has come already, to rescue men living upon it, such an opinion is altogether so unfit, that it does not require many words to disprove it. Did not God know every thing? Did not he know the evils of mankind? He did, you must admit, know of them: but he did not remove them; and was not able to remove them, even by a divine power. So then it was not practicable to remove these evils, even by a divine power, unless some person was born for that purpose. How could his birth contribute any thing towards it, if a divine power was inadequate? So the imbecility of infancy, it seems, was more efficacious than a divine power, according to the Jesuans. These religionists, both Jews and Jesuans, will have it, that God was to come down and reside among men ; then, of course, he must abandon his throne. This is strange; for if he were to make but a small alteration, every thing would rush into confusion. The votaries of those two religions would persuade us, that God was not well enough known to man, and that it appeared to him to be a loss, and he wished also to make a trial of who would believe that it was him, and who would not, as that was of so much consequence to him, so that he is just like a man newly come into the possession of great affluence, and who likes to make a display of it; thus they give to him the ambition of a man, and make him God no longer. Oh now, I apprehend them, it was not any benefit to God, to be known by men, he wished to be known for our preservation, so that those who discovered who it was and received him in his true character were to be held to be the good people and were to obtain salvation; but those who had no suspicion that it was he and treated him with contempt and slight, they were to be reckoned the bad people and were to suffer punishment. so, at length, after so many ages, God recollected the propriety of doing something for the improvement of man, that had not struck him before, throughout so long a period +. Ånd It is manifest, that, in these things, they speak of God, neither religiously nor rationally. There is nothing new or wonderful in what they say about a deluge and a conflagration. They collect no information from the Greeks on that head: nay, they are of such contracted minds and are so much the slaves of prejudice, that they will not pay attention to the Greeks, who could have told them, that, after long periods of time and many revolutions and conjunctions of the heavenly bodies, there happen conflagrations and deluges; that as the last of these momentous events was a deluge, the same that happened in the time of Deucalion, the next is to be a conflagration: and this is the reason, that, through mistake, they say that God is to come down with fire and to act the part of Jack Ketch ‡. Let us go over our ground again and enter more at large into the subject. But nothing new will be adduced, and only what has been already admitted by every body. God is good, beautiful, happy and of the most pleasing and excellent form: if he comes down among mankind, he must be changed; and he will be changed from good to bad, from beautiful to ugly, from happy to wretched, and from being perfectly moral to be a downright scoundrel. Who would wish himself to be changed in such a way as that? Certainly, this kind of change is more suitable to a mortal man: but it is the property of an immortal being, to continue always the same. Therefore God could never undergo such a change§. Either God is really changed, as these religionists think, into a mortal body, which we have already shewn to be impossible; or he is not in P. 163. + p. 165. + p. 167. § 169. reality changed, but causes those who see him to think that he is changed, and imposes upon them by a lie. Now deception and falsehood are on other occasions bad, and then only are they of use when they are employed for a remedy to friends that are afflicted with some disease, or have contracted some vicious habit, or are mad, or whenever by means of them we elude danger from enemies. But no vicious or insane person is beloved by God, and he fears nobody so as to have need of deceit to escape from danger❤. The Jews give their reasons on the one side, why they think that the Christ has not yet come; but they expect that he will arrive hereafter the Jesuans on the other side maintain that the Son of God has already come and led the life of a man. The Jews say, that as life is filled with all sorts of vices, it has need that some one be sent by God to punish the wicked and rectify every thing in the same manner as was formerly done at the deluge; and the Jesuans admit all this; because they have added more of their own to it. The overthrow of the tower of Babel is a tale like that of the deluge. This story of the tower is nothing but the fable of the sons of Aloeus spoilt by Moses's clumsy way of telling it. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha is the fable of Phaeton hashed up t. In addition to this Jewish trumpery, the Jesuans must needs put in some of their own, as how that the Son of God has already come on account of the sins of the Jews, and as how on account of their hanging Jesus on a gallows, and his gulping down some gall by mistake, God was put in a passion. The Jews and Jesuans are like a troop of bats or ants issuing out of their holes, or like sanhedrims of frogs croaking in a marsh, or like worms collecting in assemblies, in their native mud, and disputing with one another about which of them is most defiled with sin, and saying that God indicates and foretells to them every thing that is to happen, and that he relinquishes the case of the whole world, and of the heavenly revolutions, and of the widely extended earth, that he may devote all his attention to the government of them alone, that he is perpetually upon treaty with them by means of diplomatists sent backwards and forwards. And these worms say, he is God to be sure, and we are next to him, and we are made by him in all respects like God, all things are subject to us, the earth, the water, the air, the stars, all things are created on our account, that they may be subservient to our use. Now, since some of us sin, God will come or will send his Son to consume the wicked, and the rest of us will enjoy eternal life with him. It would be less trying to patience, that such things should be said by worms and frogs, than by the Jews and Jesuans disputing with one another.‡ The Jews are Egyptians who have left their original country, and are not remarkable for any exploits, nor have they been held in esteem for excellency in any way, nor have these favourites of God performed any thing memorable. Unlearned Jews, in a corner of Palestine, who had never heard that Hesiod, and other men of abilities had treated on that subject, laid their heads together, and composed an incredible and badly-told story of a certain man, formed by the hands of God, who puffed breath up the man's nose, and concerning a woman made out of his side, and certain injunctions given by God, and a snake that was their enemy, and that the snake had more influence with them than God's precepts had- -an old woman's * B. 2, p. 171. + lbid. p. 174. Ibid. p. 175. crazy invention, for it cannot, without the utmost impiety, be said that God was weak from the first, and that he had no authority with the man who was formed by him. So God blew into his face, and the man became a living soul. Add to these fictions, the deluge and the nonsensical ark, that held every thing in it, and the dove and crow that were sent as messengers, which show that these stories were altered much for the worse from that of Deucalion, and made it ridiculous. For we may be sure, they did not suppose, that these high diddle-diddles would ever attract the notice of men of education, but must have intended them for little children. Then there are the tricks of the mother Rebecca, and the comical manner in which Jacob acquired property at Laban's expence, and how God made his children a present of donkies, and tups, and ewes, and camels. And the conduct of Lot's daughters, which was worse than the Thyestean enormities. Then you have the hatred of Esau towards Jacob, the inexcusable perpetration by Levi and Simeon, in the affair of Sechem; the selling their brother Joseph for a slave; their imposition upon their father Jacob, who had no suspicion when they showed him Joseph's garment of many colours, as if the hardest of his bones could have been all eaten, how this man, so grossly imposed upon, lamented his son as if dead, when, in the mean while, he was a slave in Egypt; then the tale about the dreams of Pharaoh's butler and baker, and the interpretation of them by Joseph, which was the cause of his deliverance out of prison, and of his promotion to the second situation in the kingdom of Egypt. The more moderate, both among the Jews and Jesuans turn all these into an allegory, showing by this subterfuge, that they are ashamed of them; but they will not admit of being allegorized, for they are nothing but silly fables; but the allegories that have been attempted to be grounded on them are still more despicable than the fables themselves, and even more absurd; and endeavours have been employed to make to fit together things that are incapable of cohering. Would it not be ridiculous in man, if he were angry with the Jews, to slay all the males above the age of puberty, and set fire to their cities; but what must we think of the most high God, if, when exasperated, and moved to a high pitch of fury, he should threaten to send his Son to suffer such punishments as the Jesuans speak of? ON CHRISTIANITY. WHAT good has the Christian religion accomplished for the world? One thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven years have now passed away, and how small a portion of mankind are Christians! men those arts and sciences, which have conferred so much benefit on us? Why, if he were all powerful with the great and beneficial Creator of the universe, did he not introduce the art of printing and of making paper, that all his benevolent acts and doctrines should have been handed down to us, and commissioned his apostles to transcribe them, and print them in every language under Heaven, that all men might know what to believe and itself, fit for the whole world to learn and to speak, appointed teachers to proceed through every nation on the earth, making them acquainted with not only all the inventions and improvements of the present age, *Book 2, p. 187. but all which will ever be invented? Why did he not teach the then generation of the world, the use of steam, of constructing steam vessels, that all his apostles might have traversed the globe, and by showing all mankind miracles, such as no human being could perform, that he was a being of another world? Why did he not teach us the art of making gas, the art of navigation, of mechanics, the science of botany, of painting, of sculpture, of agriculture? Why did he not? Because he was incapable of writing his own name, incapable of writing his own acts, his speeches, his doctrines, his miracles, and, therefore, through ignorance, leaving others almost as ignorant to do that which he himself could not do! and even his much vaunted miracles, and those of the Old Testament, fall very far short of those which are every day before our eyes. The feeding ten thousand men with five barley loaves and two small fishes, is not more wonderful than that barley should be composed of dust. That Aaron's rod should be changed into a serpent, is not more wonderful than that a liquid should be converted into beings possessed of intelligence that animated nature should be changed from dust into vegetables, and from vegetables into animals! Let the Bible be no longer revered on account of the miracles there recorded, the fact that "thousands of animalcula can stand on the point of a needle," is more astonishing than any miracle throughout the whole range of sacred writings. Let but the people, let but the reflecting portion of mankind, fully appreciate the wonders displayed by the microscope and the telescope, of which Christ was utterly ignorant; let them but be satisfied, that even before our own eyes, greater miracles are now working than any in the Bible-those of more use to us; then will the whole work fall into forgetfulness, all but the two grand doctrines of "do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you," and "love thy neighbour as thyself," these are well worth preserving; well would it have been for mankind, if no more had been preserved. IMPROMPTU. 66 On Reading Mr. Taylor's Satire on the blood of Christ being generous wine." Printed and Published by RICHARD CARLILE, 62, Fleet-street, where all Communications, post-paid, or free of expense, are requested to be left. No. 3. VOL. 2.] LONDON, Friday, July 18, 1828. [PRICE 6d. EMANCIPATION, CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT; EMANCIPATION of every kind is my religious faith, as to a remote future state, and my political hope for the speedy present. In the clamour for emancipation as in every other political or religious clamour, the art of the politician should consist in the endeavour to give it a right direction, that direction which shall increase the Sum of human happiness. It is almost superfluous in me to repeat that I am an advocate for every kind of emancipation, save that from the restraint of good morals and good laws. I desire to see the Roman Catholic emancipated, not only from the shackles of bad Protestant laws; but from the shackles of his worse Catholic priesthood, to him by far the greater tyranny, by far the most injurious mancipation. What injury he sustains from bad Protestant laws is but as a feather in his scale of suffering; his most galling chains, however to him invisible, are the chains with which he is bound by his religion, to be the unhappy man, the dissenting neighbour, husband, parent, or son, the wrangling fanatic, the slave of superstition, most industrious in his idolatry, and most robbed or most taxed in his veneration for the useless religion of his fathers. Emancipation will benefit him not, until it reach this point and dissipate the thraldom of his mental error, by developing to him the physical truths by which he is every where surrounded, but which are separated from his perception by the I would destroy the influence of the Protestant over the Catholic; but I would not do it in the way in which Mr. Cobbett seeks to do it, I would not justify the influence of the Catholic over the Protestant, I would not make it a contention for ascendancy or superiority; but seek to make it an emancipation of the English Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62. Fleet Street. No. 3.-VOL. 2. F |