eye can behold, and from thence to others still smaller, and totally
invisible without the assistance of the microscope. Every tree, every
plant, every leaf, serves not only as an habitation, but as a world to
some numerous race, till animal existence becomes so exceedingly
refined, that the effluvia of a blade of grass would be food for
thousands.
Since then no part of our earth is left unoccupied, why is it to be
supposed that the immensity of space is a naked void, lying in eternal
waste? There is room for millions of worlds as large or larger than
ours, and each of them millions of miles apart from each other.
Having now arrived at this point, if we carry our ideas only one
thought further, we shall see, perhaps, the true reason, at least a
very good reason for our happiness, why the Creator, instead of making
one immense world, extending over an immense quantity of space, has
preferred dividing that quantity of matter into several distinct and
separate worlds, which we call planets, of which our earth is one. But
before I explain my ideas upon this subject, it is necessary (not for
the sake of those that already know, but for those who do not) to show
what the system of the universe is.
CHAPTER XIV.
SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE.
That part of the universe that is called the solar system (meaning the
system of worlds to which our earth belongs, and of which Sol, or in
English language, the Sun, is the center) consists, besides the Sun, of
six distinct orbs, or planets, or worlds, besides the secondary bodies,
called the satellites, or moons, of which our earth has one that
attends her in her annual revolution round the Sun, in like manner as
the other satellites or moons, attend the planets or worlds to which
they severally belong, as may be seen by the assistance of the
telescope.
The Sun is the center round which those six worlds or planets revolve
at different distances therefrom, and in circles concentric to each
other. Each world keeps constantly in nearly the same tract round the
Sun, and continues at the same time turning round itself, in nearly an
upright position, as a top turns round itself when it is spinning on
the ground, and leans a little sideways.
It is this leaning of the earth (23 1/2 degrees) that occasions summer
and winter, and the different length of days and nights. If the earth
turned round itself in a position perpendicular to the plane or level
of the circle it moves in round the Sun, as a top turns round when it
stands erect on the ground, the days and nights would be always of the
same length, twelve hours day and twelve hours night, and the season
would be uniformly the same throughout the year.
Every time that a planet (our earth for example) turns round itself, it
makes what we call day and night; and every time it goes entirely round
the Sun, it makes what we call a year, consequently our world turns
three hundred and sixty-five times round itself, in going once round
the Sun.
The names that the ancients gave to those six worlds, and which are
still called by the same names, are Mercury, Venus, this world that we
call ours, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They appear larger to the eye
than the stars, being many million miles nearer to our earth than any
of the stars are. The planet Venus is that which is called the evening
star, and sometimes the morning star, as she happens to set after, or
rise before the Sun, which in either case is never more than three
hours.
The Sun as before said being the center, the planet or world nearest
the Sun is Mercury; his distance from the Sun is thirty-four million
miles, and he moves round in a circle always at that distance from the
Sun, as a top may be supposed to spin round in the tract in which a
horse goes in a mill. The second world is Venus; she is fifty-seven
million miles distant from the Sun, and consequently moves round in a
circle much greater than that of Mercury. The third world is this that
we inhabit, and which is eighty-eight million miles distant from the
Sun, and consequently moves round in a circle greater than that of
Venus. The fourth world is Mars; he is distant from the sun one hundred
and thirty-four million miles, and consequently moves round in a circle
greater than that of our earth. The fifth is Jupiter; he is distant
from the Sun five hundred and fifty-seven million miles, and
consequently moves round in a circle greater than that of Mars. The
sixth world is Saturn; he is distant from the Sun seven hundred and
sixty-three million miles, and consequently moves round in a circle
that surrounds the circles or orbits of all the other worlds or
planets.
The space, therefore, in the air, or in the immensity of space, that
our solar system takes up for the several worlds to perform their
revolutions in round the Sun, is of the extent in a strait line of the
whole diameter of the orbit or circle in which Saturn moves round the
Sun, which being double his distance from the Sun, is fifteen hundred
and twenty-six million miles; and its circular extent is nearly five
thousand million; and its globical content is almost three thousand
five hundred million times three thousand five hundred million square
miles. [NOTE by Paine: If it should be asked, how can man know these
things? I have one plain answer to give, which is, that man knows how
to calculate an eclipse, and also how to calculate to a minute of time
when the planet Venus, in making her revolutions round the Sun, will
come in a strait line between our earth and the Sun, and will appear to
us about the size of a large pea passing across the face of the Sun.
This happens but twice in about a hundred years, at the distance of
about eight years from each other, and has happened twice in our time,
both of which were foreknown by calculation. It can also be known when
they will happen again for a thousand years to come, or to any other
portion of time. As therefore, man could not be able to do these things
if he did not understand the solar system, and the manner in which the
revolutions of the several planets or worlds are performed, the fact of
calculating an eclipse, or a transit of Venus, is a proof in point that
the knowledge exists; and as to a few thousand, or even a few million
miles, more or less, it makes scarcely any sensible difference in such
immense distances.—Author.]
But this, immense as it is, is only one system of worlds. Beyond this,
at a vast distance into space, far beyond all power of calculation, are
the stars called the fixed stars. They are called fixed, because they
have no revolutionary motion, as the six worlds or planets have that I
have been describing. Those fixed stars continue always at the same
distance from each other, and always in the same place, as the Sun does
in the center of our system. The probability, therefore, is that each
of those fixed stars is also a Sun, round which another system of
worlds or planets, though too remote for us to discover, performs its
revolutions, as our system of worlds does round our central Sun. By
this easy progression of ideas, the immensity of space will appear to
us to be filled with systems of worlds; and that no part of space lies
at waste, any more than any part of our globe of earth and water is
left unoccupied.
Having thus endeavoured to convey, in a familiar and easy manner, some
idea of the structure of the universe, I return to explain what I
before alluded to, namely, the great benefits arising to man in
consequence of the Creator having made a Plurality of worlds, such as
our system is, consisting of a central Sun and six worlds, besides
satellites, in preference to that of creating one world only of a vast
extent.
CHAPTER XV.
ADVANTAGES OF THE EXISTENCE OF MANY WORLDS IN EACH SOLAR SYSTEM
It is an idea I have never lost sight of, that all our knowledge of
science is derived from the revolutions (exhibited to our eye and from
thence to our understanding) which those several planets or worlds of
which our system is composed make in their circuit round the Sun.
Had then the quantity of matter which these six worlds contain been
blended into one solitary globe, the consequence to us would have been,
that either no revolutionary motion would have existed, or not a
sufficiency of it to give us the ideas and the knowledge of science we
now have; and it is from the sciences that all the mechanical arts that
contribute so much to our earthly felicity and comfort are derived.
As therefore the Creator made nothing in vain, so also must it be
believed that he organized the structure of the universe in the most
advantageous manner for the benefit of man; and as we see, and from
experience feel, the benefits we derive from the structure of the
universe, formed as it is, which benefits we should not have had the
opportunity of enjoying if the structure, so far as relates to our
system, had been a solitary globe, we can discover at least one reason
why a plurality of worlds has been made, and that reason calls forth
the devotional gratitude of man, as well as his admiration.
But it is not to us, the inhabitants of this globe, only, that the
benefits arising from a plurality of worlds are limited. The
inhabitants of each of the worlds of which our system is composed,
enjoy the same opportunities of knowledge as we do. They behold the
revolutionary motions of our earth, as we behold theirs. All the
planets revolve in sight of each other; and, therefore, the same
universal school of science presents itself to all.
Neither does the knowledge stop here. The system of worlds next to us
exhibits, in its revolutions, the same principles and school of
science, to the inhabitants of their system, as our system does to us,
and in like manner throughout the immensity of space.
Our ideas, not only of the almightiness of the Creator, but of his
wisdom and his beneficence, become enlarged in proportion as we
contemplate the extent and the structure of the universe. The solitary
idea of a solitary world, rolling or at rest in the immense ocean of
space, gives place to the cheerful idea of a society of worlds, so
happily contrived as to administer, even by their motion, instruction
to man. We see our own earth filled with abundance; but we forget to
consider how much of that abundance is owing to the scientific
knowledge the vast machinery of the universe has unfolded.
CHAPTER XVI.
APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING TO THE SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIANS
But, in the midst of those reflections, what are we to think of the
christian system of faith that forms itself upon the idea of only one
world, and that of no greater extent, as is before shown, than
twenty-five thousand miles. An extent which a man, walking at the rate
of three miles an hour for twelve hours in the day, could he keep on in
a circular direction, would walk entirely round in less than two years.
Alas! what is this to the mighty ocean of space, and the almighty power
of the Creator!
From whence then could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the
Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on his
protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in
our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple!
And, on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in the
boundless creation had an Eve, an apple, a serpent, and a redeemer? In
this case, the person who is irreverently called the Son of God, and
sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel
from world to world, in an endless succession of death, with scarcely a
momentary interval of life.
It has been by rejecting the evidence, that the word, or works of God
in the creation, affords to our senses, and the action of our reason
upon that evidence, that so many wild and whimsical systems of faith,
and of religion, have been fabricated and set up. There may be many
systems of religion that so far from being morally bad are in many
respects morally good: but there can be but ONE that is true; and that
one necessarily must, as it ever will, be in all things consistent with
the ever existing word of God that we behold in his works. But such is
the strange construction of the christian system of faith, that every
evidence the heavens affords to man, either directly contradicts it or
renders it absurd.
It is possible to believe, and I always feel pleasure in encouraging
myself to believe it, that there have been men in the world who
persuaded themselves that what is called a pious fraud, might, at least
under particular circumstances, be productive of some good. But the
fraud being once established, could not afterwards be explained; for it
is with a pious fraud as with a bad action, it begets a calamitous
necessity of going on.
The persons who first preached the christian system of faith, and in
some measure combined with it the morality preached by Jesus Christ,
might persuade themselves that it was better than the heathen mythology
that then prevailed. From the first preachers the fraud went on to the
second, and to the third, till the idea of its being a pious fraud
became lost in the belief of its being true; and that belief became
again encouraged by the interest of those who made a livelihood by
preaching it.
But though such a belief might, by such means, be rendered almost
general among the laity, it is next to impossible to account for the
continual persecution carried on by the church, for several hundred
years, against the sciences, and against the professors of science, if
the church had not some record or tradition that it was originally no
other than a pious fraud, or did not foresee that it could not be
maintained against the evidence that the structure of the universe
afforded.
CHAPTER XVII.
OF THE MEANS EMPLOYED IN ALL TIME, AND ALMOST UNIVERSALLY, TO DECEIVE
THE PEOPLES
Having thus shown the irreconcilable inconsistencies between the real
word of God existing in the universe, and that which is called the word
of God, as shown to us in a printed book that any man might make, I
proceed to speak of the three principal means that have been employed
in all ages, and perhaps in all countries, to impose upon mankind.
Those three means are Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy, The first two are
incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always to be
suspected.
With respect to Mystery, everything we behold is, in one sense, a
mystery to us. Our own existence is a mystery: the whole vegetable
world is a mystery. We cannot account how it is that an acorn, when put
into the ground, is made to develop itself and become an oak. We know
not how it is that the seed we sow unfolds and multiplies itself, and
returns to us such an abundant interest for so small a capital.
The fact however, as distinct from the operating cause, is not a
mystery, because we see it; and we know also the means we are to use,
which is no other than putting the seed in the ground. We know,
therefore, as much as is necessary for us to know; and that part of the
operation that we do not know, and which if we did, we could not
perform, the Creator takes upon himself and performs it for us. We are,
therefore, better off than if we had been let into the secret, and left
to do it for ourselves.
But though every created thing is, in this sense, a mystery, the word
mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can
be applied to light. The God in whom we believe is a God of moral
truth, and not a God of mystery or obscurity. Mystery is the antagonist
of truth. It is a fog of human invention that obscures truth, and
represents it in distortion. Truth never envelops itself in mystery;
and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped, is the work of
its antagonist, and never of itself.
Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God, and the practice of
moral truth, cannot have connection with mystery. The belief of a God,
so far from having any thing of mystery in it, is of all beliefs the
most easy, because it arises to us, as is before observed, out of
necessity. And the practice of moral truth, or, in other words, a
practical imitation of the moral goodness of God, is no other than our
acting towards each other as he acts benignly towards all. We cannot
serve God in the manner we serve those who cannot do without such
service; and, therefore, the only idea we can have of serving God, is
that of contributing to the happiness of the living creation that God
has made. This cannot be done by retiring ourselves from the society of
the world, and spending a recluse life in selfish devotion.
The very nature and design of religion, if I may so express it, prove
even to demonstration that it must be free from every thing of mystery,
and unincumbered with every thing that is mysterious. Religion,
considered as a duty, is incumbent upon every living soul alike, and,
therefore, must be on a level to the understanding and comprehension of
all. Man does not learn religion as he learns the secrets and mysteries
of a trade. He learns the theory of religion by reflection. It arises
out of the action of his own mind upon the things which he sees, or
upon what he may happen to hear or to read, and the practice joins
itself thereto.
When men, whether from policy or pious fraud, set up systems of
religion incompatible with the word or works of God in the creation,
and not only above but repugnant to human comprehension, they were
under the necessity of inventing or adopting a word that should serve
as a bar to all questions, inquiries and speculations. The word mystery
answered this purpose, and thus it has happened that religion, which is
in itself without mystery, has been corrupted into a fog of mysteries.
As mystery answered all general purposes, miracle followed as an
occasional auxiliary. The former served to bewilder the mind, the
latter to puzzle the senses. The one was the lingo, the other the
legerdemain.
But before going further into this subject, it will be proper to
inquire what is to be understood by a miracle.
In the same sense that every thing may be said to be a mystery, so also
may it be said that every thing is a miracle, and that no one thing is
a greater miracle than another. The elephant, though larger, is not a
greater miracle than a mite: nor a mountain a greater miracle than an
atom. To an almighty power it is no more difficult to make the one than
the other, and no more difficult to make a million of worlds than to
make one. Every thing, therefore, is a miracle, in one sense; whilst,
in the other sense, there is no such thing as a miracle. It is a
miracle when compared to our power, and to our comprehension. It is not
a miracle compared to the power that performs it. But as nothing in
this description conveys the idea that is affixed to the word miracle,
it is necessary to carry the inquiry further.
Mankind have conceived to themselves certain laws, by which what they
call nature is supposed to act; and that a miracle is something
contrary to the operation and effect of those laws. But unless we know
the whole extent of those laws, and of what are commonly called the
powers of nature, we are not able to judge whether any thing that may
appear to us wonderful or miraculous, be within, or be beyond, or be
contrary to, her natural power of acting.
The ascension of a man several miles high into the air, would have
everything in it that constitutes the idea of a miracle, if it were not
known that a species of air can be generated several times lighter than
the common atmospheric air, and yet possess elasticity enough to
prevent the balloon, in which that light air is inclosed, from being
compressed into as many times less bulk, by the common air that
surrounds it. In like manner, extracting flashes or sparks of fire from
the human body, as visibly as from a steel struck with a flint, and
causing iron or steel to move without any visible agent, would also
give the idea of a miracle, if we were not acquainted with electricity
and magnetism; so also would many other experiments in natural
philosophy, to those who are not acquainted with the subject. The
restoring persons to life who are to appearance dead as is practised
upon drowned persons, would also be a miracle, if it were not known
that animation is capable of being suspended without being extinct.
Besides these, there are performances by slight of hand, and by persons
acting in concert, that have a miraculous appearance, which, when
known, are thought nothing of. And, besides these, there are mechanical
and optical deceptions. There is now an exhibition in Paris of ghosts
or spectres, which, though it is not imposed upon the spectators as a
fact, has an astonishing appearance. As, therefore, we know not the
extent to which either nature or art can go, there is no criterion to
determine what a miracle is; and mankind, in giving credit to
appearances, under the idea of their being miracles, are subject to be
continually imposed upon.
Since then appearances are so capable of deceiving, and things not real
have a strong resemblance to things that are, nothing can be more
inconsistent than to suppose that the Almighty would make use of means,
such as are called miracles, that would subject the person who
performed them to the suspicion of being an impostor, and the person
who related them to be suspected of lying, and the doctrine intended to
be supported thereby to be suspected as a fabulous invention.
Of all the modes of evidence that ever were invented to obtain belief
to any system or opinion to which the name of religion has been given,
that of miracle, however successful the imposition may have been, is
the most inconsistent. For, in the first place, whenever recourse is
had to show, for the purpose of procuring that belief (for a miracle,
under any idea of the word, is a show) it implies a lameness or
weakness in the doctrine that is preached. And, in the second place, it
is degrading the Almighty into the character of a show-man, playing
tricks to amuse and make the people stare and wonder. It is also the
most equivocal sort of evidence that can be set up; for the belief is
not to depend upon the thing called a miracle, but upon the credit of
the reporter, who says that he saw it; and, therefore, the thing, were
it true, would have no better chance of being believed than if it were
a lie.
Suppose I were to say, that when I sat down to write this book, a hand
presented itself in the air, took up the pen and wrote every word that
is herein written; would any body believe me? Certainly they would not.
Would they believe me a whit the more if the thing had been a fact?
Certainly they would not. Since then a real miracle, were it to happen,
would be subject to the same fate as the falsehood, the inconsistency
becomes the greater of supposing the Almighty would make use of means
that would not answer the purpose for which they were intended, even if
they were real.
If we are to suppose a miracle to be something so entirely out of the
course of what is called nature, that she must go out of that course to
accomplish it, and we see an account given of such a miracle by the
person who said he saw it, it raises a question in the mind very easily
decided, which is,—Is it more probable that nature should go out of her
course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our
time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe
that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is,
therefore, at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle
tells a lie.
The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large enough
to do it, borders greatly on the marvellous; but it would have
approached nearer to the idea of a miracle, if Jonah had swallowed the
whale. In this, which may serve for all cases of miracles, the matter
would decide itself as before stated, namely, Is it more probable that
a man should have, swallowed a whale, or told a lie?
But suppose that Jonah had really swallowed the whale, and gone with it
in his belly to Nineveh, and to convince the people that it was true
have cast it up in their sight, of the full length and size of a whale,
would they not have believed him to have been the devil instead of a
prophet? or if the whale had carried Jonah to Nineveh, and cast him up
in the same public manner, would they not have believed the whale to
have been the devil, and Jonah one of his imps?
The most extraordinary of all the things called miracles, related in
the New Testament, is that of the devil flying away with Jesus Christ,
and carrying him to the top of a high mountain; and to the top of the
highest pinnacle of the temple, and showing him and promising to him
all the kingdoms of the world. How happened it that he did not discover
America? or is it only with kingdoms that his sooty highness has any
interest.
I have too much respect for the moral character of Christ to believe
that he told this whale of a miracle himself: neither is it easy to
account for what purpose it could have been fabricated, unless it were
to impose upon the connoisseurs of miracles, as is sometimes practised
upon the connoisseurs of Queen Anne’s farthings, and collectors of
relics and antiquities; or to render the belief of miracles ridiculous,
by outdoing miracle, as Don Quixote outdid chivalry; or to embarrass
the belief of miracles, by making it doubtful by what power, whether of
God or of the devil, any thing called a miracle was performed. It
requires, however, a great deal of faith in the devil to believe this
miracle.
In every point of view in which those things called miracles can be
placed and considered, the reality of them is improbable, and their
existence unnecessary. They would not, as before observed, answer any
useful purpose, even if they were true; for it is more difficult to
obtain belief to a miracle, than to a principle evidently moral,
without any miracle. Moral principle speaks universally for itself.
Miracle could be but a thing of the moment, and seen but by a few;
after this it requires a transfer of faith from God to man to believe a
miracle upon man’s report. Instead, therefore, of admitting the
recitals of miracles as evidence of any system of religion being true,
they ought to be considered as symptoms of its being fabulous. It is
necessary to the full and upright character of truth that it rejects
the crutch; and it is consistent with the character of fable to seek
the aid that truth rejects. Thus much for Mystery and Miracle.
As Mystery and Miracle took charge of the past and the present,
Prophecy took charge of the future, and rounded the tenses of faith. It
was not sufficient to know what had been done, but what would be done.
The supposed prophet was the supposed historian of times to come; and
if he happened, in shooting with a long bow of a thousand years, to
strike within a thousand miles of a mark, the ingenuity of posterity
could make it point-blank; and if he happened to be directly wrong, it
was only to suppose, as in the case of Jonah and Nineveh, that God had
repented himself and changed his mind. What a fool do fabulous systems
make of man!
It has been shewn, in a former part of this work, that the original
meaning of the words prophet and prophesying has been changed, and that
a prophet, in the sense of the word as now used, is a creature of
modern invention; and it is owing to this change in the meaning of the
words, that the flights and metaphors of the Jewish poets, and phrases
and expressions now rendered obscure by our not being acquainted with
the local circumstances to which they applied at the time they were
used, have been erected into prophecies, and made to bend to
explanations at the will and whimsical conceits of sectaries,
expounders, and commentators. Every thing unintelligible was
prophetical, and every thing insignificant was typical. A blunder would
have served for a prophecy; and a dish-clout for a type.
If by a prophet we are to suppose a man to whom the Almighty
communicated some event that would take place in future, either there
were such men, or there were not. If there were, it is consistent to
believe that the event so communicated would be told in terms that
could be understood, and not related in such a loose and obscure manner
as to be out of the comprehension of those that heard it, and so
equivocal as to fit almost any circumstance that might happen
afterwards. It is conceiving very irreverently of the Almighty, to
suppose he would deal in this jesting manner with mankind; yet all the
things called prophecies in the book called the Bible come under this
description.
But it is with Prophecy as it is with Miracle. It could not answer the
purpose even if it were real. Those to whom a prophecy should be told
could not tell whether the man prophesied or lied, or whether it had
been revealed to him, or whether he conceited it; and if the thing that
he prophesied, or pretended to prophesy, should happen, or some thing
like it, among the multitude of things that are daily happening, nobody
could again know whether he foreknew it, or guessed at it, or whether
it was accidental. A prophet, therefore, is a character useless and
unnecessary; and the safe side of the case is to guard against being
imposed upon, by not giving credit to such relations.
Upon the whole, Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy, are appendages that
belong to fabulous and not to true religion. They are the means by
which so many Lo heres! and Lo theres! have been spread about the
world, and religion been made into a trade. The success of one impostor
gave encouragement to another, and the quieting salvo of doing some
good by keeping up a pious fraud protected them from remorse.
RECAPITULATION
Having now extended the subject to a greater length than I first
intended, I shall bring it to a close by abstracting a summary from the
whole.
First, That the idea or belief of a word of God existing in print, or
in writing, or in speech, is inconsistent in itself for the reasons
already assigned. These reasons, among many others, are the want of an
universal language; the mutability of language; the errors to which
translations are subject, the possibility of totally suppressing such a
word; the probability of altering it, or of fabricating the whole, and
imposing it upon the world.
Secondly, That the Creation we behold is the real and ever existing
word of God, in which we cannot be deceived. It proclaimeth his power,
it demonstrates his wisdom, it manifests his goodness and beneficence.
Thirdly, That the moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral
goodness and beneficence of God manifested in the creation towards all
his creatures. That seeing as we daily do the goodness of God to all
men, it is an example calling upon all men to practise the same towards
each other; and, consequently, that every thing of persecution and
revenge between man and man, and every thing of cruelty to animals, is
a violation of moral duty.
I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I content
myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the power that
gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and manner he
pleases, either with or without this body; and it appears more probable
to me that I shall continue to exist hereafter than that I should have
had existence, as I now have, before that existence began.
It is certain that, in one point, all nations of the earth and all
religions agree. All believe in a God. The things in which they
disgrace are the redundancies annexed to that belief; and therefore, if
ever an universal religion should prevail, it will not be believing any
thing new, but in getting rid of redundancies, and believing as man
believed at first. Adam, if ever there was such a man, was created a
Deist; but in the mean time, let every man follow, as he has a right to
do, the religion and worship he prefers.
Does the Age of Reason the complete addition includes the third part to the Age of Reason?