The Age Of Reason.............................................................................................................................................1

Chapter X Concerning God, And The Lights Cast On His Existence And Attributes By The Bible

Chapter XIII Comparison Of Christianism With The Religious Ideas Inspired By Nature

Chapter XVII Of The Means Employed In All Time, And Almost Universally, To Deceive The Peoples

IN the opening year, 1793, when revolutionary France had beheaded its king, the wrath turned next upon the

King of kings, by whose grace every tyrant claimed to reign. But eventualities had brought among them a

great English and American heart Thomas Paine. He had pleaded for Louis Caper "Kill the king but

spare the man." Now he pleaded, "Disbelieve in the King of kings, but do not confuse with that idol the

In Paine's Preface to the Second Part of "The Age of Reason" he describes himself as writing the First Part

near the close of the year 1793. "I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has since appeared,

before a guard came about three in the morning, with an order signed by the two Committees of Public Safety

and Surety General, for putting me in arrestation." This was on the morning of December 28. But it is

necessary to weigh the words just quoted "in the state it has since appeared." For on August 5, 1794,

Francois Lanthenas, in an appeal for Paine's liberation, wrote as follows: "I deliver to Merlin de Thionville a

copy of the last work of T. Payne [The Age of Reason], formerly our colleague, and in custody since the

decree excluding foreigners from the national representation. This book was written by the author in the

beginning of the year '93 (old style). I undertook its translation before the revolution against priests, and it

was published in French about the same time. Couthon, to whom I sent it, seemed offended with me for

Under the frown of Couthon, one of the most atrocious colleagues of Robespierre, this early publication

seems to have been so effectually suppressed that no copy bearing that date, 1793, can be found in France or

elsewhere. In Paine's letter to Samuel Adams, printed in the present volume, he says that he had it translated

into French, to stay the progress of atheism, and that he endangered his life "by opposing atheism." The time

indicated by Lanthenas as that in which he submitted the work to Couthon would appear to be the latter part

of March, 1793, the fury against the priesthood having reached its climax in the decrees against them of

March 19 and 26. If the moral deformity of Couthon, even greater than that of his body, be remembered, and

the readiness with which death was inflicted for the most theoretical opinion not approved by the "Mountain,"

it will appear probable that the offence given Couthon by Paine's book involved danger to him and his

translator. On May 31, when the Girondins were accused, the name of Lanthenas was included, and he barely

escaped; and on the same day Danton persuaded Paine not to appear in the Convention, as his life might be in

danger. Whether this was because of the "Age of Reason," with its fling at the "Goddess Nature" or not, the

statements of author and translator are harmonized by the fact that Paine prepared the manuscript, with

considerable additions and changes, for publication in English, as he has stated in the Preface to Part II.

A comparison of the French and English versions, sentence by sentence, proved to me that the translation sent

by Lanthenas to Merlin de Thionville in 1794 is the same as that he sent to Couthon in 1793. This discovery

was the means of recovering several interesting sentences of the original work. I have given as footnotes

translations of such clauses and phrases of the French work as appeared to be important. Those familiar with

the translations of Lanthenas need not be reminded that he was too much of a literalist to depart from the

manuscript before him, and indeed he did not even venture to alter it in an instance (presently considered)

where it was obviously needed. Nor would Lanthenas have omitted any of the paragraphs lacking in his

translation. This original work was divided into seventeen chapters, and these I have restored, translating

their headings into English. The "Age of Reason" is thus for the first time given to the world with nearly its

It should be remembered that Paine could not have read the proof of his "Age of Reason" (Part I.) which went

through the press while he was in prison. To this must be ascribed the permanence of some sentences as

abbreviated in the haste he has described. A notable instance is the dropping out of his estimate of Jesus the

words rendered by Lanthenas "trop peu imite, trop oublie, trop meconnu." The addition of these words to

Paine's tribute makes it the more notable that almost the only recognition of the human character and life of

Jesus by any theological writer of that generation came from one long branded as an infidel.

To the inability of the prisoner to give his work any revision must be attributed the preservation in it of the

singular error already alluded to, as one that Lanthenas, but for his extreme fidelity, would have corrected.

This is Paine's repeated mention of six planets, and enumeration of them, twelve years after the discovery of

Uranus. Paine was a devoted student of astronomy, and it cannot for a moment be supposed that he had not

participated in the universal welcome of Herschel's discovery. The omission of any allusion to it convinces

me that the astronomical episode was printed from a manuscript written before 1781, when Uranus was

discovered. Unfamiliar with French in 1793, Paine might not have discovered the erratum in Lanthenas'

translation, and, having no time for copying, he would naturally use as much as possible of the same

manuscript in preparing his work for English readers. But he had no opportunity of revision, and there

remains an erratum which, if my conjecture be correct, casts a significant light on the paragraphs in which he

alludes to the preparation of the work. He states that soon after his publication of "Common Sense" (1776),

he "saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a

revolution in the system of religion," and that "man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated

belief of one God and no more." He tells Samuel Adams that it had long been his intention to publish his

thoughts upon religion, and he had made a similar remark to John Adams in 1776. Like the Quakers among

whom he was reared Paine could then readily use the phrase "word of God" for anything in the Bible which

approved itself to his "inner light," and as he had drawn from the first Book of Samuel a divine condemnation

of monarchy, John Adams, a Unitarian, asked him if he believed in the inspiration of the Old Testament.

Paine replied that he did not, and at a later period meant to publish his views on the subject. There is little

doubt that he wrote from time to time on religious points, during the American war, without publishing his

thoughts, just as he worked on the problem of steam navigation, in which he had invented a practicable

method (ten years before John Fitch made his discovery) without publishing it. At any rate it appears to me

certain that the part of "The Age of Reason" connected with Paine's favorite science, astronomy, was written

Paine's theism, however invested with biblical and Christian phraseology, was a birthright. It appears clear

from several allusions in "The Age of Reason" to the Quakers that in his early life, or before the middle of the

eighteenth century, the people so called were substantially Deists. An interesting confirmation of Paine's

statements concerning them appears as I write in an account sent by Count Leo Tolstoi to the London 'Times'

of the Russian sect called Dukhobortsy (The Times, October 23, 1895). This sect sprang up in the last

"The first seeds of the teaching called afterwards 'Dukhoborcheskaya' were sown by a foreigner, a Quaker,

who came to Russia. The fundamental idea of his Quaker teaching was that in the soul of man dwells God

himself, and that He himself guides man by His inner word. God lives in nature physically and in man's soul

spiritually. To Christ, as to an historical personage, the Dukhobortsy do not ascribe great importance ...

Christ was God's son, but only in the sense in which we call, ourselves 'sons of God.' The purpose of Christ's

sufferings was no other than to show us an example of suffering for truth. The Quakers who, in 1818, visited

the Dukhobortsy, could not agree with them upon these religious subjects; and when they heard from them

their opinion about Jesus Christ (that he was a man), exclaimed 'Darkness!' From the Old and New

Testaments,' they say, 'we take only what is useful,' mostly the moral teaching. ... The moral ideas of the

Dukhobortsy are the following: All men are, by nature, equal; external distinctions, whatsoever they may

be, are worth nothing. This idea of men's equality the Dukhoborts have directed further, against the State

authority. ... Amongst themselves they hold subordination, and much more, a monarchical Government, to be

contrary to their ideas." Here is an early Hicksite Quakerism carried to Russia long before the birth of Elias

Hicks, who recovered it from Paine, to whom the American Quakers refused burial among them. Although

Paine arraigned the union of Church and State, his ideal Republic was religious; it was based on a conception

of equality based on the divine sonship of every man. This faith underlay equally his burden against claims

to divine partiality by a "Chosen People," a Priesthood, a Monarch "by the grace of God," or an Aristocracy.

Paine's "Reason" is only an expansion of the Quaker's "inner light"; and the greater impression, as compared

with previous republican and deistic writings made by his "Rights of Man" and "Age of Reason" (really

volumes of one work), is partly explained by the apostolic fervor which made him a spiritual, successor of

Paine's mind was by no means skeptical, it was eminently instructive. That he should have waited until his

fiftyseventh year before publishing his religious convictions was due to a desire to work out some positive

and practicable system to take the place of that which he believed was crumbling. The English engineer Hall,

who assisted Paine in making the model of his iron bridge, wrote to his friends in England, in 1786: "My

employer has Common Sense enough to disbelieve most of the common systematic theories of Divinity, but

does not seem to establish any for himself." But five years later Paine was able to lay the cornerstone of his

temple: "With respect to religion itself, without regard to names, and as directing itself from the universal

family of mankind to the 'Divine object of all adoration, it is man bringing to his Maker the fruits of his heart;

and though those fruits may differ from each other like the fruits of the earth, the grateful tribute of every

one, is accepted." ("Rights of Man." See my edition of Paine's Writings, ii., p. 326.) Here we have a

reappearance of George Fox confuting the doctor in America who "denied the light and Spirit of God to be in

every one; and affirmed that it was not in the Indians. Whereupon I called an Indian to us, and asked him

'whether or not, when he lied, or did wrong to anyone, there was not something in him that reproved him for

it?' He said, 'There was such a thing in him that did so reprove him; and he was ashamed when he had done

wrong, or spoken wrong.' So we shamed the doctor before the governor and the people." (Journal of George

Paine, who coined the phrase "Religion of Humanity (The Crisis, vii., 1778), did but logically defend it in

"The Age of Reason," by denying a special revelation to any particular tribe, or divine authority in any

particular creed of church; and the centenary of this muchabused publication has been celebrated by a great

conservative champion of Church and State, Mr. Balfour, who, in his "Foundations of Belief," affirms that

"inspiration" cannot be denied to the great Oriental teachers, unless grapes may be gathered from thorns.

The centenary of the complete publication of "The Age of Reason," (October 25, 1795), was also celebrated

at the Church Congress, Norwich, on October 10, 1895, when Professor Bonney, F.R.S., Canon of

Manchester, read a paper in which he said: "I cannot deny that the increase of scientific knowledge has

deprived parts of the earlier books of the Bible of the historical value which was generally attributed to them

by our forefathers. The story of Creation in the Book of Genesis, unless we play fast and loose either with

words or with science, cannot be brought into harmony with what we have learnt from geology. Its

ethnological statements are imperfect, if not sometimes inaccurate. The stories of the Fall, of the Flood, and

of the Tower of Babel, are incredible in their present form. Some historical element may underlie many of the

traditions in the first eleven chapters in that book, but this we cannot hope to recover." Canon Bonney

proceeded to say of the New Testament also, that the Gospels are not so far as we know, strictly

contemporaneous records, so we must admit the possibility of variations and even inaccuracies in details

being introduced by oral tradition." The Canon thinks the interval too short for these importations to be

serious, but that any question of this kind is left open proves the Age of Reason fully upon us. Reason alone

can determine how many texts are as spurious as the three heavenly witnesses (i John v. 7), and like it

"serious" enough to have cost good men their lives, and persecutors their charities. When men interpolate, it

is because they believe their interpolation seriously needed. It will be seen by a note in Part II. of the work,

that Paine calls attention to an interpolation introduced into the first American edition without indication of

its being an editorial footnote. This footnote was: "The book of Luke was carried by a majority of one only.

Vide Moshelm's Ecc. History." Dr. Priestley, then in America, answered Paine's work, and in quoting less

than a page from the "Age of Reason" he made three alterations, one of which changed "church

mythologists" into "Christian mythologists," and also raised the editorial footnote into the text, omitting

the reference to Mosheim. Having done this, Priestley writes: "As to the gospel of Luke being carried by a

majority of one only, it is a legend, if not of Mr. Paine's own invention, of no better authority whatever." And

so on with further castigation of the author for what he never wrote, and which he himself (Priestley) was the

unconscious means of introducing into the text within the year of Paine's publication.

If this could be done, unintentionally by a conscientious and exact man, and one not unfriendly to Paine, if

such a writer as Priestley could make four mistakes in citing half a page, it will appear not very wonderful

when I state that in a modern popular edition of "The Age of Reason," including both parts, I have noted

about five hundred deviations from the original. These were mainly the accumulated efforts of friendly

editors to improve Paine's grammar or spelling; some were misprints, or developed out of such; and some

resulted from the sale in London of a copy of Part Second surreptitiously made from the manuscript. These

facts add significance to Paine's footnote (itself altered in some editions!), in which he says: "If this has

happened within such a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of printing, which prevents the alteration

of copies individually; what may not have happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no

printing, and when any man who could write, could make a written copy, and call it an original, by Matthew,

Nothing appears to me more striking, as an illustration of the farreaching effects of traditional prejudice,

than the errors into which some of our ablest contemporary scholars have fallen by reason of their not having

studied Paine. Professor Huxley, for instance, speaking of the freethinkers of the eighteenth century, admires

the acuteness, common sense, wit, and the broad humanity of the best of them, but says "there is rarely much

to be said for their work as an example of the adequate treatment of a grave and difficult investigation," and

that they shared with their adversaries "to the full the fatal weakness of a priori philosophizing." [NOTE:

Science and Christian Tradition, p. 18 (Lon. ed., 1894).] Professor Huxley does not name Paine, evidently

because he knows nothing about him. Yet Paine represents the turningpoint of the historical freethinking

movement; he renounced the 'a priori' method, refused to pronounce anything impossible outside pure

mathematics, rested everything on evidence, and really founded the Huxleyan school. He plagiarized by

anticipation many things from the rationalistic leaders of our time, from Strauss and Baur (being the first to

expatiate on "Christian Mythology"), from Renan (being the first to attempt recovery of the human Jesus),

and notably from Huxley, who has repeated Paine's arguments on the untrustworthiness of the biblical

manuscripts and canon, on the inconsistencies of the narratives of Christ's resurrection, and various other

points. None can be more loyal to the memory of Huxley than the present writer, and it is even because of my

sense of his grand leadership that he is here mentioned as a typical instance of the extent to which the very

elect of freethought may be unconsciously victimized by the phantasm with which they are contending. He

says that Butler overthrew freethinkers of the eighteenth century type, but Paine was of the nineteenth century

type; and it was precisely because of his critical method that he excited more animosity than his deistical

predecessors. He compelled the apologists to defend the biblical narratives in detail, and thus implicitly

acknowledge the tribunal of reason and knowledge to which they were summoned. The ultimate answer by

police was a confession of judgment. A hundred years ago England was suppressing Paine's works, and many

an honest Englishman has gone to prison for printing and circulating his "Age of Reason." The same views

are now freely expressed; they are heard in the seats of learning, and even in the Church Congress; but the

suppression of Paine, begun by bigotry and ignorance, is continued in the long indifference of the

representatives of our Age of Reason to their pioneer and founder. It is a grievous loss to them and to their

cause. It is impossible to understand the religious history of England, and of America, without studying the

phases of their evolution represented in the writings of Thomas Paine, in the controversies that grew out of

them with such practical accompaniments as the foundation of the Theophilanthropist Church in Paris and

Whatever may be the case with scholars in our time, those of Paine's time took the "Age of Reason" very

seriously indeed. Beginning with the learned Dr. Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, a large number of

learned men replied to Paine's work, and it became a signal for the commencement of those concessions, on

the part of theology, which have continued to our time; and indeed the socalled "Broad Church" is to some

extent an outcome of "The Age of Reason." It would too much enlarge this Introduction to cite here the

replies made to Paine (thirtysix are catalogued in the British Museum), but it may be remarked that they

were notably free, as a rule, from the personalities that raged in the pulpits. I must venture to quote one

passage from his very learned antagonist, the Rev. Gilbert Wakefield, B.A., "late Fellow of Jesus College,

Cambridge." Wakefield, who had resided in London during all the Paine panic, and was well acquainted with

the slanders uttered against the author of "Rights of Man," indirectly brands them in answering Paine's

argument that the original and traditional unbelief of the Jews, among whom the alleged miracles were

"But the subject before us admits of further illustration from the example of Mr. Paine himself. In this

country, where his opposition to the corruptions of government has raised him so many adversaries, and such

a swarm of unprincipled hirelings have exerted themselves in blackening his character and in

misrepresenting all the transactions and incidents of his life, will it not be a most difficult, nay an impossible

task, for posterity, after a lapse of 1700 years, if such a wreck of modern literature as that of the ancient,

should intervene, to identify the real circumstances, moral and civil, of the man? And will a true historian,

such as the Evangelists, be credited at that future period against such a predominant incredulity, without

large and mighty accessions of collateral attestation? And how transcendently extraordinary, I had almost

said miraculous, will it be estimated by candid and reasonable minds, that a writer whose object was a

melioration of condition to the common people, and their deliverance from oppression, poverty,

wretchedness, to the numberless blessings of upright and equal government, should be reviled, persecuted,

and burned in effigy, with every circumstance of insult and execration, by these very objects of his benevolent

intentions, in every corner of the kingdom?" After the execution of Louis XVI., for whose life Paine pleaded

so earnestly, while in England he was denounced as an accomplice in the deed, he devoted himself to

the preparation of a Constitution, and also to gathering up his religious compositions and adding to them.

This manuscript I suppose to have been prepared in what was variously known as White's Hotel or

Philadelphia House, in Paris, No. 7 Passage des Petits Peres. This compilation of early and fresh manuscripts

(if my theory be correct) was labelled, "The Age of Reason," and given for translation to Francois Lanthenas

in March 1793. It is entered, in Qudrard (La France Literaire) under the year 1793, but with the title "L'Age

de la Raison" instead of that which it bore in 1794, "Le Siecle de la Raison." The latter, printed "Au Burcau

de l'imprimerie, rue du TheatreFrancais, No. 4," is said to be by "Thomas Paine, Citoyen et cultivateur de

I'Amerique septentrionale, secretaire du Congres du departement des affaires etrangeres pendant la guerre

d'Amerique, et auteur des ouvrages intitules: LA SENS COMMUN et LES DROITS DE L'HOMME."

When the Revolution was advancing to increasing terrors, Paine, unwilling to participate in the decrees of a

Convention whose sole legal function was to frame a Constitution, retired to an old mansion and garden in

the Faubourg St. Denis, No. 63. Mr. J.G. Alger, whose researches in personal details connected with the

Revolution are original and useful, recently showed me in the National Archives at Paris, some papers

connected with the trial of Georgeit, Paine's landlord, by which it appears that the present No. 63 is not, as I

had supposed, the house in which Paine resided. Mr. Alger accompanied me to the neighborhood, but we

were not able to identify the house. The arrest of Georgeit is mentioned by Paine in his essay on

"Forgetfulness" (Writings, iii., 319). When his trial came on one of the charges was that he had kept in his

house "Paine and other Englishmen," Paine being then in prison, but he (Georgeit) was acquitted of the

paltry accusations brought against him by his Section, the "Faubourg du Nord." This Section took in the

whole east side of the Faubourg St. Denis, whereas the present No. 63 is on the west side. After Georgeit (or

Georger) had been arrested, Paine was left alone in the large mansion (said by Rickman to have been once the

hotel of Madame de Pompadour), and it would appear, by his account, that it was after the execution (October

31, 1793) Of his friends the Girondins, and political comrades, that he felt his end at hand, and set about his

last literary bequest to the world, "The Age of Reason," in the state in which it has since appeared, as

he is careful to say. There was every probability, during the months in which he wrote (November and

December 1793) that he would be executed. His religious testament was prepared with the blade of the

guillotine suspended over him, a fact which did not deter pious mythologists from portraying his

In editing Part I. of "The Age of Reason," I follow closely the first edition, which was printed by Barrois in

Paris from the manuscript, no doubt under the superintendence of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine, on his way to

the Luxembourg, had confided it. Barlow was an American exclergyman, a speculator on whose career

French archives cast an unfavorable light, and one cannot be certain that no liberties were taken with Paine's

I may repeat here what I have stated in the outset of my editorial work on Paine that my rule is to correct

obvious misprints, and also any punctuation which seems to render the sense less clear. And to that I will

now add that in following Paine's quotations from the Bible I have adopted the Plan now generally used in

Paine was imprisoned in the Luxembourg on December 28, 1793, and released on November 4, 1794. His

liberation was secured by his old friend, James Monroe (afterwards President), who had succeeded his

(Paine's) relentless enemy, Gouvemeur Morris, as American Minister in Paris. He was found by Monroe

more dead than alive from semistarvation, cold, and an abscess contracted in prison, and taken to the

Minister's own residence. It was not supposed that he could survive, and he owed his life to the tender care of

Mr. and Mrs. Monroe. It was while thus a prisoner in his room, with death still hovering over him, that Paine

The work was published in London by H.D. Symonds on October 25, 1795, and claimed to be "from the

Author's manuscript." It is marked as "Entered at Stationers Hall," and prefaced by an apologetic note of "The

Bookseller to the Public," whose commonplaces about avoiding both prejudice and partiality, and considering

"both sides," need not be quoted. While his volume was going through the press in Paris, Paine heard of the

publication in London, which drew from him the following hurried note to a London publisher, no doubt

"SIR, I have seen advertised in the London papers the second Edition [part] of the Age of Reason,

printed, the advertisement says, from the Author's Manuscript, and entered at Stationers Hall. I have never

sent any manuscript to any person. It is therefore a forgery to say it is printed from the author's manuscript;

and I suppose is done to give the Publisher a pretence of Copy Right, which he has no title to.

"I send you a printed copy, which is the only one I have sent to London. I wish you to make a cheap edition

of it. I know not by what means any copy has got over to London. If any person has made a manuscript copy

I have no doubt but it is full of errors. I wish you would talk to Mr. upon this subject as I wish to

know by what means this trick has been played, and from whom the publisher has got possession of any copy.

Eaton's cheap edition appeared January 1, 1796, with the above letter on the reverse of the title. The blank in

the note was probably "Symonds" in the original, and possibly that publisher was imposed upon. Eaton,

already in trouble for printing one of Paine's political pamphlets, fled to America, and an edition of the "Age

of Reason" was issued under a new title; no publisher appears; it is said to be "printed for, and sold by all the

Booksellers in Great Britain and Ireland." It is also said to be "By Thomas Paine, author of several

remarkable performances." I have never found any copy of this anonymous edition except the one in my

possession. It is evidently the edition which was suppressed by the prosecution of Williams for selling a copy

A comparison with Paine's revised edition reveals a good many clerical and verbal errors in Symonds, though

few that affect the sense. The worst are in the preface, where, instead of "1793," the misleading date "1790"

is given as the year at whose close Paine completed Part First, an error that spread far and wide and was

fastened on by his calumnious American "biographer," Cheetham, to prove his inconsistency. The editors

have been fairly demoralized by, and have altered in different ways, the following sentence of the preface in

Symonds: "The intolerant spirit of religious persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals,

styled Revolutionary, supplied the place of the Inquisition; and the Guillotine of the State outdid the Fire and

Faggot of the Church." The rogue who copied this little knew the care with which Paine weighed words, and

that he would never call persecution "religious," nor connect the guillotine with the "State," nor concede that

with all its horrors it had outdone the history of fire and faggot. What Paine wrote was: "The intolerant spirit

of church persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, styled Revolutionary, supplied the

An original letter of Paine, in the possession of Joseph Cowen, exM.P., which that gentleman permits me to

bring to light, besides being one of general interest makes clear the circumstances of the original publication.

Although the name of the correspondent does not appear on the letter, it was certainly written to Col. John

Fellows of New York, who copyrighted Part I. of the "Age of Reason." He published the pamphlets of Joel

Barlow, to whom Paine confided his manuscript on his way to prison. Fellows was afterwards Paine's

intimate friend in New York, and it was chiefly due to him that some portions of the author's writings, left in

manuscript to Madame Bonneville while she was a freethinker were rescued from her devout destructiveness

after her return to Catholicism. The letter which Mr. Cowen sends me, is dated at Paris, January 20, 1797.

"SIR, Your friend Mr. Caritat being on the point of his departure for America, I make it the opportunity of

writing to you. I received two letters from you with some pamphlets a considerable time past, in which you

inform me of your entering a copyright of the first part of the Age of Reason: when I return to America we

"As Doctor Franklin has been my intimate friend for thirty years past you will naturally see the reason of my

continuing the connection with his grandson. I printed here (Paris) about fifteen thousand of the second part

of the Age of Reason, which I sent to Mr. F[ranklin] Bache. I gave him notice of it in September 1795 and the

"I sent to him in August last a manuscript letter of about 70 pages, from me to Mr. Washington to be printed

in a pamphlet. Mr. Barnes of Philadelphia carried the letter from me over to London to be forwarded to

America. It went by the ship Hope, Cap: Harley, who since his return from America told me that he put it into

the post office at New York for Bache. I have yet no certain account of its publication. I mention this that the

letter may be enquired after, in case it has not been published or has not arrived to Mr. Bache. Barnes wrote

to me, from London 29 August informing me that he was offered three hundred pounds sterling for the

manuscript. The offer was refused because it was my intention it should not appear till it appeared in

"You ask me by your letter to Mr. Caritat for a list of my several works, in order to publish a collection of

them. This is an undertaking I have always reserved for myself. It not only belongs to me of right, but nobody

but myself can do it; and as every author is accountable (at least in reputation) for his works, he only is the

person to do it. If he neglects it in his lifetime the case is altered. It is my intention to return to America in

the course of the present year. I shall then [do] it by subscription, with historical notes. As this work will

employ many persons in different parts of the Union, I will confer with you upon the subject, and such part of

it as will suit you to undertake, will be at your choice. I have sustained so much loss, by disinterestedness and

inattention to money matters, and by accidents, that I am obliged to look closer to my affairs than I have

done. The printer (an Englishman) whom I employed here to print the second part of 'the Age of Reason'

made a manuscript copy of the work while he was printing it, which he sent to London and sold. It was by

"We are waiting here for news from America of the state of the federal elections. You will have heard long

before this reaches you that the French government has refused to receive Mr. Pinckney as minister. While

Mr. Monroe was minister he had the opportunity of softening matters with this government, for he was in

good credit with them tho' they were in high indignation at the infidelity of the Washington Administration. It

is time that Mr. Washington retire, for he has played off so much prudent hypocrisy between France and

It would appear that Symonds' stolen edition must have got ahead of that sent by Paine to Franklin Bache, for

some of its errors continue in all modern American editions to the present day, as well as in those of England.

For in England it was only the shilling edition that revised by Paine which was suppressed. Symonds,

who ministered to the halfcrown folk, and who was also publisher of replies to Paine, was left undisturbed

about his pirated edition, and the new Society for the suppression of Vice and Immorality fastened on one

Thomas Williams, who sold pious tracts but was also convicted (June 24, 1797) of having sold one copy of

the "Age of Reason." Erskine, who had defended Paine at his trial for the "Rights of Man," conducted the

prosecution of Williams. He gained the victory from a packed jury, but was not much elated by it, especially

after a certain adventure on his way to Lincoln's Inn. He felt his coat clutched and beheld at his feet a woman

bathed in tears. She led him into the small bookshop of Thomas Williams, not yet called up for judgment,

and there he beheld his victim stitching tracts in a wretched little room, where there were three children, two

suffering with Smallpox. He saw that it would be ruin and even a sort of murder to take away to prison the

husband, who was not a freethinker, and lamented his publication of the book, and a meeting of the Society

which had retained him was summoned. There was a full meeting, the Bishop of London (Porteus) in the

chair. Erskine reminded them that Williams was yet to be brought up for sentence, described the scene he had

witnessed, and Williams' penitence, and, as the book was now suppressed, asked permission to move for a

nominal sentence. Mercy, he urged, was a part of the Christianity they were defending. Not one of the

Society took his side, not even "philanthropic" Wilberforce and Erskine threw up his brief. This action

of Erskine led the Judge to give Williams only a year in prison instead of the three he said had been intended.

While Williams was in prison the orthodox colporteurs were circulating Erskine's speech on Christianity, but

also an anonymous sermon "On the Existence and Attributes of the Deity," all of which was from Paine's

"Age of Reason," except a brief "Address to the Deity" appended. This picturesque anomaly was repeated in

the circulation of Paine's "Discourse to the Theophilanthropists" (their and the author's names removed)

under the title of "Atheism Refuted." Both of these pamphlets are now before me, and beside them a London

tract of one page just sent for my spiritual benefit. This is headed "A Word of Caution." It begins by

mentioning the "pernicious doctrines of Paine," the first being "that there is No GOD" (sic,) then proceeds to

adduce evidences of divine existence taken from Paine's works. It should be added that this one dingy page is

the only "survival" of the ancient Paine effigy in the tract form which I have been able to find in recent years,

The imprisonment of Williams was the beginning of a thirty years' war for religious liberty in England, in the

course of which occurred many notable events, such as Eaton receiving homage in his pillory at Choring

Cross, and the whole Carlile family imprisoned, its head imprisoned more than nine years for publishing

the "Age of Reason." This last victory of persecution was suicidal. Gentlemen of wealth, not adherents of

Paine, helped in setting Carlile up in business in Fleet Street, where freethinking publications have since

been sold without interruption. But though Liberty triumphed in one sense, the "Age of Reason." remained to

some extent suppressed among those whose attention it especially merited. Its original prosecution by a

Society for the Suppression of Vice (a device to, relieve the Crown) amounted to a libel upon a morally clean

book, restricting its perusal in families; and the fact that the shilling book sold by and among humble people

was alone prosecuted, diffused among the educated an equally false notion that the "Age of Reason" was

vulgar and illiterate. The theologians, as we have seen, estimated more justly the ability of their antagonist,

the collaborator of Franklin, Rittenhouse, and Clymer, on whom the University of Pennsylvania had

conferred the degree of Master of Arts, but the gentry confused Paine with the class described by Burke as

"the swinish multitude." Skepticism, or its free utterance, was temporarily driven out of polite circles by its

complication with the outlawed vindicator of the "Rights of Man." But that long combat has now passed

away. Time has reduced the "Age of Reason" from a flag of popular radicalism to a comparatively

conservative treatise, so far as its negations are concerned. An old friend tells me that in his youth he heard a

sermon in which the preacher declared that "Tom Paine was so wicked that he could not be buried; his bones

were thrown into a box which was bandied about the world till it came to a buttonmanufacturer; "and now

Paine is travelling round the world in the form of buttons!" This variant of the Wandering Jew myth may now

be regarded as unconscious homage to the author whose metaphorical bones may be recognized in buttons

now fashionable, and some even found useful in holding clerical vestments together.

But the careful reader will find in Paine's "Age of Reason" something beyond negations, and in conclusion I

will especially call attention to the new departure in Theism indicated in a passage corresponding to a famous

aphorism of Kant, indicated by a note in Part II. The discovery already mentioned, that Part I. was written at

least fourteen years before Part II., led me to compare the two; and it is plain that while the earlier work is an

amplification of Newtonian Deism, based on the phenomena of planetary motion, the work of 1795 bases

belief in God on "the universal display of himself in the works of the creation and by that repugnance we feel

in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition to do good ones." This exaltation of the moral nature of man to be

the foundation of theistic religion, though now familiar, was a hundred years ago a new affirmation; it has led

on a conception of deity subversive of lastcentury deism, it has steadily humanized religion, and its ultimate

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 fellowcitizens 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

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

As several of my colleagues, and others of my fellowcitizens 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

I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and

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

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

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 priestcraft would be detected; and man would return to the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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 priesthood. 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. [NOTE: The French work

has here: "However this may be, for one or the other of these suppositions this virtuous reformer, this

revolutionist, too little imitated, too much forgotten, too much misunderstood, lost his life. Editor.

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

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

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

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 teteatate is, that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the eating of that apple damns all

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,

ninetenths of the world beside, and Mahomet into the bargain. After this, who can doubt the bountifulness

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 [NOTE: The French work has: "yielding to an unrestrained appetite. Editor.] had eaten an

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

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

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

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

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.]

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

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

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

In the former part of this essay, I have spoken of revelation. I now proceed further with that subject, for the

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,

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 gateposts 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

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

worldmakers, and the Israelites had as much right to set up the trade of worldmaking as any of the rest;

and as Moses was not an Israelite, he might not chose to contradict the tradition. The account, however, is

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. Editer.] 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

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 oeconomical than those of

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

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

'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

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 hich a later times have affixed a new idea, was the Bible word for poet, and the

word 'propesytng' meant the art of making poetry. It also meant the art of playing poetry to a tune upon any

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 thos; 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 sfiirit of God. I keep to my text. I keep to the meaning of the word prophesy.

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

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

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 therefore the phrase is reconcilable to the case, when we understand by it the greater and the

It is altogether unnecessary, after this, to offer any observations upon what those men, styled propliets, 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,

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

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

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

THUS much for the Bible; I now go on to the book called the New Testament. The new Testament! that is,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 thingitself. It is then no

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

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 outlaw, as an outcast, 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

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

BUT some perhaps will say Are we to have no word of God no revelation? I answer yes. There is a

THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no human

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 worldsaviours 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I insert in this place the 19th Psalm, as paraphrased into English verse by Addison. I recollect not the prose,

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

The allusions in job have all of them the same tendency with this Psalm; that of deducing or proving a truth

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

I know not how the printers have pointed this passage, for I keep no Bible; but it contains two distinct

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

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

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 manism 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

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,

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

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,

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 unierse 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 landsurveying. 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

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

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

It is the structure of the universe that has taught this knowledge to man. That structure is an everexisting

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 steelyard, 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

The power that two wheels of different magnitudes have upon each other is in the same proportion as if the

semidiameter of the two wheels were joined together and made into that kind of lever I have described,

suspended at the part where the semidiameters join; for the two wheels, scientifically considered, are no

It is from the study of the true theology that all our knowledge of science is derived; and it is from that

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

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

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 be contemplates the subject in this light, he sees an additional motive for saying, that nothing was made

As the Christian system of faith has made a revolution in theology, so also bas 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

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

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

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,

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 bouses 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

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

mangod 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

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.

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 profersors.

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

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

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

Since then all corruptions down from Moloch to modem 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

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

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

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

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

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

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. [NOTE: The pamphlet Common Sense was first

advertised, as "just published," on January 10, 1776. His plea for the Officers of Excise, written before

leaving England, was printed, but not published until 1793. Despite his reiterated assertion that Common

Sense was the first work he ever published the notion that he was "junius" still finds somr believers. An

indirect comment on our PaineJunians may be found in Part 2 of this work where Paine says a man capable

of writing Homer "would not have thrown away his own fame by giving it to another." It is probable that

Paine ascribed the Letters of Junius to Thomas Hollis. His friend F. Lanthenas, in his translation of the Age

of Reason (1794) advertises his translation of the Letters of Junius from the English "(Thomas Hollis)." This

he could hardly have done without consultation with Paine. Unfortunately this translation of Junius cannot be

found either in the Bibliotheque Nationale or the British Museum, and it cannot be said whether it contains

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

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

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

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 drabcolored 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 clockwork, 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. Auther.] 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

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 be believes both, has

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 twentyfive thousand and

twenty English miles, reckoning sixtynine miles and an half to an equatorial degree, and may be sailed

round in the space of about three years. [NOTE by Paine: Allowing a ship to sail, on an average, three miles

in an hour, she would sail entirely round the world in less than one year, if she could sail in a direct circle, but

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

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 crouded 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

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

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)

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

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 this leaning of the earth (231/2 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

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

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 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 wliich a horse goes in a mill. The second world is Venus; she is

fiftyseven 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 eightyeight 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 fiftyseven

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 sixtythree million miles, and consequently moves round in a

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 lirie 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 twentysix 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,

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

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.

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

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 be 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

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

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

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 twentyfive 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

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

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

ncccssarily 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

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

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

HAVING thus shown the irreconcileable 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

Those three means are Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy, The first two are incompatible with true religion, and

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

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 invelops 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 showman,

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

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

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

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 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

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

pointblank; 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

It has been shewn, in a former part of this work, that the original meaning of the words prophet and

prohesying has been changed, and that a prophet, in the sense of the word as now used, is a creature of

modem 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

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

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 multitunic 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

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.

HAVING now extended the subject to a greater length than I first intended, I shall bring it to a close by

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

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 beneficenec.

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

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 disagrce 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. [In the childhood of the world," according to the first (French) version; and the strict

translation of the final sentence is: "Deism was the religion of Adam, supposing him not an imaginary being;

but none the less must it be left to all men to follow, as is their right, the religion and worship they prefer.

Editor.] Adam, if ever there was such a man, was created a Deist; but in the mean time, let every man follow,

I HAVE mentioned in the former part of The Age of Reason that it had long been my intention to publish my

thoughts upon Religion; but that I had originally reserved it to a later period in life, intending it to be the last

work I should undertake. The circumstances, however, which existed in France in the latter end of the year

1793, determined me to delay it no longer. The just and humane principles of the Revolution which

Philosophy had first diffused, had been departed from. The Idea, always dangerous to Society as it is

derogatory to the Almighty, that priests could forgive sins, though it seemed to exist no longer, had

blunted the feelings of humanity, and callously prepared men for the commission of all crimes. The intolerant

spirit of church persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, stiled Revolutionary, supplied the

place of an Inquisition; and the Guillotine of the Stake. I saw many of my most intimate friends destroyed;

others daily carried to prison; and I had reason to believe, and had also intimations given me, that the same

Under these disadvantages, I began the former part of the Age of Reason; I had, besides, neither Bible nor

Testament [It must be borne in mind that throughout this work Paine generaly means by "Bible" only the Old

Testamut, and speaks of the Now as the "Testament." Editor.] to refer to, though I was writing against

both; nor could I procure any; notwithstanding which I have produced a work that no Bible Believer, though

writing at his ease and with a Library of Church Books about him, can refute. Towards the latter end of

December of that year, a motion was made and carried, to exclude foreigners from the Convention. There

were but two, Anacharsis Cloots and myself; and I saw I was particularly pointed at by Bourdon de l'Oise, in

Conceiving, after this, that I had but a few days of liberty, I sat down and brought the work to a close as

speedily as possible; and I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has since appeared, [This is

an allusion to the essay which Paine wrote at an earlier part of 1793. See Introduction. Editor.] before a

guard came there, about three in the morning, with an order signed by the two Committees of Public Safety

and Surety General, for putting me in arrestation as a foreigner, and conveying me to the prison of the

Luxembourg. I contrived, in my way there, to call on Joel Barlow, and I put the Manuscript of the work into

his hands, as more safe than in my possession in prison; and not knowing what might be the fate in France

either of the writer or the work, I addressed it to the protection of the citizens of the United States.

It is justice that I say, that the guard who executed this order, and the interpreter to the Committee of General

Surety, who accompanied them to examine my papers, treated me not only with civility, but with respect. The

keeper of the 'Luxembourg, Benoit, a man of good heart, shewed to me every friendship in his power, as did

also all his family, while he continued in that station. He was removed from it, put into arrestation, and

After I had been in Luxembourg about three weeks, the Americans then in Paris went in a body to the

Convention to reclaim me as their countryman and friend; but were answered by the President, Vadier, who

was also President of the Committee of Surety General, and had signed the order for my arrcstation, that I

was born in England. [These excited Americans do not seem to have understood or reported the most

important item in Vadeer's reply, namely that their application was "unofficial," i.e. not made through or

sanctioned by Gouverneur Morris, American Minister. For the detailed history of all this see vol. iii.

Editor.] I heard no more, after this, from any person out of the walls of the prison, till the fall of Robespierre,

About two months before this event, I was seized with a fever that in its progress had every symptom of

becoming mortal, and from the effects of which I am not recovered. It was then that I remembered with

renewed satisfaction, and congratulated myself most sincerely, on having written the former part of The Age

of Reason. I had then but little expectation of surviving, and those about me had less. I know therefore by

I was then with three chamber comrades: Joseph Vanheule of Bruges, Charles Bastfni, and Michael Robyns

of Louvain. The unceasing and anxious attention of these three friends to me, by night and day, I remember

with gratitude and mention with pleasure. It happened that a physician (Dr. Graham) and a surgeon, (Mr.

Bond,) part of the suite of General O'Hara, [The officer who at Yorktown, Virginia, carried out the sword of

Cornwallis for surrender, and satirically offered it to Rochambcau instead of Washington. Paine loaned him

300 pounds when he (O'Hara) left the prison, the money he had concealed in the lock of his celldoor.

Edifor.] were then in the Luxembourg: I ask not myself whether it be convenient to them, as men under the

English Government, that I express to them my thanks; but I should reproach myself if I did not; and also to

I have some reason to believe, because I cannot discover any other, that this illness preserved me in existence.

Among the papers of Robespierre that were examined and reported upon to the Convention by a Committee

of Deputies, is a note in the hand writing of Robespierre, in the following words:

"Ddmander que Thomas Paine soit decrete d'accusation, pour l'interet de l'Amerique autant que de la

[Demand that Thomas Paine be decreed of accusation, for the interest of America, as well as of France.]

From what cause it was that the intention was not put in execution, I know not, and cannot inform myself;

The Convention, to repair as much as lay in their power the injustice I had sustained, invited me publickly

and unanimously to return into the Convention, and which I accepted, to shew I could bear an injury without

permitting it to injure my principles or my disposition. It is not because right principles have been violated,

I have seen, since I have been at liberty, several publications written, some in America, and some in England,

as answers to the former part of "The Age of Reason." If the authors of these can amuse themselves by so

doing, I shall not interrupt them, They may write against the work, and against me, as much as they please;

they do me more service than they intend, and I can have no objection that they write on. They will find,

however, by this Second Part, without its being written as an answer to them, that they must return to their

They will now find that I have furnished myself with a Bible and Testament; and I can say also that I have

found them to be much worse books than I had conceived. If I have erred in any thing, in the former part of

the Age of Reason, it has been by speaking better of some parts than they deserved.

I observe, that all my opponents resort, more or less, to what they call Scripture Evidence and Bible authority,

to help them out. They are so little masters of the subject, as to confound a dispute about authenticity with a

dispute about doctrines; I will, however, put them right, that if they should be disposed to write any more,

IT has often been said that any thing may be proved from the Bible; but before any thing can be admitted as

proved by Bible, the Bible itself must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be not true, or the truth of it be

doubtful, it ceases to have authority, and cannot be admitted as proof of any thing.

It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and of all Christian priests and preachers,

to impose the Bible on the world as a mass of truth, and as the word of God; they have disputed and

wrangled, and have anathematized each other about the supposeable meaning of particular parts and passages

therein; one has said and insisted that such a passage meant such a thing, another that it meant directly the

contrary, and a third, that it meant neither one nor the other, but something different from both; and this they

It has happened, that all the answers that I have seen to the former part of 'The Age of Reason' have been

written by priests: and these pious men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and understand the

Bible; each understands it differently, but each understands it best; and they have agreed in nothing but in

Now instead of wasting their time, and heating themselves in fractious disputations about doctrinal points

drawn from the Bible, these men ought to know, and if they do not it is civility to inform them, that the first

thing to be understood is, whether there is sufficient authority for believing the Bible to be the word of God,

There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to

humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by

Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern

times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth

upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all

those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women

and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those

books, and that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of

man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his

It is not the antiquity of a tale that is an evidence of its truth; on the contrary, it is a symptom of its being

fabulous; for the more ancient any history pretends to be, the more it has the resemblance of a fable. The

origin of every nation is buried in fabulous tradition, and that of the Jews is as much to be suspected as any

To charger the commission of things upon the Almighty, which in their own nature, and by every rule of

moral justice, are crimes, as all assassination is, and more especially the assassination of infants, is matter of

serious concern. The Bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express command of God. To

believe therefore the Bible to be true, we must unbelieve all our belief in the moral justice of God; for

wherein could crying or smiling infants offend? And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo every

thing that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other

evidence that the Bible is fabulous, than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be

But in addition to all the moral evidence against the Bible, I will, in the progress of this work, produce such

other evidence as even a priest cannot deny; and show, from that evidence, that the Bible is not entitled to

But, before I proceed to this examination, I will show wherein the Bible differs from all other ancient

writings with respect to the nature of the evidence necessary to establish its authenticity; and this is is the

more proper to be done, because the advocates of the Bible, in their answers to the former part of 'The Age of

Reason,' undertake to say, and they put some stress thereon, that the authenticity of the Bible is as well

established as that of any other ancient book: as if our belief of the one could become any rule for our belief

I know, however, but of one ancient book that authoritatively challenges universal consent and belief, and

that is Euclid's Elements of Geometry; [Euclid, according to chronological history, lived three hundred years

before Christ, and about one hundred before Archimedes; he was of the city of Alexandria, in Egypt.

Author.] and the reason is, because it is a book of selfevident demonstration, entirely independent of its

author, and of every thing relating to time, place, and circumstance. The matters contained in that book would

have the same authority they now have, had they been written by any other person, or had the work been

anonymous, or had the author never been known; for the identical certainty of who was the author makes no

part of our belief of the matters contained in the book. But it is quite otherwise with respect to the books

ascribed to Moses, to Joshua, to Samuel, etc.: those are books of testimony, and they testify of things

naturally incredible; and therefore the whole of our belief, as to the authenticity of those books, rests, in the

first place, upon the certainty that they were written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel; secondly, upon the credit

we give to their testimony. We may believe the first, that is, may believe the certainty of the authorship, and

yet not the testimony; in the same manner that we may believe that a certain person gave evidence upon a

case, and yet not believe the evidence that he gave. But if it should be found that the books ascribed to

Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, were not written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, every part of the authority and

authenticity of those books is gone at once; for there can be no such thing as forged or invented testimony;

neither can there be anonymous testimony, more especially as to things naturally incredible; such as that of

talking with God face to face, or that of the sun and moon standing still at the command of a man.

The greatest part of the other ancient books are works of genius; of which kind are those ascribed to Homer,

to Plato, to Aristotle, to Demosthenes, to Cicero, etc. Here again the author is not an essential in the credit we

give to any of those works; for as works of genius they would have the same merit they have now, were they

anonymous. Nobody believes the Trojan story, as related by Homer, to be true; for it is the poet only that is

admired, and the merit of the poet will remain, though the story be fabulous. But if we disbelieve the matters

related by the Bible authors (Moses for instance) as we disbelieve the things related by Homer, there remains

nothing of Moses in our estimation, but an imposter. As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus,

we credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no further: for if we do, we must believe

the two miracles which Tacitus relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing a lame man, and a blind

man, in just the same manner as the same things are told of Jesus Christ by his historians. We must also

believe the miracles cited by Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia opening to let Alexander and his army

pass, as is related of the Red Sea in Exodus. These miracles are quite as well authenticated as the Bible

miracles, and yet we do not believe them; consequently the degree of evidence necessary to establish our

belief of things naturally incredible, whether in the Bible or elsewhere, is far greater than that which obtains

our belief to natural and probable things; and therefore the advocates for the Bible have no claim to our belief

of the Bible because that we believe things stated in other ancient writings; since that we believe the things

stated in those writings no further than they are probable and credible, or because they are selfevident, like

Euclid; or admire them because they are elegant, like Homer; or approve them because they are sedate, like

Having premised these things, I proceed to examine the authenticity of the Bible; and I begin with what are

called the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. My intention is to

shew that those books are spurious, and that Moses is not the author of them; and still further, that they were

not written in the time of Moses nor till several hundred years afterwards; that they are no other than an

attempted history of the life of Moses, and of the times in which he is said to have lived, and also of the times

prior thereto, written by some very ignorant and stupid pretenders to authorship, several hundred years after

the death of Moses; as men now write histories of things that happened, or are supposed to have happened,

The evidence that I shall produce in this case is from the books themselves; and I will confine myself to this

evidence only. Were I to refer for proofs to any of the ancient authors, whom the advocates of the Bible call

prophane authors, they would controvert that authority, as I controvert theirs: I will therefore meet them on

In the first place, there is no affirmative evidence that Moses is the author of those books; and that he is the

author, is altogether an unfounded opinion, got abroad nobody knows how. The style and manner in which

those books are written give no room to believe, or even to suppose, they were written by Moses; for it is

altogether the style and manner of another person speaking of Moses. In Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, (for

every thing in Genesis is prior to the times of Moses and not the least allusion is made to him therein,) the

whole, I say, of these books is in the third person; it is always, the Lord said unto Moses, or Moses said unto

the Lord; or Moses said unto the people, or the people said unto Moses; and this is the style and manner that

historians use in speaking of the person whose lives and actions they are writing. It may be said, that a man

may speak of himself in the third person, and, therefore, it may be supposed that Moses did; but supposition

proves nothing; and if the advocates for the belief that Moses wrote those books himself have nothing better

But granting the grammatical right, that Moses might speak of himself in the third person, because any man

might speak of himself in that manner, it cannot be admitted as a fact in those books, that it is Moses who

speaks, without rendering Moses truly ridiculous and absurd: for example, Numbers xii. 3: "Now the man

Moses was very MEEK, above all the men which were on the face of the earth." If Moses said this of himself,

instead of being the meekest of men, he was one of the most vain and arrogant coxcombs; and the advocates

for those books may now take which side they please, for both sides are against them: if Moses was not the

author, the books are without authority; and if he was the author, the author is without credit, because to boast

In Deuteronomy, the style and manner of writing marks more evidently than in the former books that Moses

is not the writer. The manner here used is dramatical; the writer opens the subject by a short introductory

discourse, and then introduces Moses as in the act of speaking, and when he has made Moses finish his

harrangue, he (the writer) resumes his own part, and speaks till he brings Moses forward again, and at last

This interchange of speakers occurs four times in this book: from the first verse of the first chapter, to the end

of the fifth verse, it is the writer who speaks; he then introduces Moses as in the act of making his harrangue,

and this continues to the end of the 40th verse of the fourth chapter; here the writer drops Moses, and speaks

historically of what was done in consequence of what Moses, when living, is supposed to have said, and

The writer opens the subject again in the first verse of the fifth chapter, though it is only by saying that Moses

called the people of Isracl together; he then introduces Moses as before, and continues him as in the act of

speaking, to the end of the 26th chapter. He does the same thing at the beginning of the 27th chapter; and

continues Moses as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 28th chapter. At the 29th chapter the writer speaks

again through the whole of the first verse, and the first line of the second verse, where he introduces Moses

for the last time, and continues him as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 33d chapter.

The writer having now finished the rehearsal on the part of Moses, comes forward, and speaks through the

whole of the last chapter: he begins by telling the reader, that Moses went up to the top of Pisgah, that he saw

from thence the land which (the writer says) had been promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that he,

Moses, died there in the land of Moab, that he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, but that no man

knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day, that is unto the time in which the writer lived who wrote the book of

Deuteronomy. The writer then tells us, that Moses was one hundred and ten years of age when he died

that his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated; and he concludes by saying, that there arose not a

prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom, says this anonymous writer, the Lord knew face to face.

Having thus shewn, as far as grammatical evidence implics, that Moses was not the writer of those books, I

will, after making a few observations on the inconsistencies of the writer of the book of Deuteronomy,

proceed to shew, from the historical and chronological evidence contained in those books, that Moses was

not, because he could not be, the writer of them; and consequently, that there is no authority for believing that

the inhuman and horrid butcheries of men, women, and children, told of in those books, were done, as those

books say they were, at the command of God. It is a duty incumbent on every true deist, that he vindicates the

The writer of the book of Deuteronomy, whoever he was, for it is an anonymous work, is obscure, and also

After telling that Moses went to the top of Pisgah (and it does not appear from any account that he ever came

down again) he tells us, that Moses died there in the land of Moab, and that he buried him in a valley in the

land of Moab; but as there is no antecedent to the pronoun he, there is no knowing who he was, that did bury

him. If the writer meant that he (God) buried him, how should he (the writer) know it? or why should we (the

readers) believe him? since we know not who the writer was that tells us so, for certainly Moses could not

The writer also tells us, that no man knoweth where the sepulchre of Moses is unto this day, meaning the time

in which this writer lived; how then should he know that Moses was buried in a valley in the land of Moab?

for as the writer lived long after the time of Moses, as is evident from his using the expression of unto this

day, meaning a great length of time after the death of Moses, he certainly was not at his funeral; and on the

other hand, it is impossible that Moses himself could say that no man knoweth where the sepulchre is unto

this day. To make Moses the speaker, would be an improvement on the play of a child that hides himself and

This writer has no where told us how he came by the speeches which he has put into the mouth of Moses to

speak, and therefore we have a right to conclude that he either composed them himself, or wrote them from

oral tradition. One or other of these is the more probable, since he has given, in the fifth chapter, a table of

commandments, in which that called the fourth commandment is different from the fourth commandment in

the twentieth chapter of Exodus. In that of Exodus, the reason given for keeping the seventh day is, because

(says the commandment) God made the heavens and the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh; but in

that of Deuteronomy, the reason given is, that it was the day on which the children of Israel came out of

Egypt, and therefore, says this commandment, the Lord thy God commanded thee to kee the sabbathday

This makes no mention of the creation, nor that of the coming out of Egypt. There are also many things given

as laws of Moses in this book, that are not to be found in any of the other books; among which is that

inhuman and brutal law, xxi. 18, 19, 20, 21, which authorizes parents, the father and the mother, to bring their

own children to have them stoned to death for what it pleased them to call stubbornness. But priests have

always been fond of preaching up Deuteronomy, for Deuteronomy preaches up tythes; and it is from this

book, xxv. 4, they have taken the phrase, and applied it to tything, that "thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he

treadeth Out the corn:" and that this might not escape observation, they have noted it in the table of contents

at the head of the chapter, though it is only a single verse of less than two lines. O priests! priests! ye are

willing to be compared to an ox, for the sake of tythes. [An elegant pocket edition of Paine's Theological

Works (London. R. Carlile, 1822) has in its title a picture of Paine, as a Moses in evening dress, unfolding the

two tables of his "Age of Reason" to a famer from whom the Bishop of Llandaff (who replied to this work)

has taken a sheaf and a lamb which he is carrying to a church at the summit of a well stocked hill. Editor.]

Though it is impossible for us to know identically who the writer of Deuteronomy was, it is not difficult

to discover him professionally, that he was some Jewish priest, who lived, as I shall shew in the course of this

I come now to speak of the historical and chronological evidence. The chronology that I shall use is the Bible

chronology; for I mean not to go out of the Bible for evidence of any thing, but to make the Bible itself prove

historically and chronologically that Moses is not the author of the books ascribed to him. It is therefore

proper that I inform the readers (such an one at least as may not have the opportunity of knowing it) that in

the larger Bibles, and also in some smaller ones, there is a series of chronology printed in the margin of every

page for the purpose of shawing how long the historical matters stated in each page happened, or are

supposed to have happened, before Christ, and consequently the distance of time between one historical

I begin with the book of Genesis. In Genesis xiv., the writer gives an account of Lot being taken prisoner

in a battle between the four kings against five, and carried off; and that when the account of Lot being taken

came to Abraham, that he armed all his household and marched to rescue Lot from the captors; and that he

To shew in what manner this expression of Pursuing them unto Dan applies to the case in question, I will

refer to two circumstances, the one in America, the other in France. The city now called New York, in

America, was originally New Amsterdam; and the town in France, lately called Havre Marat, was before

called HavredeGrace. New Amsterdam was changed to New York in the year 1664; HavredeGrace to

Havre Marat in the year 1793. Should, therefore, any writing be found, though without date, in which the

name of NewYork should be mentioned, it would be certain evidence that such a writing could not have

been written before, and must have been written after New Amsterdam was changed to New York, and

consequently not till after the year 1664, or at least during the course of that year. And in like manner, any

dateless writing, with the name of Havre Marat, would be certain evidence that such a writing must have been

written after HavredeGrace became Havre Marat, and consequently not till after the year 1793, or at least

I now come to the application of those cases, and to show that there was no such place as Dan till many years

after the death of Moses; and consequently, that Moses could not be the writer of the book of Genesis, where

The place that is called Dan in the Bible was originally a town of the Gentiles, called Laish; and when the

tribe of Dan seized upon this town, they changed its name to Dan, in commemoration of Dan, who was the

To establish this in proof, it is necessary to refer from Genesis to chapter xviii. of the book called the Book of

judges. It is there said (ver. 27) that "they (the Danites) came unto Laish to a people that were quiet and

secure, and they smote them with the edge of the sword [the Bible is filled with murder] and burned the city

with fire; and they built a city, (ver. 28,) and dwelt therein, and [ver. 29,] they called the name of the city

Dan, after the name of Dan, their father; howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first."

This account of the Danites taking possession of Laish and changing it to Dan, is placed in the book of

Judges immediately after the death of Samson. The death of Samson is said to have happened B.C. 1120 and

that of Moses B.C. 1451; and, therefore, according to the historical arrangement, the place was not called Dan

There is a striking confusion between the historical and the chronological arrangement in the book of judges.

The last five chapters, as they stand in the book, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, are put chronologically before all the

preceding chapters; they are made to be 28 years before the 16th chapter, 266 before the 15th, 245 before the

13th, 195 before the 9th, go before the 4th, and 15 years before the 1st chapter. This shews the uncertain and

fabulous state of the Bible. According to the chronological arrangement, the taking of Laish, and giving it the

name of Dan, is made to be twenty years after the death of Joshua, who was the successor of Moses; and by

the historical order, as it stands in the book, it is made to be 306 years after the death of Joshua, and 331 after

that of Moses; but they both exclude Moses from being the writer of Genesis, because, according to either of

the statements, no such a place as Dan existed in the time of Moses; and therefore the writer of Genesis must

have been some person who lived after the town of Laish had the name of Dan; and who that person was

nobody knows, and consequently the book of Genesis is anonymous, and without authority.

I come now to state another point of historical and chronological evidence, and to show therefrom, as in the

In Genesis xxxvi. there is given a genealogy of the sons and descendants of Esau, who are called Edomites,

and also a list by name of the kings of Edom; in enumerating of which, it is said, verse 31, "And these are the

kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel."

Now, were any dateless writing to be found, in which, speaking of any past events, the writer should say,

these things happened before there was any Congress in America, or before there was any Convention in

France, it would be evidence that such writing could not have been written before, and could only be written

after there was a Congress in America or a Convention in France, as the case might be; and, consequently,

that it could not be written by any person who died before there was a Congress in the one country, or a

Nothing is more frequent, as well in history as in conversation, than to refer to a fact in the room of a date: it

is most natural so to do, because a fact fixes itself in the memory better than a date; secondly, because the fact

includes the date, and serves to give two ideas at once; and this manner of speaking by circumstances implies

as positively that the fact alluded to is past, as if it was so expressed. When a person in speaking upon any

matter, says, it was before I was married, or before my son was born, or before I went to America, or before I

went to France, it is absolutely understood, and intended to be understood, that he has been married, that he

has had a son, that he has been in America, or been in France. Language does not admit of using this mode of

expression in any other sense; and whenever such an expression is found anywhere, it can only be understood

The passage, therefore, that I have quoted that "these are the kings that reigned in Edom, before there

reigned any king over the children of Israel," could only have been written after the first king began to reign

over them; and consequently that the book of Genesis, so far from having been written by Moses, could not

have been written till the time of Saul at least. This is the positive sense of the passage; but the expression,

any king, implies more kings than one, at least it implies two, and this will carry it to the time of David; and,

if taken in a general sense, it carries itself through all times of the Jewish monarchy.

Had we met with this verse in any part of the Bible that professed to have been written after kings began to

reign in Israel, it would have been impossible not to have seen the application of it. It happens then that this is

the case; the two books of Chronicles, which give a history of all the kings of Israel, are professedly, as well

as in fact, written after the Jewish monarchy began; and this verse that I have quoted, and all the remaining

verses of Genesis xxxvi. are, word for word, In 1 Chronicles i., beginning at the 43d verse.

It was with consistency that the writer of the Chronicles could say as he has said, 1 Chron. i. 43, These are the

kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king ever the children of Israel," because he was going

to give, and has given, a list of the kings that had reigned in Israel; but as it is impossible that the same

expression could have been used before that period, it is as certain as any thing can be proved from historical

language, that this part of Genesis is taken from Chronicles, and that Genesis is not so old as Chronicles, and

probably not so old as the book of Homer, or as AEsop's Fables; admitting Homer to have been, as the tables

of chronology state, contemporary with David or Solomon, and AEsop to have lived about the end of the

Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the

word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and

traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies. The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and

his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian Tales, without the merit of being entertaining, and the account of

men living to eight and nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the immortality of the giants of the

Besides, the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those

accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of

religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on

as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): "And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation,

went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the

captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them,

"Have ye saved all the women alive?" behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of

Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the

congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, "kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that

hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women children that have not known a man by lying with

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is

impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to

Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child murdered, another destined to

violation, and herself in the hands of an executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of those

daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings? It is

in vain that we attempt to impose upon nature, for nature will have her course, and the religion that tortures

After this detestable order, follows an account of the plunder taken, and the manner of dividing it; and here it

is that the profanenegs of priestly hypocrisy increases the catalogue of crimes. Verse 37, "And the Lord's

tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen; and the beeves were thirty and six thousand,

of which the Lord's tribute was threescore and twelve; and the asses were thirty thousand, of which the Lord's

tribute was threescore and one; and the persons were sixteen thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was thirty

and two." In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the Bible, are too

horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear; for it appears, from the 35th verse of this chapter, that the

number of womenchildren consigned to debauchery by the order of Moses was thirtytwo thousand.

People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of

superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to

doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they

have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another thing, it is a book

of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy, than to ascribe the wickedness of

But to return to my subject, that of showing that Moses is not the author of the books ascribed to him, and

that the Bible is spurious. The two instances I have already given would be sufficient, without any additional

evidence, to invalidate the authenticity of any book that pretended to be four or five hundred years more

ancient than the matters it speaks of, refers to, them as facts; for in the case of pursuing them unto Dan, and

of the kings that reigned over the children of Israel; not even the flimsy pretence of prophecy can be pleaded.

The expressions are in the preter tense, and it would be downright idiotism to say that a man could prophecy

But there are many other passages scattered throughout those books that unite in the same point of evidence.

It is said in Exodus, (another of the books ascribed to Moses,) xvi. 35: "And the children of Israel did eat

manna until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna untit they came unto the borders of the land of

Whether the children of Israel ate manna or not, or what manna was, or whether it was anything more than a

kind of fungus or small mushroom, or other vegetable substance common to that part of the country, makes

no part of my argument; all that I mean to show is, that it is not Moses that could write this account, because

the account extends itself beyond the life time of Moses. Moses, according to the Bible, (but it is such a book

of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe, or whether any) died in the wilderness,

and never came upon the borders of 'the land,of Canaan; and consequently, it could not be he that said what

the children of Israel did, or what they ate when they came there. This account of eating manna, which they

tell us was written by Moses, extends itself to the time of Joshua, the successor of Moses, as appears by the

account given in the book of Joshua, after the children of Israel had passed the river Jordan, and came into the

borders of the land of Canaan. Joshua, v. 12: "And the manna ceased on the morrow, after they had eaten of

the old corn of the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any more, but they did eat of the fruit of the

But a more remarkable instance than this occurs in Deuteronomy; which, while it shows that Moses could not

be the writer of that book, shows also the fabulous notions that prevailed at that time about giants' In

Deuteronomy iii. 11, among the conquests said to be made by Moses, is an account of the taking of Og, king

of Bashan: "For only Og, king of Bashan, remained of the race of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead

of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the

breadth of it, after the cubit of a man." A cubit is 1 foot 9 888/1000 inches; the length therefore of the bed

was 16 feet 4 inches, and the breadth 7 feet 4 inches: thus much for this giant's bed. Now for the historical

part, which, though the evidence is not so direct and positive as in the former cases, is nevertheless very

presumable and corroborating evidence, and is better than the best evidence on the contrary side.

The writer, by way of proving the existence of this giant, refers to his bed, as an ancient relick, and says, is it

not in Rabbath (or Rabbah) of the children of Ammon? meaning that it is; for such is frequently the bible

method of affirming a thing. But it could not be Moses that said this, because Moses could know nothing

about Rabbah, nor of what was in it. Rabbah was not a city belonging to this giant king, nor was it one of the

cities that Moses took. The knowledge therefore that this bed was at Rabbah, and of the particulars of its

dimensions, must be referred to the time when Rabbah was taken, and this was not till four hundred years

after the death of Moses; for which, see 2 Sam. xii. 26: "And Joab [David's general] fought against Rabbah of

As I am not undertaking to point out all the contradictions in time, place, and circumstance that abound in the

books ascribed to Moses, and which prove to demonstration that those books could not be written by Moses,

nor in the time of Moses, I proceed to the book of Joshua, and to shew that Joshua is not the author of that

book, and that it is anonymous and without authority. The evidence I shall produce is contained in the book

itself: I will not go out of the Bible for proof against the supposed authenticity of the Bible. False testimony is

Joshua, according to Joshua i., was the immediate successor of Moses; he was, moreover, a military man,

which Moses was not; and he continued as chief of the people of Israel twentyfive years; that is, from the

time that Moses died, which, according to the Bible chronology, was B.C. 1451, until B.C. 1426, when,

according to the same chronology, Joshua died. If, therefore, we find in this book, said to have been written

by Joshua, references to facts done after the death of Joshua, it is evidence that Joshua could not be the

author; and also that the book could not have been written till after the time of the latest fact which it records.

As to the character of the book, it is horrid; it is a military history of rapine and murder, as savage and brutal

as those recorded of his predecessor in villainy and hypocrisy, Moses; and the blasphemy consists, as in the

In the first place, the book of Joshua, as is the case in the preceding books, is written in the third person; it is

the historian of Joshua that speaks, for it would have been absurd and vainglorious that Joshua should say of

himself, as is said of him in the last verse of the sixth chapter, that "his fame was noised throughout all the

In Joshua xxiv. 31, it is said "And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders

that overlived Joshua." Now, in the name of common sense, can it be Joshua that relates what people had

done after he was dead? This account must not only have been written by some historian that lived after

There are several passages of a general meaning with respect to time, scattered throughout the book of

Joshua, that carrics the time in which the book was written to a distance from the time of Joshua, but without

marking by exclusion any particular time, as in the passage above quoted. In that passage, the time that

intervened between the death of Joshua and the death of the elders is excluded descriptively and absolutely,

and the evidence substantiates that the book could not have been written till after the death of the last.

But though the passages to which I allude, and which I am going to quote, do not designate any particular

time by exclusion, they imply a time far more distant from the days of Joshua than is contained between the

death of Joshua and the death of the elders. Such is the passage, x. 14, where, after giving an account that the

sun stood still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, at the command of Joshua, (a tale only fit

to amuse children) [NOTE: This tale of the sun standing still upon Motint Gibeon, and the moon in the valley

of Ajalon, is one of those fables that detects itself. Such a circumstance could not have happened without

being known all over the world. One half would have wondered why the sun did not rise, and the other why it

did not set; and the tradition of it would be universal; whereas there is not a nation in the world that knows

anything about it. But why must the moon stand still? What occasion could there be for moonlight in the

daytime, and that too whilst the sun shined? As a poetical figure, the whole is well enough; it is akin to that in

the song of Deborah and Barak, The stars in their courses fought against Sisera; but it is inferior to the

figurative declaration of Mahomet to the persons who came to expostulate with him on his goings on, Wert

thou, said he, to come to me with the sun in thy right hand and the moon in thy left, it should not alter my

career. For Joshua to have exceeded Mahomet, he should have put the sun and moon, one in each pocket, and

carried them as Guy Faux carried his dark lanthorn, and taken them out to shine as he might happen to want

them. The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately.

One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again;

the account, however, abstracted from the poetical fancy, shews the ignorance of Joshua, for he should have

commanded the earth to have stood still. Author.] the passage says: "And there was no day like that,

The time implied by the expression after it, that is, after that day, being put in comparison with all the time

that passed before it, must, in order to give any expressive signification to the passage, mean a great letgth of

time: for example, it would have been ridiculous to have said so the next day, or the next week, or the

next month, or the next year; to give therefore meaning to the passage, comparative with the wonder it

relates, and the prior time it alludes to, it must mean centuries of years; less however than one would be

A distant, but general time is also expressed in chapter viii.; where, after giving an account of the taking the

city of Ai, it is said, ver. 28th, "And Joshua burned Ai, and made it an heap for ever, a desolation unto this

day;" and again, ver. 29, where speaking of the king of Ai, whom Joshua had hanged, and buried at the

entering of the gate, it is said, "And he raised thereon a great heap of stones, which remaineth unto this day,"

that is, unto the day or time in which the writer of the book of Joshua lived. And again, in chapter x. where,

after speaking of the five kings whom Joshua had hanged on five trees, and then thrown in a cave, it is said,

"And he laid great stones on the cave's mouth, which remain unto this very day."

In enumerating the several exploits of Joshua, and of the tribes, and of the places which they conquered or

attempted, it is said, xv. 63, "As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could

not drive them out; but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah AT JERUSALEM unto this day." The

question upon this passage is, At what time did the Jebusites and the children of Judah dwell together at

Jerusalem? As this matter occurs again in judges i. I shall reserve my observations till I come to that part.

Having thus shewn from the book of Joshua itself, without any auxiliary evidence whatever, that Joshua is

not the author of that book, and that it is anonymous, and consequently without authority, I proceed, as

The book of Judges is anonymous on the face of it; and, therefore, even the pretence is wanting to call it the

word of God; it has not so much as a nominal voucher; it is altogether fatherless.

This book begins with the same expression as the book of Joshua. That of Joshua begins, chap i. 1, Now after

the death of Moses, etc., and this of the Judges begins, Now after the death of Joshua, etc. This, and the

similarity of stile between the two books, indicate that they are the work of the same author; but who he was,

is altogether unknown; the only point that the book proves is that the author lived long after the time of

Joshua; for though it begins as if it followed immediately after his death, the second chapter is an epitome or

abstract of the whole book, which, according to the Bible chronology, extends its history through a space of

306 years; that is, from the death of Joshua, B.C. 1426 to the death of Samson, B.C. 1120, and only 25 years

before Saul went to seek his father's asses, and was made king. But there is good reason to believe, that it was

not written till the time of David, at least, and that the book of Joshua was not written before the same time.

In Judges i., the writer, after announcing the death of Joshua, proceeds to tell what happened between the

children of Judah and the native inhabitants of the land of Canaan. In this statement the writer, having

abruptly mentioned Jerusalem in the 7th verse, says immediately after, in the 8th verse, by way of

explanation, "Now the children of Judah had fought against Jerusalem, and taken it;" consequently this book

could not have been written before Jerusalem had been taken. The reader will recollect the quotation I have

just before made from Joshua xv. 63, where it said that the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at

The evidence I have already produced to prove that the books I have hitherto treated of were not written by

the persons to whom they are ascribed, nor till many years after their death, if such persons ever lived, is

already so abundant, that I can afford to admit this passage with less weight than I am entitled to draw from

it. For the case is, that so far as the Bible can be credited as an history, the city of Jerusalem was not taken till

the time of David; and consequently, that the book of Joshua, and of Judges, were not written till after the

commencement of the reign of David, which was 370 years after the death of Joshua.

The name of the city that was afterward called Jerusalem was originally Jebus, or Jebusi, and was the capital

of the Jebusites. The account of David's taking this city is given in 2 Samuel, v. 4, etc.; also in 1 Chron. xiv.

4, etc. There is no mention in any part of the Bible that it was ever taken before, nor any account that favours

such an opinion. It is not said, either in Samuel or in Chronicles, that they "utterly destroyed men, women and

children, that they left not a soul to breathe," as is said of their other conquests; and the silence here observed

implies that it was taken by capitulation; and that the Jebusites, the native inhabitants, continued to live in the

place after it was taken. The account therefore, given in Joshua, that "the Jebusites dwell with the children of

Judah" at Jerusalem at this day, corresponds to no other time than after taking the city by David.

Having now shown that every book in the Bible, from Genesis to Judges, is without authenticity, I come to

the book of Ruth, an idle, bungling story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about a strolling

countrygirl creeping slily to bed to her cousin Boaz. [The text of Ruth does not imply the unpleasant sense

Paine's words are likely to convey. Editer.] Pretty stuff indeed to be called the word of God. It is,

however, one of the best books in the Bible, for it is free from murder and rapine.

I come next to the two books of Samuel, and to shew that those books were not written by Samuel, nor till a

great length of time after the death of Samuel; and that they are, like all the former books, anonymous, and

To be convinced that these books have been written much later than the time of Samuel, and consequently not

by him, it is only necessary to read the account which the writer gives of Saul going to seek his father's asses,

and of his interview with Samuel, of whom Saul went to enquire about those lost asses, as foolish people

The writer, in relating this story of Saul, Samuel, and the asses, does not tell it as a thing that had just then

happened, but as an ancient story in the time this writer lived; for he tells it in the language or terms used at

the time that Samuel lived, which obliges the writer to explain the story in the terms or language used in the

Samuel, in the account given of him in the first of those books, chap. ix. 13 called the seer; and it is by this

term that Saul enquires after him, ver. 11, "And as they [Saul and his servant] went up the hill to the city, they

found young maidens going out to draw water; and they said unto them, Is the seer here? "Saul then went

according to the direction of these maidens, and met Samuel without knowing him, and said unto him, ver.

18, "Tell me, I pray thee, where the seer's house is? and Samuel answered Saul, and said, I am the seer."

As the writer of the book of Samuel relates these questions and answers, in the language or manner of

speaking used in the time they are said to have been spoken, and as that manner of speaking was out of use

when this author wrote, he found it necessary, in order to make the story understood, to explain the terms in

which these questions and answers are spoken; and he does this in the 9th verse, where he says, "Beforetune

in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he spake, Come let us go to the seer; for he that is now

called a prophet, was beforetime called a seer." This proves, as I have before said, that this story of Saul,

Samuel, and the asses, was an ancient story at the time the book of Samuel was written, and consequently that

But if we go further into those books the evidence is still more positive that Samuel is not the writer of them;

for they relate things that did not happen till several years after the death of Samuel. Samuel died before Saul;

for i Samuel, xxviii. tells, that Saul and the witch of Endor conjured Samuel up after he was dead; yet the

history of matters contained in those books is extended through the remaining part of Saul's life, and to the

latter end of the life of David, who succceded Saul. The account of the death and burial of Samuel (a thing

which he could not write himself) is related in i Samuel xxv.; and the chronology affixed to this chapter

makes this to be B.C. 106O; yet the history of this first book is brought down to B.C. 1056, that is, to the

The second book of Samuel begins with an account of things that did not happen till four years after Samuel

was dead; for it begins with the reign of David, who succeeded Saul, and it goes on to the end of David's

reign, which was fortythree years after the death of Samuel; and, therefore, the books are in themselves

I have now gone through all the books in the first part of the Bible, to which the names of persons are affixed,

as being the authors of those books, and which the church, styling itself the Christian church, have imposed

upon the world as the writings of Moses, Joshua and Samuel; and I have detected and proved the falsehood of

this imposition. And now ye priests, of every description, who have preached and written against the

former part of the 'Age of Reason,' what have ye to say? Will ye with all this mass of evidence against you,

and staring you in the face, still have the assurance to march into your pulpits, and continue to impose these

books on your congregations, as the works of inspired penmen and the word of God? when it is as evident as

demonstration can make truth appear, that the persons who ye say are the authors, are not the authors, and

that ye know not who the authors are. What shadow of pretence have ye now to produce for continuing the

blasphemous fraud? What have ye still to offer against the pure and moral religion of deism, in support of

your system of falsehood, idolatry, and pretended revelation? Had the cruel and murdering orders, with which

the Bible is filled, and the numberless torturing executions of men, women, and children, in consequence of

those orders, been ascribed to some friend, whose memory you revered, you would have glowed with

satisfaction at detecting the falsehood of the charge, and gloried in defending his injured fame. It is because

ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honour of your Creator, that ye listen to the

horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference. The evidence I have produced, and shall still

produce in the course of this work, to prove that the Bible is without authority, will, whilst it wounds the

stubbornness of a priest, relieve and tranquillize the minds of millions: it will free them from all those hard

thoughts of the Almighty which priestcraft and the Bible had infused into their minds, and which stood in

I come now to the two books of Kings, and the two books of Chronicles. Those books are altogether

historical, and are chiefly confined to the lives and actions of the Jewish kings, who in general were a parcel

of rascals: but these are matters with which we have no more concern than we have with the Roman

emperors, or Homer's account of the Trojan war. Besides which, as those books are anonymous, and as we

know nothing of the writer, or of his character, it is impossible for us to know what degree of credit to give to

the matters related therein. Like all other ancient histories, they appear to be a jumble of fable and of fact, and

of probable and of improbable things, but which distance of time and place, and change of circumstances in

The chief use I shall make of those books will be that of comparing them with each other, and with other

parts of the Bible, to show the confusion, contradiction, and cruelty in this pretended word of God.

The first book of Kings begins with the reign of Solomon, which, according to the Bible chronology, was

B.C. 1015; and the second book ends B.C. 588, being a little after the reign of Zedekiah, whom

Nebuchadnezzar, after taking Jerusalem and conquering the Jews, carried captive to Babylon. The two books

The two books of Chroniclcs are an history of the same times, and in general of the same persons, by another

author; for it would be absurd to suppose that the same author wrote the history twice over. The first book of

Chronicles (after giving the genealogy from Adam to Saul, which takes up the first nine chapters) begins with

the reign of David; and the last book ends, as in the last book of Kings, soon, after the reign of Zedekiah,

about B.C. 588. The last two verses of the last chapter bring the history 52 years more forward, that is, to 536.

But these verses do not belong to the book, as I shall show when I come to speak of the book of Ezra.

The two books of Kings, besides the history of Saul, David, and Solomon, who reigned over all Israel,

contain an abstract of the lives of seventeen kings, and one queen, who are stiled kings of Judah; and of

nineteen, who are stiled kings of Israel; for the Jewish nation, immediately on the death of Solomon, split into

two parties, who chose separate kings, and who carried on most rancorous wars against each other.

These two books are little more than a history of assassinations, treachery, and wars. The cruelties that the

Jews had accustomed themselves to practise on the Canaanites, whose country they had savagely invaded,

under a pretended gift from God, they afterwards practised as furiously on each other. Scarcely half their

kings died a natural death, and in some instances whole families were destroyed to secure possession to the

successor, who, after a few years, and sometimes only a few months, or less, shared the same fate. In 2 Kings

x., an account is given of two baskets full of children's heads, seventy in number, being exposed at the

entrance of the city; they were the children of Ahab, and were murdered by the orders of Jehu, whom Elisha,

the pretended man of God, had anointed to be king over Israel, on purpose to commit this bloody deed, and

assassinate his predecessor. And in the account of the reign of Menahem, one of the kings of Israel who had

murdered Shallum, who had reigned but one month, it is said, 2 Kings xv. 16, that Menahem smote the city

of Tiphsah, because they opened not the city to him, and all the women therein that were with child he ripped

Could we permit ourselves to suppose that the Almighty would distinguish any nation of people by the name

of his chosen people, we must suppose that people to have been an example to all the rest of the world of the

purest piety and humanity, and not such a nation of ruffians and cutthroats as the ancient Jews were, a

people who, corrupted by and copying after such monsters and imposters as Moses and Aaron, Joshua,

Samuel, and David, had distinguished themselves above all others on the face of the known earth for

barbarity and wickedness. If we will not stubbornly shut our eyes and steel our hearts it is impossible not to

see, in spite of all that longestablished superstition imposes upon the mind, that the flattering appellation of

his chosen people is no other than a LIE which the priests and leaders of the Jews had invented to cover the

baseness of their own characters; and which Christian priests sometimes as corrupt, and often as cruel, have

The two books of Chronicles are a repetition of the same crimes; but the history is broken in several places,

by the author leaving out the reign of some of their kings; and in this, as well as in that of Kings, there is such

a frequent transition from kings of Judah to kings of Israel, and from kings of Israel to kings of Judah, that the

narrative is obscure in the reading. In the same book the history sometimes contradicts itself: for example, in

2 Kings, i. 17, we are told, but in rather ambiguous terms, that after the death of Ahaziah, king of Israel,

Jehoram, or Joram, (who was of the house of Ahab, reigned in his stead in the second Year of Jehoram, or

Joram, son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah; and in viii. 16, of the same book, it is said, "And in the fifth year of

Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Jehoshaphat being then king of Judah, Jehoram, the son of

Jehoshaphat king of judah, began to reign." That is, one chapter says Joram of Judah began to reign in the

second year of Joram of Israel; and the other chapter says, that Joram of Israel began to reign in the fifth year

Several of the most extraordinary matters related in one history, as having happened during the reign of such

or such of their kings, are not to be found in the other, in relating the reign of the same king: for example, the

two first rival kings, after the death of Solomon, were Rehoboam and Jeroboam; and in i Kings xii. and xiii.

an account is given of Jeroboam making an offering of burnt incense, and that a man, who is there called a

man of God, cried out against the altar (xiii. 2): "O altar, altar! thus saith the Lord: Behold, a child shall be

born unto the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that

burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burned upon thee." Verse 4: "And it came to pass, when

king Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, which had cried against the altar in Bethel, that he put

forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay hold on him; and his hand which he put out against him dried up so

One would think that such an extraordinary case as this, (which is spoken of as a judgement,) happening to

the chief of one of the parties, and that at the first moment of the separation of the Israelites into two nations,

would, if it,. had been true, have been recorded in both histories. But though men, in later times, have

believed all that the prophets have said unto them, it does appear that those prophets, or historians,

A long account also is given in Kings about Elijah. It runs through several chapters, and concludes with

telling, 2 Kings ii. 11, "And it came to pass, as they (Elijah and Elisha) still went on, and talked, that, behold,

there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder, and Elijah went up by a

whirlwind into heaven." Hum! this the author of Chronicles, miraculous as the story is, makes no mention of,

though he mentions Elijah by name; neither does he say anything of the story related in the second chapter of

the same book of Kings, of a parcel of children calling Elisha bald head; and that this man of God (ver. 24)

"turned back, and looked upon them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord; and there came forth two

shebears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." He also passes over in silence the story

told, 2 Kings xiii., that when they were burying a man in the sepulchre where Elisha had been buried, it

happened that the dead man, as they were letting him down, (ver. 21) "touched the bones of Elisha, and he

(the dead man) revived, and stood up on his feet." The story does not tell us whether they buried the man,

notwithstanding he revived and stood upon his feet, or drew him up again. Upon all these stories the writer of

the Chronicles is as silent as any writer of the present day, who did not chose to be accused of lying, or at

But, however these two historians may differ from each other with respect to the tales related by either, they

are silent alike with respect to those men styled prophets whose writings fill up the latter part of the Bible.

Isaiah, who lived in the time of Hezekiab, is mentioned in Kings, and again in Chronicles, when these

histories are speaking of that reign; but except in one or two instances at most, and those very slightly, none

of the rest are so much as spoken of, or even their existence hinted at; though, according to the Bible

chronology, they lived within the time those histories were written; and some of them long before. If those

prophets, as they are called, were men of such importance in their day, as the compilers of the Bible, and

priests and commentators have since represented them to be, how can it be accounted for that not one of those

The history in the books of Kings and of Chronicles is brought forward, as I have already said, to the year

B.C. 588; it will, therefore, be proper to examine which of these prophets lived before that period.

Here follows a table of all the prophets, with the times in which they lived before Christ, according to the

chronology affixed to the first chapter of each of the books of the prophets; and also of the number of years

TABLE of the Prophets, with the time in which they lived before Christ, and also before the books of Kings

[NOTE In 2 Kings xiv. 25, the name of Jonah is mentioned on account of the restoration of a tract of land by

Jeroboam; but nothing further is said of him, nor is any allusion made to the book of Jonah, nor to his

This table is either not very honourable for the Bible historians, or not very honourable for the Bible

prophets; and I leave to priests and commentators, who are very learned in little things, to settle the point of

etiquette between the two; and to assign a reason, why the authors of Kings and of Chronicles have treated

those prophets, whom, in the former part of the 'Age of Reason,' I have considered as poets, with as much

I have one more observation to make on the book of Chronicles; after which I shall pass on to review the

In my observations on the book of Genesis, I have quoted a passage from xxxvi. 31, which evidently refers to

a time, after that kings began to reign over the children of Israel; and I have shown that as this verse is

verbatim the same as in 1 Chronicles i. 43, where it stands consistently with the order of history, which in

Genesis it does not, that the verse in Genesis, and a great part of the 36th chapter, have been taken from

Chronicles; and that the book of Genesis, though it is placed first in the Bible, and ascribed to Moses, has

been manufactured by some unknown person, after the book of Chronicles was written, which was not until

The evidence I proceed by to substantiate this, is regular, and has in it but two stages. First, as I have already

stated, that the passage in Genesis refers itself for time to Chronicles; secondly, that the book of Chronicles,

to which this passage refers itself, was not begun to be written until at least eight hundred and sixty years

after the time of Moses. To prove this, we have only to look into 1 Chronicles iii. 15, where the writer, in

giving the genealogy of the descendants of David, mentions Zedekiah; and it was in the time of Zedekiah that

Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, B.C. 588, and consequently more than 860 years after Moses. Those

who have superstitiously boasted of the antiquity of the Bible, and particularly of the books ascribed to

Moses, have done it without examination, and without any other authority than that of one credulous man

telling it to another: for, so far as historical and chronological evidence applies, the very first book in the

Bible is not so ancient as the book of Homer, by more than three hundred years, and is about the same age

I am not contending for the morality of Homer; on the contrary, I think it a book of false glory, and tending to

inspire immoral and mischievous notions of honour; and with respect to AEsop, though the moral is in

general just, the fable is often cruel; and the cruelty of the fable does more injury to the heart, especially in a

Having now dismissed Kings and Chronicles, I come to the next in course, the book of Ezra.

As one proof, among others I shall produce to shew the disorder in which this pretended word of God, the

Bible, has been put together, and the uncertainty of who the authors were, we have only to look at the first

three verses in Ezra, and the last two in 2 Chronicles; for by what kind of cutting and shuffling has it been

that the first three verses in Ezra should be the last two verses in 2 Chronicles, or that the last two in 2

Chronicles should be the first three in Ezra? Either the authors did not know their own works or the compilers

Ver. 22. Now in the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, that the word of the Lord, spoken by the mouth of

Jeremiah, might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a

earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem

which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? the Lord his God be with him, and let him go

Ver. 1. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord, by the mouth of Jeremiah,

might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation

2. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and

3. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is

in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel (he is the God) which is in Jerusalem.

*** The last verse in Chronicles is broken abruptly, and ends in the middle of the phrase with the word 'up'

without signifying to what place. This abrupt break, and the appearance of the same verses in different books,

show as I have already said, the disorder and ignorance in which the Bible has been put together, and that

the compilers of it had no authority for what they were doing, nor we any authority for believing what they

have done. [NOTE I observed, as I passed along, several broken and senseless passages in the Bible, without

thinking them of consequence enough to be introduced in the body of the work; such as that, 1 Samuel xiii. 1,

where it is said, "Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose him

three thousand men," The first part of the verse, that Saul reigned one year has no sense, since it does not tell

us what Saul did, nor say any thing of what happened at the end of that one year; and it is, besides, mere

absurdity to say he reigned one year, when the very next phrase says he had reigned two for if he had reigned

Another instance occurs in Joshua v. where the writer tells us a story of an angel (for such the table of

contents at the head of the chapter calls him) appearing unto Joshua; and the story ends abruptly, and without

any conclusion. The story is as follows: Ver. 13. "And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that

he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his

hand; and Joshua went unto bim and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?" Verse 14, "And

he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth,

and did worship and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant?" Verse 15, "And the captain of the

Lord's host said unto Josbua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standeth is holy.

And Joshua did so." And what then? nothing: for here the story ends, and the chapter too.

Either this story is broken off in the middle, or it is a story told by some Jewish humourist in ridicule of

Joshua's pretended mission from God, and the compilers of the Bible, not perceiving the design of the story,

have told it as a serious matter. As a story of humour and ridicule it has a great deal of point; for it pompously

introduces an angel in the figure of a man, with a drawn sword in his hand, before whom Joshua falls on his

face to the earth, and worships (which is contrary to their second commandment;) and then, this most

important embassy from heaven ends in telling Joshua to pull off his shoe. It might as well have told him to

It is certain, however, that the Jews did not credit every thing their leaders told them, as appears from the

cavalier manner in which they speak of Moses, when he was gone into the mount. As for this Moses, say

The only thing that has any appearance of certainty in the book of Ezra is the time in which it was written,

which was immediately after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, about B.C. 536. Ezra

(who, according to the Jewish commentators, is the same person as is called Esdras in the Apocrypha) was

one of the persons who returned, and who, it is probable, wrote the account of that affair. Nebemiah, whose

book follows next to Ezra, was another of the returned persons; and who, it is also probable, wrote the

account of the same affair, in the book that bears his name. But those accounts are nothing to us, nor to any

other person, unless it be to the Jews, as a part of the history of their nation; and there is just as much of the

word of God in those books as there is in any of the histories of France, or Rapin's history of England, or the

But even in matters of historical record, neither of those writers are to be depended upon. In Ezra ii., the

writer gives a list of the tribes and families, and of the precise number of souls of each, that returned from

Babylon to Jerusalem; and this enrolment of the persons so returned appears to have been one of the principal

objects for writing the book; but in this there is an error that destroys the intention of the undertaking.

The writer begins his enrolment in the following manner (ii. 3): "The children of Parosh, two thousand one

hundred seventy and four." Ver. 4, "The children of Shephatiah, three hundred seventy and two." And in this

manner he proceeds through all the families; and in the 64th verse, he makes a total, and says, the whole

But whoever will take the trouble of casting up the several particulars, will find that the total is but 29,818; so

that the error is 12,542. What certainty then can there be in the Bible for any thing?

[Here Mr. Paine includes the long list of numbers from the Bible of all the children listed and the total

Nehemiah, in like manner, gives a list of the returned families, and of the number of each family. He begins

as in Ezra, by saying (vii. 8): "The children of Parosh, two thousand three hundred and seventytwo; "and so

on through all the families. (The list differs in several of the particulars from that of Ezra.) In ver. 66,

Nehemiah makes a total, and says, as Ezra had said, "The whole congregation together was forty and two

thousand three hundred and threescore." But the particulars of this list make a total but of 31,089, so that the

error here is 11,271. These writers may do well enough for Biblemakers, but not for any thing where truth

The next book in course is the book of Esther. If Madam Esther thought it any honour to offer herself as a

kept mistress to Ahasuerus, or as a rival to Queen Vashti, who had refused to come to a drunken king in the

midst of a drunken company, to be made a show of, (for the account says, they had been drinking seven days,

and were merry,) let Esther and Mordecai look to that, it is no business of ours, at least it is none of mine;

besides which, the story has a great deal the appearance of being fabulous, and is also anonymous. I pass on

The book of Job differs in character from all the books we have hitherto passed over. Treachery and murder

make no part of this book; it is the meditations of a mind strongly impressed with the vicissitudes of human

life, and by turns sinking under, and struggling against the pressure. It is a highly wrought composition,

between willing submission and involuntary discontent; and shows man, as he sometimes is, more disposed

to be resigned than he is capable of being. Patience has but a small share in the character of the person of

whom the book treats; on the contrary, his grief is often impetuous; but he still endeavours to keep a guard

upon it, and seems determined, in the midst of accumulating ills, to impose upon himself the hard duty of

I have spoken in a respectful manner of the book of Job in the former part of the 'Age of Reason,' but without

knowing at that time what I have learned since; which is, that from all the evidence that can be collected, the

I have seen the opinion of two Hebrew commentators, Abenezra and Spinoza, upon this subject; they both

say that the book of Job carries no internal evidence of being an Hebrew book; that the genius of the

composition, and the drama of the piece, are not Hebrew; that it has been translated from another language

into Hebrew, and that the author of the book was a Gentile; that the character represented under the name of

Satan (which is the first and only time this name is mentioned in the Bible) [In a later work Paine notes that

in "the Bible" (by which be always means the Old Testament alone) the word Satan occurs also in 1 Chron.

xxi. 1, and remarks that the action there ascribed to Satan is in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, attributed to Jehovah ("Essay

on Dreams"). In these places, however, and in Ps. cix. 6, Satan means "adversary," and is so translated (A.S.

version) in 2 Sam. xix. 22, and 1 Kings v. 4, xi. 25. As a proper name, with the article, Satan appears in the

Old Testament only in Job and in Zech. iii. 1, 2. But the authenticity of the passage in Zechariah has been

questioned, and it may be that in finding the proper name of Satan in Job alone, Paine was following some

opinion met with in one of the authorities whose comments are condensed in his paragraph. Editor.] does

not correspond to any Hebrew idea; and that the two convocations which the Deity is supposed to have made

of those whom the poem calls sons of God, and the familiarity which this supposed Satan is stated to have

It may also be observed, that the book shows itself to be the production of a mind cultivated in science, which

the Jews, so far from being famous for, were very ignorant of. The allusions to objects of natural philosophy

are frequent and strong, and are of a different cast to any thing in the books known to be Hebrew. The

astronomical names, Pleiades, Orion, and Arcturus, are Greek and not Hebrew names, and it does not appear

from any thing that is to be found in the Bible that the Jews knew any thing of astronomy, or that they studied

it, they had no translation of those names into their own language, but adopted the names as they found them

in the poem. [Paine's Jewish critic, David Levi, fastened on this slip ("Detence of the Old Testament," 1797,

p. 152). In the original the names are Ash (Arcturus), Kesil' (Orion), Kimah' (Pleiades), though the

identifications of the constellations in the A.S.V. have been questioned. Editor.]

That the Jews did translate the literary productions of the Gentile nations into the Hebrew language, and mix

them with their own, is not a matter of doubt; Proverbs xxxi. i, is an evidence of this: it is there said, The

word of king Lemuel, the prophecy which his mother taught him. This verse stands as a preface to the

proverbs that follow, and which are not the proverbs of Solomon, but of Lemuel; and this Lemuel was not

one of the kings of Israel, nor of Judah, but of some other country, and consequently a Gentile. The Jews

however have adopted his proverbs; and as they cannot give any account who the author of the book of Job

was, nor how they came by the book, and as it differs in character from the Hebrew writings, and stands

totally unconnected with every other book and chapter in the Bible before it and after it, it has all the

circumstantial evidence of being originally a book of the Gentiles. [The prayer known by the name of Agur's

Prayer, in Proverbs xxx., immediately preceding the proverbs of Lemuel, and which is the only

sensible, wellconceived, and wellexpressed prayer in the Bible, has much the appearance of being a prayer

taken from the Gentiles. The name of Agur occurs on no other occasion than this; and he is introduced,

together with the prayer ascribed to him, in the same manner, and nearly in the same words, that Lemuel and

his proverbs are introduced in the chapter that follows. The first verse says, "The words of Agur, the son of

Jakeh, even the prophecy: "here the word prophecy is used with the same application it has in the following

chapter of Lemuel, unconnected with anything of prediction. The prayer of Agur is in the 8th and 9th verses,

"Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither riches nor poverty, but feed me with food convenient

for me; lest I be full and deny thee and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of

my God in vain." This has not any of the marks of being a Jewish prayer, for the Jews never prayed but when

they were in trouble, and never for anything but victory, vengeance, or riches. Author. (Prov. xxx. 1, and

xxxi. 1, the word "prophecy" in these verses is tranrinted "oracle" or "burden" (marg.) in the revised version.

The prayer of Agur was quoted by Paine in his plea for the officers of Excise, 1772. Editer.]

The Biblemakers, and those regulators of time, the Bible chronologists, appear to have been at a loss where

to place and how to dispose of the book of Job; for it contains no one historical circumstance, nor allusion to

any, that might serve to determine its place in the Bible. But it would not have answered the purpose of these

men to have informed the world of their ignorance; and, therefore, they have affixed it to the aera of B.C.

1520, which is during the time the Israelites were in Egypt, and for which they have just as much authority

and no more than I should have for saying it was a thousand years before that period. The probability

however is, that it is older than any book in the Bible; and it is the only one that can be read without

We know nothing of what the ancient Gentile world (as it is called) was before the time of the Jews, whose

practice has been to calumniate and blacken the character of all other nations; and it is from the Jewish

accounts that we have learned to call them heathens. But, as far as we know to the contrary, they were a just

and moral people, and not addicted, like the Jews, to cruelty and revenge, but of whose profession of faith we

are unacquainted. It appears to have been their custom to personify both virtue and vice by statues and

images, as is done nowadays both by statuary and by painting; but it does not follow from this that they

Psalms, of which it is not necessary to make much observation. Some of them are moral, and others are very

revengeful; and the greater part relates to certain local circumstances of the Jewish nation at the time they

were written, with which we have nothing to do. It is, however, an error or an imposition to call them the

Psalms of David; they are a collection, as songbooks are nowa days, from different songwriters, who

lived at different times. The 137th Psalm could not have been written till more than 400 years after the time

of David, because it is written in commemoration of an event, the capitivity of the Jews in Babylon, which

did not happen till that distance of time. "By the rivers of Babylon we sat down; yea, we wept when we

remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows, in the midst thereof; for there they that carried us

away cartive required of us a song, saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion." As a man would say to an

American, or to a Frenchman, or to an Englishman, sing us one of your American songs, or your French

songs, or your English songs. This remark, with respect to the time this psalm was written, is of no other use

than to show (among others already mentioned) the general imposition the world has been under with respect

to the authors of the Bible. No regard has been paid to time, place, and circumstance; and the names of

persons have been affixed to the several books which it was as impossible they should write, as that a man

The Book of Proverbs. These, like the Psalms, are a collection, and that from authors belonging to other

nations than those of the Jewish nation, as I have shewn in the observations upon the book of Job; besides

which, some of the Proverbs ascribed to Solomon did not appear till two hundred and fifty years after the

death of Solomon; for it is said in xxv. i, "These are also proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah,

king of Judah, copied out." It was two hundred and fifty years from the time of Solomon to the time of

Hezekiah. When a man is famous and his name is abroad he is made the putative father of things he never

said or did; and this, most probably, has been the case with Solomon. It appears to have been the fashion of

that day to make proverbs, as it is now to make jestbooks, and father them upon those who never saw them.

[A "Tom Paine's Jest Book" had appeared in London with little or nothing of Paine in it. Editor.]

The book of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, is also ascribed to Solomon, and that with much reason, if not with

truth. It is written as the solitary reflections of a wornout debauchee, such as Solomon was, who looking

back on scenes he can no longer enjoy, cries out All is Vanity! A great deal of the metaphor and of the

sentiment is obscure, most probably by translation; but enough is left to show they were strongly pointed in

the original. [Those that look out of the window shall be darkened, is an obscure figure in translation for loss

of sight. Author.] From what is transmitted to us of the character of Solomon, he was witty, ostentatious,

dissolute, and at last melancholy. He lived fast, and died, tired of the world, at the age of fiftyeight years.

Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, are worse than none; and, however it may carry with it

the appearance of heightened enjoyment, it defeats all the felicity of affection, by leaving it no point to fix

upon; divided love is never happy. This was the case with Solomon; and if he could not, with all his

pretensions to wisdom, discover it beforehand, he merited, unpitied, the mortification he afterwards endured.

In this point of view, his preaching is unnecessary, because, to know the consequences, it is only necessary to

know the cause. Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines would have stood in place of the whole

book. It was needless after this to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive

To be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to objects that can accompany the mind all

the way through life, and that we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure is miserable in

old age; and the mere drudge in business is but little better: whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and

mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests,

and of superstition, the study of those things is the study of the true theology; it teaches man to know and to

admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable, and of divine

Those who knew Benjaman Franklin will recollect, that his mind was ever young; his temper ever serene;

science, that never grows grey, was always his mistress. He was never without an object; for when we cease

Solomon's Songs, amorous and foolish enough, but which wrinkled fanaticism has called divine. The

compilers of the Bible have placed these songs after the book of Ecclesiastes; and the chronologists have

affixed to them the aera of B.C. 1O14, at which time Solomon, according to the same chronology, was

nineteen years of age, and was then forming his seraglio of wives and concubines. The Biblemakers and the

chronologists should have managed this matter a little better, and either have said nothing about the time, or

chosen a time less inconsistent with the supposed divinity of those songs; for Solomon was then in the

It should also have occurred to them, that as he wrote, if he did write, the book of Ecclesiastes, long after

these songs, and in which he exclaims that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, that he included those songs in

that description. This is the more probable, because he says, or somebody for him, Ecclesiastes ii. 8, I got me

mensingers, and womensingers (most probably to sing those songs], and musical instruments of all sores;

and behold (Ver. ii), "all was vanity and vexation of spirit." The compilers however have done their work but

by halves; for as they have given us the songs they should have given us the tunes, that we might sing them.

The books called the books of the Prophets fill up all the remaining part of the Bible; they are sixteen in

number, beginning with Isaiah and ending with Malachi, of which I have given a list in the observations upon

Chronicles. Of these sixteen prophets, all of whom except the last three lived within the time the books of

Kings and Chronicles were written, two only, Isaiah and Jeremiah, are mentioned in the history of those

books. I shall begin with those two, reserving, what I have to say on the general character of the men called

Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to Isaiah, will find it one of the most wild and

disorderly compositions ever put together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and, except a short

historical part, and a few sketches of history in the first two or three chapters, is one continued incoherent,

bombastical rant, full of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of meaning; a schoolboy

would scarcely have been excusable for writing such stuff; it is (at least in translation) that kind of

The historical part begins at chapter xxxvi., and is continued to the end of chapter xxxix. It relates some

matters that are said to have passed during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah, at which time Isaiah lived.

This fragment of history begins and ends abruptly; it has not the least connection with the chapter that

precedes it, nor with that which follows it, nor with any other in the book. It is probable that Isaiah wrote this

fragment himself, because he was an actor in the circumstances it treats of; but except this part there are

scarcely two chapters that have any connection with each other. One is entitled, at the beginning of the first

verse, the burden of Babylon; another, the burden of Moab; another, the burden of Damascus; another, the

burden of Egypt; another, the burden of the Desert of the Sea; another, the burden of the Valley of Vision: as

you would say the story of the Knight of the Burning Mountain, the story of Cinderella, or the glassen

I have already shown, in the instance of the last two verses of 2 Chronicles, and the first three in Ezra, that the

compilers of the Bible mixed and confounded the writings of different authors with each other; which alone,

were there no other cause, is sufficient to destroy the authenticity of an compilation, because it is more than

presumptive evidence that the compilers are ignorant who the authors were. A very glaring instance of this

occurs in the book ascribed to Isaiah: the latter part of the 44th chapter, and the beginning of the 45th, so far

from having been written by Isaiah, could only have been written by some person who lived at least an

These chapters are a compliment to Cyrus, who permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem from the

Babylonian captivity, to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, as is stated in Ezra. The last verse of the 44th

chapter, and the beginning of the 45th [Isaiah] are in the following words: "That saith of Cyrus, he is my

shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt be built; and to the temple

thy foundations shall be laid: thus saith the Lord to his enointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden to

subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings to open before him the twoleaved gates, and

What audacity of church and priestly ignorance it is to impose this book upon the world as the writing of

Isaiah, when Isaiah, according to their own chronology, died soon after the death of Hezekiah, which was

B.C. 698; and the decree of Cyrus, in favour of the Jews returning to Jerusalem, was, according to the same

chronology, B.C. 536; which is a distance of time between the two of 162 years. I do not suppose that the

compilers of the Bible made these books, but rather that they picked up some loose, anonymous essays, and

put them together under the names of such authors as best suited their purpose. They have encouraged the

imposition, which is next to inventing it; for it was impossible but they must have observed it.

When we see the studied craft of the scripturemakers, in making every part of this romantic book of

schoolboy's eloquence bend to the monstrous idea of a Son of God, begotten by a ghost on the body of a

virgin, there is no imposition we are not justified in suspecting them of. Every phrase and circumstance are

marked with the barbarous hand of superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it was impossible they

could have. The head of every chapter, and the top of every page, are blazoned with the names of Christ and

the Church, that the unwary reader might suck in the error before he began to read.

Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son (Isa. vii. I4), has been interpreted to mean the person called

Jesus Christ, and his mother Mary, and has been echoed through christendom for more than a thousand years;

and such has been the rage of this opinion, that scarcely a spot in it but has been stained with blood and

marked with desolation in consequence of it. Though it is not my intention to enter into controversy on

subjects of this kind, but to confine myself to show that the Bible is spurious, and thus, by taking away the

foundation, to overthrow at once the whole structure of superstition raised thereon, I will however stop a

Whether Isaiah was playing a trick with Ahaz, king of Judah, to whom this passage is spoken, is no business

of mine; I mean only to show the misapplication of the passage, and that it has no more reference to Christ

The king of Syria and the king of Israel (I have already mentioned that the Jews were split into two nations,

one of which was called Judah, the capital of which was Jerusalem, and the other Israel) made war jointly

against Ahaz, king of Judah, and marched their armies towards Jerusalem. Ahaz and his people became

alarmed, and the account says (Is. vii. 2), Their hearts were moved as the trees of the wood are moved with

In this situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz, and assures him in the name of the Lord (the cant

phrase of all the prophets) that these two kings should not succeed against him; and to satisfy Ahaz that this

should be the case, tells him to ask a sign. This, the account says, Ahaz declined doing; giving as a reason

that he would not tempt the Lord; upon which Isaiah, who is the speaker, says, ver. 14, "Therefore the Lord

himself shall give you a sign; behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son;" and the 16th verse says, "And

before this child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land which thou abhorrest or dreadest

[meaning Syria and the kingdom of Israel] shall be forsaken of both her kings." Here then was the sign, and

the time limited for the completion of the assurance or promise; namely, before this child shall know to refuse

Isaiah having committed himself thus far, it became necessary to him, in order to avoid the imputation of

being a false prophet, and the consequences thereof, to take measures to make this sign appear. It certainly

was not a difficult thing, in any time of the world, to find a girl with child, or to make her so; and perhaps

Isaiah knew of one beforehand; for I do not suppose that the prophets of that day were any more to be trusted

than the priests of this: be that, however, as it may, he says in the next chapter, ver. 2, "And I took unto me

faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah, and I went unto the

Here then is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child and this virgin; and it is upon the barefaced

perversion of this story that the book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid interest of priests in later

times, have founded a theory, which they call the gospel; and have applied this story to signify the person

they call Jesus Christ; begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call holy, on the body of a woman engaged

in marriage, and afterwards married, whom they call a virgin, seven hundred years after this foolish story was

told; a theory which, speaking for myself, I hesitate not to believe, and to say, is as fabulous and as false as

God is true. [In Is. vii. 14, it is said that the child should be called Immanuel; but this name was not given to

either of the children, otherwise than as a character, which the word signifies. That of the prophetess was

But to show the imposition and falsehood of Isaiah we have only to attend to the sequel of this story; which,

though it is passed over in silence in the book of Isaiah, is related in 2 Chronicles, xxviii; and which is, that

instead of these two kings failing in their attempt against Ahaz, king of Judah, as Isaiah had pretended to

foretel in the name of the Lord, they succeeded: Ahaz was defeated and destroyed; an hundred and twenty

thousand of his people were slaughtered; Jerusalem was plundered, and two hundred thousand women and

sons and daughters carried into captivity. Thus much for this lying prophet and imposter Isaiah, and the book

Jeremiah. This prophet, as he is called, lived in the time that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, in the reign

of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah; and the suspicion was strong against him that he was a traitor in the

interest of Nebuchadnezzar. Every thing relating to Jeremiah shows him to have been a man of an equivocal

character: in his metaphor of the potter and the clay, (ch. xviii.) he guards his prognostications in such a

crafty manner as always to leave himself a door to escape by, in case the event should be contrary to what he

had predicted. In the 7th and 8th verses he makes the Almighty to say, "At what instant I shall speak

concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and destroy it, if that nation,

against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent me of the evil that I thought to do unto

them." Here was a proviso against one side of the case: now for the other side. Verses 9 and 10, "At what

instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, if it do evil in

my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent me of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them."

Here is a proviso against the other side; and, according to this plan of prophesying, a prophet could never be

wrong, however mistaken the Almighty might be. This sort of absurd subterfuge, and this manner of speaking

of the Almighty, as one would speak of a man, is consistent with nothing but the stupidity of the Bible.

As to the authenticity of the book, it is only necessary to read it in order to decide positively that, though

some passages recorded therein may have been spoken by Jeremiah, he is not the author of the book. The

historical parts, if they can be called by that name, are in the most confused condition; the same events are

several times repeated, and that in a manner different, and sometimes in contradiction to each other; and this

disorder runs even to the last chapter, where the history, upon which the greater part of the book has been

employed, begins anew, and ends abruptly. The book has all the appearance of being a medley of

unconnected anecdotes respecting persons and things of that time, collected together in the same rude manner

as if the various and contradictory accounts that are to be found in a bundle of newspapers, respecting persons

and things of the present day, were put together without date, order, or explanation. I will give two or three

It appears, from the account of chapter xxxvii. that the army of Nebuchadnezzer, which is called the army of

the Chaldeans, had besieged Jerusalem some time; and on their hearing that the army of Pharaoh of Egypt

was marching against them, they raised the siege and retreated for a time. It may here be proper to mention,

in order to understand this confused history, that Nebuchadnezzar had besieged and taken Jerusalem during

the reign of Jehoakim, the redecessor of Zedekiah; and that it was Nebuchadnezzar who had make Zedekiah

king, or rather viceroy; and that this second siege, of which the book of Jeremiah treats, was in consequence

of the revolt of Zedekiah against Nebuchadnezzar. This will in some measure account for the suspicion that

affixes itself to Jeremiah of being a traitor, and in the interest of Nebuchadnezzar, whom Jeremiah calls,

Chapter xxxvii. 1113, says, "And it came to pass, that, when the army of the Chaldeans was broken up from

Jerusalem, for fear of Pharaoh's army, that Jeremiah went forth out of Jerusalem, to go (as this account states)

into the land of Benjamin, to separate himself thence in the midst of the people; and when he was in the gate

of Benjamin a captain of the ward was there, whose name was Irijah ... and he took Jeremiah the prophet,

saying, Thou fallest away to the Chaldeans; then Jeremiah said, It is false; I fall not away to the Chaldeans."

Jeremiah being thus stopt and accused, was, after being examined, committed to prison, on suspicion of being

But the next chapter gives an account of the imprisonment of Jeremiah, which has no connection with this

account, but ascribes his imprisonment to another circumstance, and for which we must go back to chapter

xxi. It is there stated, ver. 1, that Zedekiah sent Pashur the son of Malchiah, and Zephaniah the son of

Maaseiah the priest, to Jeremiah, to enquire of him concerning Nebuchadnezzar, whose army was then before

Jerusalem; and Jeremiah said to them, ver. 8, "Thus saith the Lord, Behold I set before you the way of life,

and the way of death; he that abideth in this city shall die by the sword and by the famine, and by the

pestilence; but he that goeth out and falleth to the Clialdeans that besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall

This interview and conference breaks off abruptly at the end of the 10th verse of chapter xxi.; and such is the

disorder of this book that we have to pass over sixteen chapters upon various subjects, in order to come at the

continuation and event of this conference; and this brings us to the first verse of chapter xxxviii., as I have

just mentioned. The chapter opens with saying, "Then Shaphatiah, the son of Mattan, Gedaliah the son of

Pashur, and Jucal the son of Shelemiah, and Pashur the son of Malchiah, (here are more persons mentioned

than in chapter xxi.) heard the words that Jeremiah spoke unto all the people, saying, Thus saith the Lord, He

that remaineth in this city, shall die by the sword, by famine, and by the pestilence; but he that goeth forth to

the Chaldeans shall live; for he shall have his life for a prey, and shall live"; [which are the words of the

conference;] therefore, (say they to Zedekiah,) "We beseech thee, let this man be put to death, for thus he

weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, in speaking

such words unto them; for this man seeketh not the welfare of the people, but the hurt: "and at the 6th verse it

These two accounts are different and contradictory. The one ascribes his imprisonment to his attempt to

escape out of the city; the other to his preaching and prophesying in the city; the one to his being seized by

the guard at the gate; the other to his being accused before Zedekiah by the conferees. [I observed two

chapters in I Samuel (xvi. and xvii.) that contradict each other with respect to David, and the manner he

became acquainted with Saul; as Jeremiah xxxvii. and xxxviii. contradict each other with respect to the cause

In 1 Samuel, xvi., it is said, that an evil spirit of God troubled Saul, and that his servants advised him (as a

remedy) "to seek out a man who was a cunning player upon the harp." And Saul said, ver. 17, " Provide me

now a man that can play well, and bring him to me. Then answered one of his servants, and said, Behold, I

have seen a son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty man, and a man of war,

and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with him; wherefore Saul sent messengers unto

Jesse, and said, Send me David, thy son. And (verse 21) David came to Saul, and stood before him, and he

loved him greatly, and he became his armourbearer; and when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul,

(verse 23) David took his harp, and played with his hand, and Saul was refreshed, and was well."

But the next chapter (xvii.) gives an account, all different to this, of the manner that Saul and David became

acquainted. Here it is ascribed to David's encounter with Goliah, when David was sent by his father to carry

provision to his brethren in the camp. In the 55th verse of this chapter it is said, "And when Saul saw David

go forth against the Philistine (Goliah) he said to Abner, the captain of the host, Abner, whose son is this

youth? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, 0 king, I cannot tell. And the king said, Enquire thou whose son

the stripling is. And as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him

before Saul, with the head of the Philistine in his hand; and Saul said unto him, Whose son art thou, thou

young man? And David answered, I am the son of thy servant, Jesse, the Betblehemite," These two accounts

belie each other, because each of them supposes Saul and David not to have known each other before. This

In the next chapter (Jer. xxxix.) we have another instance of the disordered state of this book; for

notwithstanding the siege of the city by Nebuchadnezzar has been the subject of several of the preceding

chapters, particularly xxxvii. and xxxviii., chapter xxxix. begins as if not a word had been said upon the

subject, and as if the reader was still to be informed of every particular respecting it; for it begins with saying,

ver. 1, "In the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the tenth month, came Nebuchadnezzar king of

But the instance in the last chapter (lii.) is still more glaring; for though the story has been told over and over

again, this chapter still supposes the reader not to know anything of it, for it begins by saying, ver. i,

"Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem,

and his mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah." (Ver. 4,) "And it came to pass in

the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his

army, against Jerusalem, and pitched against it, and built forts against it," etc.

It is not possible that any one man, and more particularly Jeremiah, could have been the writer of this book.

The errors are such as could not have been committed by any person sitting down to compose a work. Were I,

or any other man, to write in such a disordered manner, no body would read what was written, and every

body would suppose that the writer was in a state of insanity. The only way, therefore, to account for the

disorder is, that the book is a medley of detached unauthenticated anecdotes, put together by some stupid

bookmaker, under the name of Jeremiah; because many of them refer to him, and to the circumstances of

Of the duplicity, and of the false predictions of Jeremiah, I shall mention two instances, and then proceed to

It appears from chapter xxxviii. that when Jeremiah was in prison, Zedekiah sent for him, and at this

interview, which was private, Jeremiah pressed it strongly on Zedekiah to surrender himself to the enemy.

"If," says he, (ver. 17,) thou wilt assuredly go forth unto the king of Babylon's princes, then thy soul shall

live," etc. Zedekiah was apprehensive that what passed at this conference should be known; and he said to

Jeremiah, (ver. 25,) "If the princes [meaning those of Judah] hear that I have talked with thee, and they come

unto thee, and say unto thee, Declare unto us now what thou hast said unto the king; hide it not from us, and

we will not put thee to death; and also what the king said unto thee; then thou shalt say unto them, I presented

my supplication before the king that he would not cause me to return to Jonathan's house, to die there. Then

came all the princes unto Jeremiah, and asked him, and "he told them according to all the words the king had

comenanded." Thus, this man of God, as he is called, could tell a lie, or very strongly prevaricatc, when he

supposed it would answer his purpose; for certainly he did not go to Zedekiah to make this supplication,

neither did he make it; he went because he was sent for, and he employed that opportunity to advise Zedekiah

In chapter xxxiv. 25, is a prophecy of Jeremiah to Zedekiah in these words: "Thus saith the Lord, Behold I

will give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire; and thou shalt not escape

out of his hand, but thou shalt surely be taken, and delivered into his hand; and thine eyes shall behold the

eyes of the king of Babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth to mouth, and thou shalt go to Babylon. Yet

hear the word of the Lord; O Zedekiah, king, of Judah, thus saith the Lord, Thou shalt not die by the sword,

but thou shalt die in Peace; and with the burnings of thy fathers, the former kings that were before thee, so

shall they burn odours for thee, and they will lament thee, saying, Ah, Lord! for I have pronounced the word,

Now, instead of Zedekiah beholding the eyes of the king of Babylon, and speaking with him mouth to mouth,

and dying in peace, and with the burning of odours, as at the funeral of his fathers, (as Jeremiah had declared

the Lord himself had pronounced,) the reverse, according to chapter Iii., 10, 11 was the case; it is there said,

that the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes: then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and

bound him in chains, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death.

As for Jeremiah, he experienced none of those evils. He was taken into favour by Nebuchadnezzar, who gave

him in charge to the captain of the guard (xxxix, 12), "Take him (said he) and look well to him, and do him

no harm; but do unto him even as he shall say unto thee." Jeremiah joined himself afterwards to

Nebuchadnezzar, and went about prophesying for him against the Egyptians, who had marched to the relief

of Jerusalem while it was besieged. Thus much for another of the lying prophets, and the book that bears his

I have been the more particular in treating of the books ascribed to Isaiah and Jeremiah, because those two

are spoken of in the books of Kings and Chronicles, which the others are not. The remainder of the books

ascribed to the men called prophets I shall not trouble myself much about; but take them collectively into the

In the former part of the 'Age of Reason,' I have said that the word prophet was the Bibleword for poet, and

that the flights and metaphors of Jewish poets have been foolishly erected into what are now called

prophecies. I am sufficiently justified in this opinion, not only because the books called the prophecies are

written in poetical language, but because there is no word in the Bible, except it be the word prophet, that

describes what we mean by a poet. I have also said, that the word signified a performer upon musical

instruments, of which I have given some instances; such as that of a company of prophets, prophesying with

psalteries, with tabrets, with pipes, with harps, etc., and that Saul prophesied with them, 1 Sam. x., 5. It

appears from this passage, and from other parts in the book of Samuel, that the word prophet was confined to

signify poetry and music; for the person who was supposed to have a visionary insight into concealed things,

was not a prophet but a seer, [I know not what is the Hebrew word that corresponds to the word seer in

English; but I observe it is translated into French by Le Voyant, from the verb voir to see, and mhich means

The Hebrew word for Seer, in 1 Samuel ix., transliterated, is chozeh, the gazer, it is translated in Is. xlvii. 13,

"the stargazers." Editor.] (i Sam, ix. 9;) and it was not till after the word seer went out of use (which most

probably was when Saul banished those he called wizards) that the profession of the seer, or the art of seeing,

According to the modern meaning of the word prophet and prophesying, it signifies foretelling events to a

great distance of time; and it became necessary to the inventors of the gospel to give it this latitude of

meaning, in order to apply or to stretch what they call the prophecies of the Old Testament, to the times of the

New. But according to the Old Testament, the prophesying of the seer, and afterwards of the prophet, so far

as the meaning of the word "seer" was incorporated into that of prophet, had reference only to things of the

time then passing, or very closely connected with it; such as the event of a battle they were going to engage

in, or of a journey, or of any enterprise they were going to undertake, or of any circumstance then pending, or

of any difficulty they were then in; all of which had immediate reference to themselves (as in the case already

mentioned of Ahaz and Isaiah with respect to the expression, Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,)

and not to any distant future time. It was that kind of prophesying that orresponds to what we call

fortunetelling; such as casting nativities, predicting riches, fortunate or unfortunate marriages, conjuring for

lost goods, etc.; and it is the fraud of the Christian church, not that of the Jews, and the ignorance and the

superstition of modern, not that of ancient times, that elevated those poetical, musical, conjuring, dreaming,

But, besides this general character of all the prophets, they had also a particular character. They were in

parties, and they prophesied for or against, according to the party they were with; as the poetical and political

writers of the present day write in defence of the party they associate with against the other.

After the Jews were divided into two nations, that of Judah and that of Israel, each party had its prophets, who

abused and accused each other of being false prophets, lying prophets, impostors, etc.

The prophets of the party of Judah prophesied against the prophets of the party of Israel; and those of the

party of Israel against those of Judah. This party prophesying showed itself immediately on the separation

under the first two rival kings, Rehoboam and Jeroboam. The prophet that cursed, or prophesied against the

altar that Jeroboam had built in Bethel, was of the party of Judah, where Rehoboam was king; and he was

waylaid on his return home by a prophet of the party of Israel, who said unto him (i Kings xiii.) "Art thou

the man of God that came from Judah? and he said, I am." Then the prophet of the party of Israel said to him

"I am a prophet also, as thou art, [signifying of Judah,] and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord,

saying, Bring him back with thee unto thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water; but (says the 18th

verse) he lied unto him." The event, however, according to the story, is, that the prophet of Judah never got

back to Judah; for he was found dead on the road by the contrivance of the prophet of Israel, who no doubt

was called a true prophet by his own party, and the prophet of Judah a lying brophet.

In 2 Kings, iii., a story is related of prophesying or conjuring that shews, in several particulars, the character

of a prophet. Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and Joram king of Israel, had for a while ceased their party

animosity, and entered into an alliance; and these two, together with the king of Edom, engaged in a war

against the king of Moab. After uniting and marching their armies, the story says, they were in great distress

for water, upon which Jehoshaphat said, "Is there not here a prophet of the Lord, that we may enquire of the

Lord by him? and one of the servants of the king of Israel said here is Elisha. [Elisha was of the party of

Judah.] And Jehoshaphat the king of Judah said, The word of the Lord is with him." The story then says, that

these three kings went down to Elisha; and when Elisha [who, as I have said, was a Judahmite prophet] saw

the King of Israel, he said unto him, "What have I to do with thee, get thee to the prophets of thy father and

the prophets of thy mother. Nay but, said the king of Israel, the Lord hath called these three kings together, to

deliver them into the hands of the king of Moab," (meaning because of the distress they were in for water;)

upon which Elisha said, "As the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand, surely, were it not that I regard the

presence of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, I would not look towards thee nor see thee." Here is all the venom

and vulgarity of a party prophet. We are now to see the performance, or manner of prophesying.

Ver. 15. "Bring me," (said Elisha), "a minstrel; and it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of

the Lord came upon him." Here is the farce of the conjurer. Now for the prophecy: "And Elisha said, [singing

most probably to the tune he was playing], Thus saith the Lord, Make this valley full of ditches; "which was

just telling them what every countryman could have told them without either fiddle or farce, that the way to

But as every conjuror is not famous alike for the same thing, so neither were those prophets; for though all of

them, at least those I have spoken of, were famous for lying, some of them excelled in cursing. Elisha, whom

I have just mentioned, was a chief in this branch of prophesying; it was he that cursed the fortytwo children

in the name of the Lord, whom the two shebears came and devoured. We are to suppose that those children

were of the party of Israel; but as those who will curse will lie, there is just as much credit to be given to this

story of Elisha's two she bears as there is to that of the Dragon of Wantley, of whom it is said:

As a man would eat an apple. There was another description of men called prophets, that amused themselves

with dreams and visions; but whether by night or by day we know not. These, if they were not quite harmless,

EZEKIEL and DANIEL; and the first question upon these books, as upon all the others, is, Are they genuine?

Of this there is no proof; but so far as my own opinion goes, I am more inclined to believe they were, than

that they were not. My reasons for this opinion are as follows: First, Because those books do not contain

internal evidence to prove they were not written by Ezekiel and Daniel, as the books ascribed to Moses,

Joshua, Samuel, etc., prove they were not written by Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc.

Secondly, Because they were not written till after the Babylonish captivity began; and there is good reason to

believe that not any book in the bible was written before that period; at least it is proveable, from the books

themselves, as I have already shown, that they were not written till after the commencement of the Jewish

Thirdly, Because the manner in which the books ascribed to Ezekiel and Daniel are written, agrees with the

Had the numerous commentators and priests, who have foolishly employed or wasted their time in pretending

to expound and unriddle those books, been carred into captivity, as Ezekiel and Daniel were, it would greatly

have improved their intellects in comprehending the reason for this mode of writing, and have saved them the

trouble of racking their invention, as they have done to no purpose; for they would have found that

themselves would be obliged to write whatever they had to write, respecting their own affairs, or those of

their friends, or of their country, in a concealed manner, as those men have done.

These two books differ from all the rest; for it is only these that are filled with accounts of dreams and

visions: and this difference arose from the situation the writers were in as prisoners of war, or prisoners of

state, in a foreign country, which obliged them to convey even the most trifling information to each other, and

all their political projects or opinions, in obscure and metaphorical terms. They pretend to have dreamed

dreams, and seen visions, because it was unsafe for them to speak facts or plain language. We ought,

however, to suppose, that the persons to whom they wrote understood what they meant, and that it was not

intended anybody else should. But these busy commentators and priests have been puzzling their wits to find

out what it was not intended they should know, and with which they have nothing to do.

Ezekiel and Daniel were carried prisoners to Babylon, under the first captivity, in the time of Jehoiakim, nine

years before the second captivity in the time of Zedekiah. The Jews were then still numerous, and had

considerable force at Jerusalem; and as it is natural to suppose that men in the situation of Ezekiel and Daniel

would be meditating the recovery of their country, and their own deliverance, it is reasonable to suppose that

the accounts of dreams and visions with which these books are filled, are no other than a disguised mode of

correspondence to facilitate those objects: it served them as a cypher, or secret alphabet. If they are not this,

they are tales, reveries, and nonsense; or at least a fanciful way of wearing off the wearisomeness of

Ezekiel begins his book by speaking of a vision of cherubims, and of a wheel within a wheel, which he says

he saw by the river Chebar, in the land of his captivity. Is it not reasonable to suppose that by the cherubims

he meant the temple at Jerusalem, where they had figures of cherubims? and by a wheel within a wheel

(which as a figure has always been understood to signify political contrivance) the project or means of

recovering Jerusalem? In the latter part of his book he supposes himself transported to Jerusalem, and into the

temple; and he refers back to the vision on the river Chebar, and says, (xliii 3,) that this last vision was like

the vision on the river Chebar; which indicates that those pretended dreams and visions had for their object

As to the romantic interpretations and applications, wild as the dreams and visions they undertake to explain,

which commentators and priests have made of those books, that of converting them into things which they

call prophecies, and making them bend to times and circumstances as far remote even as the present day, it

Scarcely anything can be more absurd than to suppose that men situated as Ezekiel and Daniel were, whose

country was overrun, and in the possession of the enemy, all their friends and relations in captivity abroad,

or in slavery at home, or massacred, or in continual danger of it; scarcely any thing, I say, can be more absurd

than to suppose that such men should find nothing to do but that of employing their time and their thoughts

about what was to happen to other nations a thousand or two thousand years after they were dead; at the same

time nothing more natural than that they should meditate the recovery of Jerusalem, and their own

deliverance; and that this was the sole object of all the obscure and apparently frantic writing contained in

In this sense the mode of writing used in those two books being forced by necessity, and not adopted by

choice, is not irrational; but, if we are to use the books as prophecies, they are false. In Ezekiel xxix. 11.,

speaking of Egypt, it is said, "No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast pass through it; neither

shall it be inhabited for forty years." This is what never came to pass, and consequently it is false, as all the

In the former part of 'The Age of Reason' I have spoken of Jonah, and of the story of him and the whale.

A fit story for ridicule, if it was written to be believed; or of laughter, if it was intended to try what credulity

could swallow; for, if it could swallow Jonah and the whale it could swallow anything.

But, as is already shown in the observations on the book of Job and of Proverbs, it is not always certain

which of the books in the Bible are originally Hebrew, or only translations from the books of the Gentiles

into Hebrew; and, as the book of Jonah, so far from treating of the affairs of the Jews, says nothing upon that

subject, but treats altogether of the Gentiles, it is more probable that it is a book of the Gentiles than of the

Jews, [I have read in an ancient Persian poem (Saadi, I believe, but have mislaid the reference) this phrase:

"And now the whale swallowed Jonah: the sun set." Editer.] and that it has been written as a fable to

expose the nonsense, and satyrize the vicious and malignant character, of a Bibleprophet, or a predicting

Jonah is represented, first as a disobedient prophet, running away from his mission, and taking shelter aboard

a vessel of the Gentiles, bound from Joppa to Tarshish; as if he ignorantly supposed, by such a paltry

contrivance, he could hide himself where God could not find him. The vessel is overtaken by a storm at sea;

and the mariners, all of whom are Gentiles, believing it to be a judgement on account of some one on board

who had committed a crime, agreed to cast lots to discover the offender; and the lot fell upon Jonah. But

before this they had cast all their wares and merchandise overboard to lighten the vessel, while Jonah, like a

After the lot had designated Jonah to be the offender, they questioned him to know who and what he was?

and he told them he was an Hebrew; and the story implies that he confessed himself to be guilty. But these

Gentiles, instead of sacrificing him at once without pity or mercy, as a company of Bibleprophets or priests

would have done by a Gentile in the same case, and as it is related Samuel had done by Agag, and Moses by

the women and children, they endeavoured to save him, though at the risk of their own lives: for the account

says, "Nevertheless [that is, though Jonah was a Jew and a foreigner, and the cause of all their misfortunes,

and the loss of their cargo] the men rowed hard to bring the boat to land, but they could not, for the sea

wrought and was tempestuous against them." Still however they were unwilling to put the fate of the lot into

execution; and they cried, says the account, unto the Lord, saying, "We beseech thee, O Lord, let us not

perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood; for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee."

Meaning thereby, that they did not presume to judge Jonah guilty, since that he might be innocent; but that

they considered the lot that had fallen upon him as a decree of God, or as it pleased God. The address of this

prayer shows that the Gentiles worshipped one Supreme Being, and that they were not idolaters as the Jews

represented them to be. But the storm still continuing, and the danger encreasing, they put the fate of the lot

into execution, and cast Jonah in the sea; where, according to the story, a great fish swallowed him up whole

We have now to consider Jonah securely housed from the storm in the fish's belly. Here we are told that he

prayed; but the prayer is a madeup prayer, taken from various parts of the Psalms, without connection or

consistency, and adapted to the distress, but not at all to the condition that Jonah was in. It is such a prayer as

a Gentile, who might know something of the Psalms, could copy out for him. This circumstance alone, were

there no other, is sufficient to indicate that the whole is a madeup story. The prayer, however, is supposed to

have answered the purpose, and the story goes on, (takingoff at the same time the cant language of a

Bibleprophet,) saying, "The Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon dry land."

Jonah then received a second mission to Nineveh, with which he sets out; and we have now to consider him

as a preacher. The distress he is represented to have suffered, the remembrance of his own disobedience as

the cause of it, and the miraculous escape he is supposed to have had, were sufficient, one would conceive, to

have impressed him with sympathy and benevolence in the execution of his mission; but, instead of this, he

enters the city with denunciation and malediction in his mouth, crying, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be

We have now to consider this supposed missionary in the last act of his mission; and here it is that the

malevolent spirit of a Bibleprophet, or of a predicting priest, appears in all that blackness of character that

Having published his predictions, he withdrew, says the story, to the east side of the city. But for what?

not to contemplate in retirement the mercy of his Creator to himself or to others, but to wait, with malignant

impatience, the destruction of Nineveh. It came to pass, however, as the story relates, that the Ninevites

reformed, and that God, according to the Bible phrase, repented him of the evil he had said he would do unto

them, and did it not. This, saith the first verse of the last chapter, displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was

very angry. His obdurate heart would rather that all Nineveh should be destroyed, and every soul, young and

old, perish in its ruins, than that his prediction should not be fulfilled. To expose the character of a prophet

still more, a gourd is made to grow up in the night, that promises him an agreeable shelter from the heat of

Here the rage of the prophet becomes excessive, and he is ready to destroy himself. "It is better, said he, for

me to die than to live." This brings on a supposed expostulation between the Almighty and the prophet; in

which the former says, "Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And Jonah said, I do well to be angry

even unto death. Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not laboured,

neither madest it to grow, which came up in a night, and perished in a night; and should not I spare Nineveh,

that great city, in which are more than threescore thousand persons, that cannot discern between their right

Here is both the winding up of the satire, and the moral of the fable. As a satire, it strikes against the character

of all the Bibleprophets, and against all the indiscriminate judgements upon men, women and children, with

which this lying book, the bible, is crowded; such as Noah's flood, the destruction of the cities of Sodom and

Gomorrah, the extirpation of the Canaanites, even to suckling infants, and women with child; because the

same reflection 'that there are more than threescore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right

hand and their left,' meaning young children, applies to all their cases. It satirizes also the supposed partiality

As a moral, it preaches against the malevolent spirit of prediction; for as certainly as a man predicts ill, he

becomes inclined to wish it. The pride of having his judgment right hardens his heart, till at last he beholds

with satisfaction, or sees with disappointment, the accomplishment or the failure of his predictions. This

book ends with the same kind of strong and welldirected point against prophets, prophecies and

indiscriminate judgements, as the chapter that Benjamin Franklin made for the Bible, about Abraham and the

stranger, ends against the intolerant spirit of religious persecutions Thus much for the book Jonah. [The

story of Abraham and the Fireworshipper, ascribed to Franklin, is from Saadi. (See my "Sacred Anthology,"

p. 61.) Paine has often been called a "mere scoffer," but he seems to have been among the first to treat with

dignity the book of Jonah, so especially liable to the ridicule of superficial readers, and discern in it the

Of the poetical parts of the Bible, that are called prophecies, I have spoken in the former part of 'The Age of

Reason,' and already in this, where I have said that the word for prophet is the Bibleword for Poet, and that

the flights and metaphors of those poets, many of which have become obscure by the lapse of time and the

change of circumstances, have been ridiculously erected into things called prophecies, and applied to

purposes the writers never thought of. When a priest quotes any of those passages, he unriddles it agreeably

to his own views, and imposes that explanation upon his congregation as the meaning of the writer. The

whore of Babylon has been the common whore of all the priests, and each has accused the other of keeping

There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already

shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them

sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.

I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell

trees. Here they lie; and the priests, if they can, may replant them. They may, perhaps, stick them in the

ground, but they will never make them grow. I pass on to the books of the New Testament.

THE New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of

As it is nothing extraordinary that a woman should be with child before she was married, and that the son she

might bring forth should be executed, even unjustly, I see no reason for not believing that such a woman as

Mary, and such a man as Joseph, and Jesus, existed; their mere existence is a matter of indifference, about

which there is no ground either to believe or to disbelieve, and which comes under the common head of, It

may be so, and what then? The probability however is that there were such persons, or at least such as

resembled them in part of the circumstances, because almost all romantic stories have been suggested by

some actual circumstance; as the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, not a word of which is true, were suggested

It is not then the existence or the nonexistence, of the persons that I trouble myself about; it is the fable of

Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which

I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young woman

engaged to be married, and while under this engagement, she is, to speak plain language, debauched by a

ghost, under the impious pretence, (Luke i. 35,) that "the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of

the Highest shall overshadow thee." Notwithstanding which, Joseph afterwards marries her, cohabits with her

as his wife, and in his turn rivals the ghost. This is putting the story into intelligible language, and when told

in this manner, there is not a priest but must be ashamed to own it. [Mary, the supposed virgin, mother of

Jesus, had several other children, sons and daughters. See Matt. xiii. 55, 56. Author.]

Obscenity in matters of faith, however wrapped up, is always a token of fable and imposture; for it is

necessary to our serious belief in God, that we do not connect it with stories that run, as this does, into

ludicrous interpretations. This story is, upon the face of it, the same kind of story as that of Jupiter and Leda,

or Jupiter and Europa, or any of the amorous adventures of Jupiter; and shews, as is already stated in the

former part of 'The Age of Reason,' that the Christian faith is built upon the heathen Mythology.

As the historical parts of the New Testament, so far as concerns Jesus Christ, are confined to a very short

space of time, less than two years, and all within the same country, and nearly to the same spot, the

discordance of time, place, and circumstance, which detects the fallacy of the books of the Old Testament,

and proves them to be impositions, cannot be expected to be found here in the same abundance. The New

Testament compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act, in which there is not room for very numerous

violations of the unities. There are, however, some glaring contradictions, which, exclusive of the fallacy of

the pretended prophecies, are sufficient to show the story of Jesus Christ to be false.

I lay it down as a position which cannot be controverted, first, that the agreement of all the parts of a story

does not prove that story to be true, because the parts may agree, and the whole may be false; secondly, that

the disagreement of the parts of a story proves the whole cannot be true. The agreement does not prove truth,

The history of Jesus Christ is contained in the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The

first chapter of Matthew begins with giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ; and in the third chapter of Luke there

is also given a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Did these two agree, it would not prove the genealogy to be true,

because it might nevertheless be a fabrication; but as they contradict each other in every particular, it proves

falsehood absolutely. If Matthew speaks truth, Luke speaks falsehood; and if Luke speaks truth, Matthew

speaks falsehood: and as there is no authority for believing one more than the other, there is no authority for

believing either; and if they cannot be believed even in the very first thing they say, and set out to prove, they

are not entitled to be believed in any thing they say afterwards. Truth is an uniform thing; and as to

inspiration and revelation, were we to admit it, it is impossible to suppose it can be contradictory. Either then

the men called apostles were imposters, or the books ascribed to them have been written by other persons,

The book of Matthew gives (i. 6), a genealogy by name from David, up, through Joseph, the husband of

Mary, to Christ; and makes there to be twent eight generations. The book of Luke gives also a genealogy by

name from Christ, through Joseph the husband of Mary, down to David, and makes there to be fortythree

generations; besides which, there is only the two names of David and Joseph that are alike in the two lists.

I here insert both genealogical lists, and for the sake of perspicuity and comparison, have placed them both in

[NOTE: * From the birth of David to the birth of Christ is upwards of 1080 years; and as the lifetime of

Christ is not included, there are but 27 full generations. To find therefore the average age of each person

mentioned in the list, at the time his first son was born, it is only necessary to divide 1080 by 27, which gives

40 years for each person. As the lifetime of man was then but of the same extent it is now, it is an absurdity

to suppose, that 27 following generations should all be old bachelors, before they married; and the more so,

when we are told that Solomon, the next in succession to David, had a house full of wives and mistresses

before he was twentyone years of age. So far from this genealogy being a solemn truth, it is not even a

reasonable lie. The list of Luke gives about twentysix years for the average age, and this is too much.

Now, if these men, Matthew and Luke, set out with a falsehood between them (as these two accounts show

they do) in the very commencement of their history of Jesus Christ, and of who, and of what he was, what

authority (as I have before asked) is there left for believing the strange things they tell us afterwards? If they

cannot be believed in their account of his natural genealogy, how are we to believe them when they tell us he

was the son of God, begotten by a ghost; and that an angel announced this in secret to his mother? If they lied

in one genealogy, why are we to believe them in the other? If his natural genealogy be manufactured, which it

certainly is, why are we not to suppose that his celestial genealogy is manufactured also, and that the whole is

fabulous? Can any man of serious reflection hazard his future happiness upon the belief of a story naturally

impossible, repugnant to every idea of decency, and related by persons already detected of falsehood? Is it

not more safe that we stop ourselves at the plain, pure, and unmixed belief of one God, which is deism, than

that we commit ourselves on an ocean of improbable, irrational, indecent, and contradictory tales?

The first question, however, upon the books of the New Testament, as upon those of the Old, is, Are they

genuine? were they written by the persons to whom they are ascribed? For it is upon this ground only that the

strange things related therein have been credited. Upon this point, there is no direct proof for or against; and

all that this state of a case proves is doubtfulness; and doubtfulness is the opposite of belief. The state,

therefore, that the books are in, proves against themselves as far as this kind of proof can go.

But, exclusive of this, the presumption is that the books called the Evangelists, and ascribed to Matthew,

Mark, Luke, and John, were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and that they are impositions.

The disordered state of the history in these four books, the silence of one book upon matters related in the

other, and the disagreement that is to be found among them, implies that they are the productions of some

unconnected individuals, many years after the things they pretend to relate, each of whom made his own

legend; and not the writings of men living intimately together, as the men called apostles are supposed to

have done: in fine, that they have been manufactured, as the books of the Old Testament have been, by other

The story of the angel announcing what the church calls the immaculate conception, is not so much as

mentioned in the books ascribed to Mark, and John; and is differently related in Matthew and Luke. The

former says the angel, appeared to Joseph; the latter says, it was to Mary; but either Joseph or Mary was the

worst evidence that could have been thought of; for it was others that should have testified for them, and not

they for themselves. Were any girl that is now with child to say, and even to swear it, that she was gotten with

child by a ghost, and that an angel told her so, would she be believed? Certainly she would not. Why then are

we to believe the same thing of another girl whom we never saw, told by nobody knows who, nor when, nor

where? How strange and inconsistent is it, that the same circumstance that would weaken the belief even of a

probable story, should be given as a motive for believing this one, that has upon the face of it every token of

The story of Herod destroying all the children under two years old, belongs altogether to the book of

Matthew; not one of the rest mentions anything about it. Had such a circumstance been true, the universality

of it must have made it known to all the writers, and the thing would have been too striking to have been

omitted by any. This writer tell us, that Jesus escaped this slaughter, because Joseph and Mary were warned

by an angel to flee with him into Egypt; but he forgot to make provision for John [the Baptist], who was then

under two years of age. John, however, who staid behind, fared as well as Jesus, who fled; and therefore the

Not any two of these writers agree in reciting, exactly in the same words, the written inscription, short as it is,

which they tell us was put over Christ when he was crucified; and besides this, Mark says, He was crucified

at the third hour, (nine in the morning;) and John says it was the sixth hour, (twelve at noon.) [According to

John, (xix. 14) the sentence was not passed till about the sixth hour (noon,) and consequently the execution

could not be till the afternoon; but Mark (xv. 25) Says expressly that he was crucified at the third hour, (nine

John Jesus of Nazareth the king of the Jews. We may infer from these circumstances, trivial as they are,

that those writers, whoever they were, and in whatever time they lived, were not present at the scene. The

only one of the men called apostles who appears to have been near to the spot was Peter, and when he was

accused of being one of Jesus's followers, it is said, (Matthew xxvi. 74,) "Then Peter began to curse and to

swear, saying, I know not the man:" yet we are now called to believe the same Peter, convicted, by their own

The accounts that are given of the circumstances, that they tell us attended the crucifixion, are differently

The book ascribed to Matthew says 'there was darkness over all the land from the sixth hour unto the ninth

hour that the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom that there was an

earthquake that the rocks rent that the graves opened, that the bodies of many of the saints that slept

arose and came out of their graves after the resurrection, and went into the holy city and appeared unto many.'

Such is the account which this dashing writer of the book of Matthew gives, but in which he is not supported

The writer of the book ascribed to Mark, in detailing the circumstances of the crucifixion, makes no mention

of any earthquake, nor of the rocks rending, nor of the graves opening, nor of the dead men walking out. The

writer of the book of Luke is silent also upon the same points. And as to the writer of the book of John,

though he details all the circumstances of the crucifixion down to the burial of Christ, he says nothing about

either the darkness the veil of the temple the earthquake the rocks the graves nor the dead

Now if it had been true that these things had happened, and if the writers of these books had lived at the time

they did happen, and had been the persons they are said to be namely, the four men called apostles,

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it was not possible for them, as true historians, even without the aid of

inspiration, not to have recorded them. The things, supposing them to have been facts, were of too much

notoriety not to have been known, and of too much importance not to have been told. All these supposed

apostles must have been witnesses of the earthquake, if there had been any, for it was not possible for them to

have been absent from it: the opening of the graves and resurrection of the dead men, and their walking about

the city, is of still greater importance than the earthquake. An earthquake is always possible, and natural, and

proves nothing; but this opening of the graves is supernatural, and directly in point to their doctrine, their

cause, and their apostleship. Had it been true, it would have filled up whole chapters of those books, and been

the chosen theme and general chorus of all the writers; but instead of this, little and trivial things, and mere

prattling conversation of 'he said this and she said that' are often tediously detailed, while this most important

of all, had it been true, is passed off in a slovenly manner by a single dash of the pen, and that by one writer

It is an easy thing to tell a lie, but it is difficult to support the lie after it is told. The writer of the book of

Matthew should have told us who the saints were that came to life again, and went into the city, and what

became of them afterwards, and who it was that saw them; for he is not hardy enough to say that he saw them

himself; whether they came out naked, and all in natural buff, hesaints and shesaints, or whether they

came full dressed, and where they got their dresses; whether they went to their former habitations, and

reclaimed their wives, their husbands, and their property, and how they were received; whether they entered

ejectments for the recovery of their possessions, or brought actions of crim. con. against the rival interlopers;

whether they remained on earth, and followed their former occupation of preaching or working; or whether

Strange indeed, that an army of saints should retum to life, and nobody know who they were, nor who it was

that saw them, and that not a word more should be said upon the subject, nor these saints have any thing to

tell us! Had it been the prophets who (as we are told) had formerly prophesied of these things, they must have

had a great deal to say. They could have told us everything, and we should have had posthumous prophecies,

with notes and commentaries upon the first, a little better at least than we have now. Had it been Moses, and

Aaron, and Joshua, and Samuel, and David, not an unconverted Jew had remained in all Jerusalem. Had it

been John the Baptist, and the saints of the times then present, everybody would have known them, and they

would have outpreached and outfamed all the other apostles. But, instead of this, these saints are made to

pop up, like Jonah's gourd in the night, for no purpose at all but to wither in the morning. Thus much for

The tale of the resurrection follows that of the crucifixion; and in this as well as in that, the writers, whoever

The book of Matthew states, that when Christ was put in the sepulchre the Jews applied to Pilate for a watch

or a guard to be placed over the septilchre, to prevent the body being stolen by the disciples; and that in

consequence of this request the sepulchre was made sure, sealing the stone that covered the mouth, and

setting a watch. But the other books say nothing about this application, nor about the sealing, nor the guard,

nor the watch; and according to their accounts, there were none. Matthew, however, follows up this part of

the story of the guard or the watch with a second part, that I shall notice in the conclusion, as it serves to

The book of Matthew continues its account, and says, (xxviii. 1,) that at the end of the Sabbath, as it began to

dawn, towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre.

Mark says it was sunrising, and John says it was dark. Luke says it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and

Mary the mother of James, and other women, that came to the sepulchre; and John states that Mary

Magdalene came alone. So well do they agree about their first evidence! They all, however, appear to have

known most about Mary Magdalene; she was a woman of large acquaintance, and it was not an ill conjecture

that she might be upon the stroll. [The Bishop of Llandaff, in his famous "Apology," censured Paine severely

for this insinuation against Mary Magdalene, but the censure really falls on our English version, which, by a

chapter heading (Luke vii.), has unwarrantably identified her as the sinful woman who anointed Jesus, and

The book of Matthew goes on to say (ver. 2): "And behold there was a great earthquake, for the angel of the

Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it" But the

other books say nothing about any earthquake, nor about the angel rolling back the stone, and sitting upon it

and, according to their account, there was no angel sitting there. Mark says the angel [Mark says "a young

man," and Luke "two men." Editor.] was within the sepulchre, sitting on the right side. Luke says there

were two, and they were both standing up; and John says they were both sitting down, one at the head and the

Matthew says, that the angel that was sitting upon the stone on the outside of the sepulchre told the two

Marys that Christ was risen, and that the women went away quickly. Mark says, that the women, upon seeing

the stone rolled away, and wondering at it, went into the sepulchre, and that it was the angel that was sitting

within on the right side, that told them so. Luke says, it was the two angels that were Standing up; and John

says, it was Jesus Christ himself that told it to Mary Magdalene; and that she did not go into the sepulchre,

Now, if the writers of these four books had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature

of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,)

and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been

in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury, and would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence,

and these are the books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as

The writer of the book of Matthew, after giving this account, relates a story that is not to be found in any of

the other books, and which is the same I have just before alluded to. "Now," says he, [that is, after the

conversation the women had had with the angel sitting upon the stone,] "behold some of the watch [meaning

the watch that he had said had been placed over the sepulchre] came into the city, and shawed unto the chief

priests all the things that were done; and when they were assembled with the elders and had taken counsel,

they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, Say ye, that his disciples came by night, and stole him away

while we slept; and if this come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. So they took

the money, and did as they were taught; and this saying [that his disciples stole him away] is commonly

The expression, until this day, is an evidence that the book ascribed to Matthew was not written by Matthew,

and that it has been manufactured long after the times and things of which it pretends to treat; for the

expression implies a great length of intervening time. It would be inconsistent in us to speak in this manner of

any thing happening in our own time. To give, therefore, intelligible meaning to the expression, we must

suppose a lapse of some generations at least, for this manner of speaking carries the mind back to ancient

The absurdity also of the story is worth noticing; for it shows the writer of the book of Matthew to have been

an exceeding weak and foolish man. He tells a story that contradicts itself in point of possibility; for though

the guard, if there were any, might be made to say that the body was taken away while they were asleep, and

to give that as a reason for their not having prevented it, that same sleep must also have prevented their

knowing how, and by whom, it was done; and yet they are made to say that it was the disciples who did it.

Were a man to tender his evidence of something that he should say was done, and of the manner of doing it,

and of the person who did it, while he was asleep, and could know nothing of the matter, such evidence could

not be received: it will do well enough for Testament evidence, but not for any thing where truth is concerned.

I come now to that part of the evidence in those books, that respects the pretended appearance of Christ after

The writer of the book of Matthew relates, that the angel that was sitting on the stone at the mouth of the

sepulchre, said to the two Marys (xxviii. 7), "Behold Christ is gone before you into Galilee, there ye shall see

him; lo, I have told you." And the same writer at the next two verses (8, 9,) makes Christ himself to speak to

the same purpose to these women immediately after the angel had told it to them, and that they ran quickly to

tell it to the disciples; and it is said (ver. 16), "Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a

mountain where Jesus had appointed them; and, when they saw him, they worshipped him."

But the writer of the book of John tells us a story very different to this; for he says (xx. 19) "Then the same

day at evening, being the first day of the week, [that is, the same day that Christ is said to have risen,] when

the doors were shut, where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the

According to Matthew the eleven were marching to Galilee, to meet Jesus in a mountain, by his own

appointment, at the very time when, according to John, they were assembled in another place, and that not by

The writer of the book of Luke xxiv. 13, 3336, contradicts that of Matthew more pointedly than John does;

for he says expressly, that the meeting was in Jerusalem the evening of the same day that he (Christ) rose, and

Now, it is not possible, unless we admit these supposed disciples the right of wilful lying, that the writers of

these books could be any of the eleven persons called disciples; for if, according to Matthew, the eleven went

into Galilee to meet Jesus in a mountain by his own appointment, on the same day that he is said to have

risen, Luke and John must have been two of that eleven; yet the writer of Luke says expressly, and John

implies as much, that the meeting was that same day, in a house in Jerusalem; and, on the other hand, if,

according to Luke and John, the eleven were assembled in a house in Jerusalem, Matthew must have been

one of that eleven; yet Matthew says the meeting was in a mountain in Galilee, and consequently the

The writer of the book of Mark says nothing about any meeting in Galilee; but he says (xvi. 12) that Christ,

after his resurrection, appeared in another form to two of them, as they walked into the country, and that these

two told it to the residue, who would not believe them. [This belongs to the late addition to Mark, which

originally ended with xvi. 8. Editor.] Luke also tells a story, in which he keeps Christ employed the whole

of the day of this pretended resurrection, until the evening, and which totally invalidates the account of going

to the mountain in Galilee. He says, that two of them, without saying which two, went that same day to a

village called Emmaus, three score furlongs (seven miles and a half) from Jerusalem, and that Christ in

disguise went with them, and stayed with them unto the evening, and supped with them, and then vanished

out of their sight, and reappeared that same evening, at the meeting of the eleven in Jerusalem.

This is the contradictory manner in which the evidence of this pretended reappearance of Christ is stated: the

only point in which the writers agree, is the skulking privacy of that reappearance; for whether it was in the

recess of a mountain in Galilee, or in a shutup house in Jerusalem, it was still skulking. To what cause then

are we to assign this skulking? On the one hand, it is directly repugnant to the supposed or pretended end,

that of convincing the world that Christ was risen; and, on the other hand, to have asserted the publicity of it

would have exposed the writers of those books to public detection; and, therefore, they have been under the

As to the account of Christ being seen by more than five hundred at once, it is Paul only who says it, and not

the five hundred who say it for themselves. It is, therefore, the testimony of but one man, and that too of a

man, who did not, according to the same account, believe a word of the matter himself at the time it is said to

have happened. His evidence, supposing him to have been the writer of Corinthians xv., where this account is

given, is like that of a man who comes into a court of justice to swear that what he had sworn before was

false. A man may often see reason, and he has too always the right of changing his opinion; but this liberty

I now come to the last scene, that of the ascension into heaven. Here all fear of the Jews, and of every

thing else, must necessarily have been out of the question: it was that which, if true, was to seal the whole;

and upon which the reality of the future mission of the disciples was to rest for proof. Words, whether

declarations or promises, that passed in private, either in the recess of a mountain in Galilee, or in a shutup

house in Jerusalem, even supposing them to have been spoken, could not be evidence in public; it was

therefore necessary that this last scene should preclude the possibility of denial and dispute; and that it should

be, as I have stated in the former part of 'The Age of Reason,' as public and as visible as the sun at noonday;

at least it ought to have been as public as the crucifixion is reported to have been. But to come to the point.

In the first place, the writer of the book of Matthew does not say a syllable about it; neither does the writer of

the book of John. This being the case, is it possible to suppose that those writers, who affect to be even

minute in other matters, would have been silent upon this, had it been true? The writer of the book of Mark

passes it off in a careless, slovenly manner, with a single dash of the pen, as if he was tired of romancing, or

ashamed of the story. So also does the writer of Luke. And even between these two, there is not an apparent

agreement, as to the place where this final parting is said to have been. [The last nine verses of Mark being

ungenuine, the story of the ascension rests exclusively on the words in Luke xxiv. 51, "was carried up into

The book of Mark says that Christ appeared to the eleven as they sat at meat, alluding to the meeting of the

eleven at Jerusalem: he then states the conversation that he says passed at that meeting; and immediately after

says (as a schoolboy would finish a dull story,) "So then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was

received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God." But the writer of Luke says, that the ascension

was from Bethany; that he (Christ) led them out as far as Bethany, and was fiarted from them there, and was

carried up into heaven. So also was Mahomet: and, as to Moses, the apostle Jude says, ver. 9. That 'Michael

and the devil disputed about his body.' While we believe such fables as these, or either of them, we believe

I have now gone through the examination of the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; and

when it is considered that the whole space of time, from the crucifixion to what is called the ascension, is but

a few days, apparently not more than three or four, and that all the circumstances are reported to have

happened nearly about the same spot, Jerusalem, it is, I believe, impossible to find in any story upon record

so many and such glaring absurdities, contradictions, and falsehoods, as are in those books. They are more

numerous and striking than I had any expectation of finding, when I began this examination, and far more so

than I had any idea of when I wrote the former part of 'The Age of Reason.' I had then neither Bible nor

Testament to refer to, nor could I procure any. My own situation, even as to existence, was becoming every

day more precarious; and as I was willing to leave something behind me upon the subject, I was obliged to be

quick and concise. The quotations I then made were from memory only, but they are correct; and the opinions

I have advanced in that work are the effect of the most clear and longestablished conviction, that the

Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world; that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ

being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation by that strange means,

are all fabulous inventions, dishonourable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty; that the only true

religion is deism, by which I then meant and now mean the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral

character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues; and that it was upon this only (so far as religion

is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now and so help me God.

But to retum to the subject. Though it is impossible, at this distance of time, to ascertain as a fact who

were the writers of those four books (and this alone is sufficient to hold them in doubt, and where we doubt

we do not believe) it is not difficult to ascertain negatively that they were not written by the persons to whom

First, that the writers cannot have been eyewitnesses and earwitnesses of the matters they relate, or they

would have related them without those contradictions; and, consequently that the books have not been written

by the persons called apostles, who are supposed to have been witnesses of this kind.

Secondly, that the writers, whoever they were, have not acted in concerted imposition, but each writer

separately and individually for himself, and without the knowledge of the other.

The same evidence that applies to prove the one, applies equally to prove both cases; that is, that the books

were not written by the men called apostles, and also that they are not a concerted imposition. As to

inspiration, it is altogether out of the question; we may as well attempt to unite truth and falsehood, as

If four men are eyewitnesses and earwitnesses to a scene, they will without any concert between them,

agree as to time and place, when and where that scene happened. Their individual knowledge of the thing,

each one knowing it for himself, renders concert totally unnecessary; the one will not say it was in a

mountain in the country, and the other at a house in town; the one will not say it was at sunrise, and the other

that it was dark. For in whatever place it was and whatever time it was, they know it equally alike.

And on the other hand, if four men concert a story, they will make their separate relations of that story agree

and corroborate with each other to support the whole. That concert supplies the want of fact in the one case,

as the knowledge of the fact supersedes, in the other case, the necessity of a concert. The same contradictions,

therefore, that prove there has been no concert, prove also that the reporters had no knowledge of the fact, (or

rather of that which they relate as a fact,) and detect also the falsehood of their reports. Those books,

therefore, have neither been written by the men called apostles, nor by imposters in concert. How then

I am not one of those who are fond of believing there is much of that which is called wilful lying, or lying

originally, except in the case of men setting up to be prophets, as in the Old Testament; for prophesying is

lying professionally. In almost all other cases it is not difficult to discover the progress by which even simple

supposition, with the aid of credulity, will in time grow into a lie, and at last be told as a fact; and whenever

we can find a charitable reason for a thing of this kind, we ought not to indulge a severe one.

The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations

can always create in vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of

Julius Caesar not many years before, and they generally have their origin in violent deaths, or in execution of

innocent persons. In cases of this kind, compassion lends its aid, and benevolently stretches the story. It goes

on a little and a little farther, till it becomes a most certain truth. Once start a ghost, and credulity fills up the

history of its life, and assigns the cause of its appearance; one tells it one way, another another way, till there

are as many stories about the ghost, and about the proprietor of the ghost, as there are about Jesus Christ in

The story of the appearance of Jesus Christ is told with that strange mixture of the natural and impossible,

that distinguishes legendary tale from fact. He is represented as suddenly coming in and going out when the

doors are shut, and of vanishing out of sight, and appearing again, as one would conceive of an unsubstantial

vision; then again he is hungry, sits down to meat, and eats his supper. But as those who tell stories of this

kind never provide for all the cases, so it is here: they have told us, that when he arose he left his

graveclothes behind him; but they have forgotten to provide other clothes for him to appear in afterwards, or

to tell us what be did with them when he ascended; whether he stripped all off, or went up clothes and all. In

the case of Elijah, they have been careful enough to make. him throw down his mantle; how it happened not

to be burnt in the chariot of fire, they also have not told us; but as imagination supplies all deficiencies of this

Those who are not much acquainted with ecclesiastical history, may suppose that the book called the New

Testament has existed ever since the time of Jesus Christ, as they suppose that the books ascribed to Moses

have existed ever since the time of Moses. But the fact is historically otherwise; there was no such book as

the New Testament till more than three hundred years after the time that Christ is said to have lived.

At what time the books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, began to appear, is altogether a matter of

uncertainty. There is not the least shadow of evidence of who the persons were that wrote them, nor at what

time they were written; and they might as well have been called by the names of any of the other supposed

apostles as by the names they are now called. The originals are not in the possession of any Christian Church

existing, any more than the two tables of stone written on, they pretend, by the finger of God, upon Mount

Sinai, and given to Moses, are in the possession of the Jews. And even if they were, there is no possibility of

proving the handwriting in either case. At the time those four books were written there was no printing, and

consequently there could be no publication otherwise than by written copies, which any man might make or

alter at pleasure, and call them originals. Can we suppose it is consistent with the wisdom of the Almighty to

commit himself and his will to man upon such precarious means as these; or that it is consistent we should

pin our faith upon such uncertainties? We cannot make nor alter, nor even imitate, so much as one blade of

grass that he has made, and yet we can make or alter words of God as easily as words of man. [The former

part of the 'Age of Reason' has not been published two years, and there is already an expression in it that is

not mine. The expression is: The book of Luke was carried by a majority of one voice only. It may be true,

but it is not I that have said it. Some person who might know of that circumstance, has added it in a note at

the bottom of the page of some of the editions, printed either in England or in America; and the printers, after

that, have erected it into the body of the work, and made me the author of it. If this has happened within such

a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of printing, which prevents the alteration of copies individually,

what may not have happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no printing, and when any

man who could write could make a written copy and call it an original by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John?

The spurious addition to Paine's work alluded to in his footnote drew on him a severe criticism from Dr.

Priestley ("Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever," p. 75), yet it seems to have been Priestley himself who, in

his quotation, first incorporated into Paine's text the footnote added by the editor of the American edition

(1794). The American added: "Vide Moshiem's (sic) Ecc. History," which Priestley omits. In a modern

American edition I notice four verbal alterations introduced into the above footnote. Editor.]

About three hundred and fifty years after the time that Christ is said to have lived, several writings of the kind

I am speaking of were scattered in the hands of divers individuals; and as the church had begun to form itself

into an hierarchy, or church government, with temporal powers, it set itself about collecting them into a code,

as we now see them, called 'The New Testament.' They decided by vote, as I have before said in the former

part of the Age of Reason, which of those writings, out of the collection they had made, should be the word

of God, and which should not. The Robbins of the Jews had decided, by vote, upon the books of the Bible

As the object of the church, as is the case in all national establishments of churches, was power and revenue,

and terror the means it used, it is consistent to suppose that the most miraculous and wonderful of the

writings they had collected stood the best chance of being voted. And as to the authenticity of the books, the

Disputes, however, ran high among the people then calling themselves Christians, not only as to points of

doctrine, but as to the authenticity of the books. In the contest between the person called St. Augustine, and

Fauste, about the year 400, the latter says, "The books called the Evangelists have been composed long after

the times of the apostles, by some obscure men, who, fearing that the world would not give credit to their

relation of matters of which they could not be informed, have published them under the names of the

apostles; and which are so full of sottishness and discordant relations, that there is neither agreement nor

And in another place, addressing himself to the advocates of those books, as being the word of God, he says,

"It is thus that your predecessors have inserted in the scriptures of our Lord many things which, though they

carry his name, agree not with his doctrine. This is not surprising, since that we have often proved that these

things have not been written by himself, nor by his apostles, but that for the greatest part they are founded

upon tales, upon vague reports, and put together by I know not what half Jews, with but little agreement

between them; and which they have nevertheless published under the name of the apostles of our Lord, and

have thus attributed to them their own errers and their lies. [I have taken these two extracts from Boulanger's

Life of Paul, written in French; Boulanger has quoted them from the writings of Augustine against Fauste, to

This Bishop Faustus is usualy styled "The Manichaeum," Augustine having entitled his book, Contra

Fsustum Manichaeum Libri xxxiii., in which nearly the whole of Faustus' very able work is quoted.

The reader will see by those extracts that the authenticity of the books of the New Testament was denied, and

the books treated as tales, forgeries, and lies, at the time they were voted to be the word of God. But the

interest of the church, with the assistance of the faggot, bore down the opposition, and at last suppressed all

investigation. Miracles followed upon miracles, if we will believe them, and men were taught to say they

believed whether they believed or not. But (by way of throwing in a thought) the French Revolution has

excommunicated the church from the power of working miracles; she has not been able, with the assistance

of all her saints, to work one miracle since the revolution began; and as she never stood in greater need than

now, we may, without the aid of divination, conclude that all her former miracles are tricks and lies.

[Boulanger in his life of Paul, has collected from the ecclesiastical histories, and the writings of the fathers as

they are called, several matters which show the opinions that prevailed among the different sects of

Christians, at the time the Testament, as we now see it, was voted to be the word of God. The following

The Marcionists (a Christian sect) asserted that the evangelists were filled with falsities. The Manichaeans,

who formed a very numerous sect at the commencement of Christianity, rejected as false all the New

Testament, and showed other writings quite different that they gave for authentic. The Cerinthians, like the

Marcionists, admitted not the Acts of the Apostles. The Encratites and the Sevenians adopted neither the

Acts, nor the Epistles of Paul. Chrysostom, in a bomily which he made upon the Acts of the Apostles, says

that in his time, about the year 400, many people knew nothing either of the author or of the book. St. Irene,

who lived before that time, reports that the Valentinians, like several other sects of the Christians, accused the

scriptures of being filled with imperfections, errors, and contradictions. The Ebionites, or Nazarenes, who

were the first Christians, rejected all the Epistles of Paul, and regarded him as an impostor. They report,

among other things, that he was originally a Pagan; that he came to Jerusalem, where he lived some time; and

that having a mind to marry the daughter of the high priest, he had himself been circumcised; but that not

being able to obtain her, he quarrelled with the Jews and wrote against circumcision, and against the

observation of the Sabbath, and against all the legal ordinances. Author. [Much abridged from the Exam.

When we consider the lapse of more than three hundred years intervening between the time that Christ is said

to have lived and the time the New Testament was formed into a book, we must see, even without the

assistance of historical evidence, the exceeding uncertainty there is of its authenticity. The authenticity of the

book of Homer, so far as regards the authorship, is much better established than that of the New Testament,

though Homer is a thousand years the most ancient. It was only an exceeding good poet that could have

written the book of Homer, and, therefore, few men only could have attempted it; and a man capable of doing

it would not have thrown away his own fame by giving it to another. In like manner, there were but few that

could have composed Euclid's Elements, because none but an exceeding good geometrician could have been

But with respect to the books of the New Testament, particularly such parts as tell us of the resurrection and

ascension of Christ, any person who could tell a story of an apparition, or of a man's walking, could have

made such books; for the story is most wretchedly told. The chance, therefore, of forgery in the Testament is

millions to one greater than in the case of Homer or Euclid. Of the numerous priests or parsons of the present

day, bishops and all, every one of them can make a sermon, or translate a scrap of Latin, especially if it has

been translated a thousand times before; but is there any amongst them that can write poetry like Homer, or

science like Euclid? The sum total of a parson's learning, with very few exceptions, is a, b, ab, and hic, haec,

hoc; and their knowledge of science is, three times one is three; and this is more than sufficient to have

enabled them, had they lived at the time, to have written all the books of the New Testament.

As the opportunities of forgery were greater, so also was the inducement. A man could gain no advantage by

writing under the name of Homer or Euclid; if he could write equal to them, it would be better that he wrote

under his own name; if inferior, he could not succeed. Pride would prevent the former, and impossibility the

latter. But with respect to such books as compose the New Testament, all the inducements were on the side of

forgery. The best imagined history that could have been made, at the distance of two or three hundred years

after the time, could not have passed for an original under the name of the real writer; the only chance of

success lay in forgery; for the church wanted pretence for its new doctrine, and truth and talents were out of

But as it is not uncommon (as before observed) to relate stories of persons walking after they are dead, and of

ghosts and apparitions of such as have fallen by some violent or extraordinary means; and as the people of

that day were in the habit of believing such things, and of the appearance of angels, and also of devils, and of

their getting into people's insides, and skaking them like a fit of an ague, and of their being cast out again as if

by an emetic (Mary Magdalene, the book of Mark tells us had brought up, or been brought to bed of seven

devils;) it was nothing extraordinary that some story of this kind should get abroad of the person called Jesus

Christ, and become afterwards the foundation of the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Each writer told a tale as he heard it, or thereabouts, and gave to his book the name of the saint or the apostle

whom tradition had given as the eyewitness. It is only upon this ground that the contradictions in those

books can be acounted for; and if this be not the case, they are downright impositions, lies, and forgeries,

That they have been written by a sort of half Jews, as the foregoing quotations mention, is discernible

enough. The frequent references made to that chief assassin and impostor Moses, and to the men called

prophets, establishes this point; and, on the other hand, the church has complimented the fraud, by admitting

the Bible and the Testament to reply to each other. Between the ChristianJew and the ChristianGentile, the

thing called a prophecy, and the thing prophesied of, the type and the thing typified, the sign and the thing

signified, have been industriously rummaged up, and fitted together like old locks and picklock keys. The

story foolishly enough told of Eve and the serpent, and naturally enough as to the enmity between men and

serpents (for the serpent always bites about the heel, because it cannot reach higher, and the man always

knocks the serpent about the head, as the most effectual way to prevent its biting;) ["It shall bruise thy head,

and thou shalt bruise his heel." Gen. iii. 15. Author.] this foolish story, I say, has been made into a

prophecy, a type, and a promise to begin with; and the lying imposition of Isaiah to Ahaz, 'That a virgin shall

conceive and bear a son,' as a sign that Ahaz should conquer, when the event was that he was defeated (as

already noticed in the observations on the book of Isaiah), has been perverted, and made to serve as a winder

Jonah and the whale are also made into a sign and type. Jonah is Jesus, and the whale is the grave; for it is

said, (and they have made Christ to say it of himself, Matt. xii. 40), "For as Jonah was three days and three

nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nighis in the heart of the earth."

But it happens, aukwardly enough, that Christ, according to their own account, was but one day and two

nights in the grave; about 36 hours instead of 72; that is, the Friday night, the Saturday, and the Saturday

night; for they say he was up on the Sunday morning by sunrise, or before. But as this fits quite as well as the

bite and the kick in Genesis, or the virgin and her son in Isaiah, it will pass in the lump of orthodox things.

Epistles of Paul The epistles ascribed to Paul, being fourteen in number, almost fill up the remaining part

of the Testament. Whether those epistles were written by the person to whom they are ascribed is a matter of

no great importance, since that the writer, whoever he was, attempts to prove his doctrine by argument. He

does not pretend to have been witness to any of the scenes told of the resurrection and the ascension; and he

The story of his being struck to the ground as he was journeying to Damascus, has nothing in it miraculous or

extraordinary; he escaped with life, and that is more than many others have done, who have been struck with

lightning; and that he should lose his sight for three days, and be unable to eat or drink during that time, is

nothing more than is common in such conditions. His companions that were with him appear not to have

suffered in the same manner, for they were well enough to lead him the remainder of the journey; neither did

The character of the person called Paul, according to the accounts given of him, has in it a great deal of

violence and fanaticism; he had persecuted with as much heat as he preached afterwards; the stroke he had

received had changed his thinking, without altering his constitution; and either as a Jew or a Christian he was

the same zealot. Such men are never good moral evidences of any doctrine they preach. They are always in

The doctrine he sets out to prove by argument, is the resurrection of the same body: and he advances this as

an evidence of immortality. But so much will men differ in their manner of thinking, and in the conclusions

they draw from the same premises, that this doctrine of the resurrection of the same body, so far from being

an evidence of immortality, appears to me to be an evidence againt it; for if I have already died in this body,

and am raised again in the same body in which I have died, it is presumptive evidence that I shall die again.

That resurrection no more secures me against the repetition of dying, than an aguefit, when past, secures me

against another. To believe therefore in immortality, I must have a more elevated idea than is contained in the

Besides, as a matter of choice, as well as of hope, I had rather have a better body and a more convenient form

than the present. Every animal in the creation excels us in something. The winged insects, without

mentioning doves or eagles, can pass over more space with greater ease in a few minutes than man can in an

hour. The glide of the smallest fish, in proportion to its bulk, exceeds us in motion almost beyond

comparison, and without weariness. Even the sluggish snail can ascend from the bottom of a dungeon, where

man, by the want of that ability, would perish; and a spider can launch itself from the top, as a playful

amusement. The personal powers of man are so limited, and his heavy frame so little constructed to extensive

enjoyment, that there is nothing to induce us to wish the opinion of Paul to be true. It is too little for the

But all other arguments apart, the consciousness of existence is the only conceivable idea we can have of

another life, and the continuance of that consciousness is immortality. The consciousness of existence, or the

knowing that we exist, is not necessarily confined to the same form, nor to the same matter, even in this life.

We have not in all cases the same form, nor in any case the same matter, that composed our bodies twenty or

thirty years ago; and yet we are conscious of being the same persons. Even legs and arms, which make up

almost half the human frame, are not necessary to the consciousness of existence. These may be lost or taken

away and the full consciousness of existence remain; and were their place supplied by wings, or other

appendages, we cannot conceive that it could alter our consciousness of existence. In short, we know not how

much, or rather how little, of our composition it is, and how exquisitely fine that little is, that creates in us

this consciousness of existence; and all beyond that is like the pulp of a peach, distinct and separate from the

Who can say by what exceeding fine action of fine matter it is that a thought is produced in what we call the

mind? and yet that thought when produced, as I now produce the thought I am writing, is capable of

Statues of brass and marble will perish; and statues made in imitation of them are not the same statues, nor

the same workmanship, any more than the copy of a picture is the same picture. But print and reprint a

thought a thousand times over, and that with materials of any kind, carve it in wood, or engrave it on stone,

the thought is eternally and identically the same thought in every case. It has a capacity of unimpaired

existence, unaffected by change of matter, and is essentially distinct, and of a nature different from every

thing else that we know of, or can conceive. If then the thing produced has in itself a capacity of being

immortal, it is more than a token that the power that produced it, which is the selfsame thing as

consciousness of existence, can be immortal also; and that as independently of the matter it was first

connected with, as the thought is of the printing or writing it first appeared in. The one idea is not more

That the consciousness of existence is not dependent on the same form or the same matter, is demonstrated to

our senses in the works of the creation, as far as our senses are capable of receiving that demonstration. A

very numerous part of the animal creation preaches to us, far better than Paul, the belief of a life hereafter.

Their little life resembles an earth and a heaven, a present and a future state; and comprises, if it may be so

The most beautiful parts of the creation to our eye are the winged insects, and they are not so originally. They

acquire that form and that inimitable brilliancy by progressive changes. The slow and creeping caterpillar

worm of to day, passes in a few days to a torpid figure, and a state resembling death; and in the next change

comes forth in all the miniature magnificence of life, a splendid butterfly. No resemblance of the former

creature remains; every thing is changed; all his powers are new, and life is to him another thing. We cannot

conceive that the consciousness of existence is not the same in this state of the animal as before; why then

must I believe that the resurrection of the same body is necessary to continue to me the consciousness of

In the former part of 'The Agee o,f Reason.' I have called the creation the true and only real word of God; and

this instance, or this text, in the book of creation, not only shows to us that this thing may be so, but that it is

so; and that the belief of a future state is a rational belief, founded upon facts visible in the creation: for it is

not more difficult to believe that we shall exist hereafter in a better state and form than at present, than that a

worm should become a butterfly, and quit the dunghill for the atmosphere, if we did not know it as a fact.

As to the doubtful jargon ascribed to Paul in 1 Corinthians xv., which makes part of the burial service of

some Christian sectaries, it is as destitute of meaning as the tolling of a bell at the funeral; it explains nothing

to the understanding, it illustrates nothing to the imagination, but leaves the reader to find any meaning if he

can. "All flesh," says he, "is not the same flesh. There is one flesh of men, another of beasts, another of

fishes, and another of birds." And what then? nothing. A cook could have said as much. "There are also,"

says he, "bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial; the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial

is the other." And what then? nothing. And what is the difference? nothing that he has told. "There is," says

he, "one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars." And what then?

nothing; except that he says that one star differlth from another star in glory, instead of distance; and he might

as well have told us that the moon did not shine so bright as the sun. All this is nothing better than the jargon

of a conjuror, who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to

Sometimes Paul affects to be a naturalist, and to prove his system of resurrection from the principles of

vegetation. "Thou fool" says he, "that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." To which one might

reply in his own language, and say, Thou fool, Paul, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die

not; for the grain that dies in the ground never does, nor can vegetate. It is only the living grains that produce

the next crop. But the metaphor, in any point of view, is no simile. It is succession, and [not] resurrection.

The progress of an animal from one state of being to another, as from a worm to a butterfly, applies to the

case; but this of a grain does not, and shows Paul to have been what he says of others, a fool.

Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul were written by him or not, is a matter of indifference; they are

either argumentative or dogmatical; and as the argument is defective, and the dogmatical part is merely

presumptive, it signifies not who wrote them. And the same may be said for the remaining parts of the

Testament. It is not upon the Epistles, but upon what is called the Gospel, contained in the four books

ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and upon the pretended prophecies, that the theory of the church,

calling itself the Christian Church, is founded. The Epistles are dependant upon those, and must follow their

fate; for if the story of Jesus Chiist be fabulous, all reasoning founded upon it, as a supposed truth, must fall

We know from history, that one of the principal leaders of this church, Athanasius, lived at the time the New

Testament was formed; [Athanasius died, according to the Church chronology, in the year 371 Auther.]

and we know also, from the absurd jargon he has left us under the name of a creed, the character of the men

who formed the New Testament; and we know also from the same history that the authenticity of the books

of which it is composed was denied at the time. It was upon the vote of such as Athanasius that the Testament

was decreed to be the word of God; and nothing can present to us a more strange idea than that of decreeing

the word of God by vote. Those who rest their faith upon such authority put man in the place of God, and

have no true foundation for future happiness. Credulity, however, is not a crime, but it becomes criminal by

resisting conviction. It is strangling in the womb of the conscience the efforts it makes to ascertain truth. We

I here close the subject on the Old Testament and the New. The evidence I have produced to prove them

forgeries, is extracted from the books themselves, and acts, like a twoedge sword, either way. If the

evidence be denied, the authenticity of the Scriptures is denied with it, for it is Scripture evidence: and if the

evidence be admitted, the authenticity of the books is disproved. The contradictory impossibilities, contained

in the Old Testament and the New, put them in the case of a man who swears for and against. Either evidence

Should the Bible and the Testament hereafter fall, it is not that I have done it. I have done no more than

extracted the evidence from the confused mass of matters with which it is mixed, and arranged that evidence

in a point of light to be clearly seen and easily comprehended; and, having done this, I leave the reader to

IN the former part of 'The Age of Reason' I have spoken of the three frauds, mystery, miracle, and Prophecy;

and as I have seen nothing in any of the answers to that work that in the least affects what I have there said

upon those subjects, I shall not encumber this Second Part with additions that are not necessary.

I have spoken also in the same work upon what is celled revelation, and have shown the absurd

misapplication of that term to the books of the Old Testament and the New; for certainly revelation is out of

the question in reciting any thing of which man has been the actor or the witness. That which man has done

or seen, needs no revelation to tell him he has done it, or seen it for he knows it already nor to enable

him to tell it or to write it. It is ignorance, or imposition, to apply the term revelation in such cases; yet the

Bible and Testament are classed under this fraudulent description of being all revelation.

Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between God and man, can only be applied to something

which God reveals of his will to man; but though the power of the Almighty to make such a communication

is necessarily admitted, because to that power all things are possible, yet, the thing so revealed (if any thing

ever was revealed, and which, by the bye, it is impossible to prove) is revelation to the person only to whom

it is made. His account of it to another is not revelation; and whoever puts faith in that account, puts it in the

man from whom the account comes; and that man may have been deceived, or may have dreamed it; or he

may be an impostor and may lie. There is no possible criterion whereby to judge of the truth of what he tells;

for even the morality of it would be no proof of revelation. In all such cases, the proper answer should be,

"When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be revelation; but it is not and cannot be incumbent upon me to

believe it to be revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of man as the word of God,

and put man in the place of God." This is the manner in which I have spoken of revelation in the former part

of The Age of Reason; and which, whilst it reverentially admits revelation as a possible thing, because, as

before said, to the Almighty all things are possible, it prevents the imposition of one man upon another, and

But though, speaking for myself, I thus admit the possibility of revelation, I totally disbelieve that the

Almighty ever did communicate any thing to man, by any mode of speech, in any language, or by any kind of

vision, or appearance, or by any means which our senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than by the

universal display of himself in the works of the creation, and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad

actions, and disposition to good ones. [A fair parallel of the then unknown aphorism of Kant: "Two things fill

the soul with wonder and reverence, increasing evermore as I meditate more closely upon them: the starry

heavens above me and the moral law within me." (Kritik derpraktischen Vernunfe, 1788). Kant's religious

utterances at the beginning of the French Revolution brought on him a royal mandate of silence, because he

had worked out from "the moral law within" a principle of human equality precisely similar to that which

Paine had derived from his Quaker doctrine of the "inner light" of every man. About the same time Paine's

writings were suppressed in England. Paine did not understand German, but Kant, though always independent

in the formation of his opinions, was evidently well acquainted with the literature of the Revolution, in

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the

human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most

dishonourable belief against the character of the divinity, the most destructive to morality, and the peace and

happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist. It is better, far better, that we admitted,

if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there

were any such, than that we permitted one such impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the

Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit among us.

Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the

Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious wars, that since that time

have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called revealed religion,

and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man? The lies of the Bible have been the cause of the one,

Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by the sword; but of what period of time do

they speak? It was impossible that twelve men could begin with the sword: they had not the power; but no

sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently powerful to employ the sword than they did so, and the

stake and faggot too; and Mahomet could not do it sooner. By the same spirit that Peter cut off the ear of the

high priest's servant (if the story be true) he would cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he been

able. Besides this, Christianity grounds itself originally upon the [Hebrew] Bible, and the Bible was

established altogether by the sword, and that in the worst use of it not to terrify, but to extirpate. The Jews

made no converts: they butchered all. The Bible is the sire of the [New] Testament, and both are called the

word of God. The Christians read both books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing called

Cliristianity is made up of both. It is then false to say that Christianity was not established by the sword.

The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the only reason that can be given for it is, that they

are rather Deists than Christians. They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and they call the scriptures a

dead letter. [This is an interesting and correct testimony as to the beliefs of the earlier Quakers, one of whom

was Paine's father. Editer.] Had they called them by a worse name, they had been nearer the truth.

It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the Creator, and who wishes to lessen the

catalogue of artificial miseries, and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among mankind, to

expel all ideas of a revealed religion as a dangerous heresy, and an impious fraud. What is it that we have

learned from this pretended thing called revealed religion? Nothing that is useful to man, and every thing that

is disbonourable to his Maker. What is it the Bible teaches us? repine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the

Testament teaches us? to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be

As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly scattered in those books, they make no part of

this pretended thing, revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and the bonds by which

society is held together, and without which it cannot exist; and are nearly the same in all religions, and in all

societies. The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and where it attempts to exceed, it becomes

mean and ridiculous. The doctrine of not retaliating injuries is much better expressed in Proverbs, which is a

collection as well from the Gentilcs as the Jews, than it is in the Testament. It is there said, (Xxv. 2 I) "If

thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink:" [According to

what is called Christ's sermon on the mount, in the book of Matthew, where, among some other [and] good

things, a great deal of this feigned morality is introduced, it is there expressly said, that the doctrine of

forbearance, or of not retaliating injuries, was not any part of the doctrine of the Jews; but as this doctrine is

found in "Proverbs," it must, according to that statement, have been copied from the Gentiles, from whom

Christ had leamed it. Those men whom Jewish and Christian idolators have abusively called heathen, had

much better and clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be found in the Old Testament, so far as it is

Jewish, or in the New. The answer of Solon on the question, "Which is the most perfect popular govemment,"

has never been exceeded by any man since his time, as containing a maxim of political morality, "That," says

he, "where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole

constitution." Solon lived about 500 years before Christ. Author.] but when it is said, as in the Testament,

"If a man smite thee on the right chcek, turn to him the other also," it is assassinating the dignity of

Loving, of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides no meaning. It is incumbent on

man, as a moralist, that he does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense, for there

is no end to retaliation; each retaliates on the other, and calls it justice: but to love in proportion to the injury,

if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for a crime. Besides, the word enemies is too vague and

general to be used in a moral maxim, which ought always to be clear and defined, like a proverb. If a man be

the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in

politics, that man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon us, and

it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we put the best construction upon a thing that it will bear. But

even this erroneous motive in him makes no motive for love on the other part; and to say that we can love

Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first place, are impossible to be performed, and if

they could be would be productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime. The maxim of doing as

we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine of loving enemies; for no man expects to be

Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies, are in general the greatest persecutors, and they act

consistently by so doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse

of what it preaches. For my own part, I disown the doctrine, and consider it as a feigned or fabulous morality;

yet the man does not exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the

American Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that I have, in any case, returned evil for evil. But it is

not incumbent on man to reward a bad action with a good one, or to return good for evil; and wherever it is

done, it is a voluntary act, and not a duty. It is also absurd to suppose that such doctrine can make any part of

a revealed religion. We imitate the moral character of the Creator by forbearing with each other, for he

forbears with all; but this doctrine would imply that he loved man, not in proportion as he was good, but as he

If we consider the nature of our condition here, we must see there is no occasion for such a thing as revealed

religion. What is it we want to know? Does not the creation, the universe we behold, preach to us the

existence of an Almighty power, that governs and regulates the whole? And is not the evidence that this

creation holds out to our senses infinitely stronger than any thing we can read in a book, that any imposter

might make and call the word of God? As for morality, the knowledge of it exists in every man's conscience.

Here we are. The existence of an Almighty power is sufficiently demonstrated to us, though we cannot

conceive, as it is impossible we should, the nature and manner of its existence. We cannot conceive how we

came here ourselves, and yet we know for a fact that we are here. We must know also, that the power that

called us into being, can if he please, and when he pleases, call us to account for the manner in which we

have lived here; and therefore without seeking any other motive for the belief, it is rational to believe that he

will, for we know beforehand that he can. The probability or even possibility of the thing is all that we ought

to know; for if we knew it as a fact, we should be the mere slaves of terror; our belief would have no merit,

Deism then teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived, all that is necessary or proper to be known.

The creation is the Bible of the deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty

of his existence, and the immutability of his power; and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries.

The probability that we may be called to account hereafter, will, to reflecting minds, have the influence of

belief; for it is not our belief or disbelief that can make or unmake the fact. As this is the state we are in, and

which it is proper we should be in, as free agents, it is the fool only, and not the philosopher, nor even the

But the belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the strange fable of the Christian creed, and with

the wild adventures related in the Bible, and the obscurity and obscene nonsense of the Testament, that the

mind of man is bewildered as in a fog. Viewing all these things in a confused mass, he confounds fact with

fable; and as he cannot believe all, he feels a disposition to reject all. But the belief of a God is a belief

distinct from all other things, and ought not to be confounded with any. The notion of a Trinity of Gods has

enfeebled the belief of one God. A multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief; and in proportion as

Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form instead of fact; of notion instead of principle: morality is

banished to make room for an imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its origin in a supposed

debauchery; a man is preached instead of a God; an execution is an object for gratitude; the preachers daub

themselves with the blood, like a troop of assassins, and pretend to admire the brilliancy it gives them; they

preach a humdrum sermon on the merits of the execution; then praise Jesus Christ for being executed, and

A man, by hearing all this nonsense lumped and preached together, confounds the God of the Creation with

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more

unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called

Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the

heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of

despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general,

The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it every evidence of divine originality, is pure

and simple deism. It must have been the first and will probably be the last that man believes. But pure and

simple deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments. They cannot lay hold of religion as an

engine but by mixing it with human inventions, and making their own authority a part; neither does it answer

the avarice of priests, but by incorporating themselves and their functions with it, and becoming, like the

government, a party in the system. It is this that forms the otherwise mysterious connection of church and

Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would

be regulated by the forcc of belief; he would stand in awe of God, and of himself, and would not do the thing

that could not be concealed from either. To give this belief the full opportunity of force, it is necessary that it

But when, according to the Christian Trinitarian scheme, one part of God is represented by a dying man, and

another part, called the Holy Ghost, by a flying pigeon, it is impossible that belief can attach itself to such

wild conceits. [The book called the book of Matthew, says, (iii. 16,) that the Holy Ghost descended in the

shape of a dove. It might as well have said a goose; the creatures are equally harmless, and the one is as much

a nonsensical lie as the other. Acts, ii. 2, 3, says, that it descended in a mighty rushing wind, in the shape of

cloven tongues: perbaps it was cloven feet. Such absurd stuff is fit only for tales of witches and wizards.

It has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man

in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of government to hold him in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the

one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support. The study of theology as it stands

in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds

by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no conclusion. Not any thing can

be studied as a science without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this

Instead then of studying theology, as is now done, out of the Bible and Testament, the meanings of which

books are always controverted, and the authenticity of which is disproved, it is necessary that we refer to the

Bible of the creation. The principles we discover there are eternal, and of divine origin: they are the

foundation of all the science that exists in the world, and must be the foundation of theology.

We can know God only through his works. We cannot have a conception of any one attribute, but by

following some principle that leads to it. We have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not the

means of comprehending something of its immensity. We can have no idea of his wisdom, but by knowing

the order and manner in which it acts. The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the Creator of

man is the Creator of science, and it is through that medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face.

Could a man be placed in a situation, and endowed with power of vision to behold at one view, and to

contemplate deliberately, the structure of the universe, to mark the movements of the several planets, the

cause of their varying appearances, the unerring order in which they revolve, even to the remotest comet,

their connection and dependence on each other, and to know the system of laws established by the Creator,

that governs and regulates the whole; he would then conceive, far beyond what any church theology can

teach him, the power, the wisdom, the vastness, the munificence of the Creator. He would then see that all the

knowledge man has of science, and that all the mechanical arts by which he renders his situation comfortable

here, are derived from that source: his mind, exalted by the scene, and convinced by the fact, would increase

in gratitude as it increased in knowledge: his religion or his worship would become united with his

improvement as a man: any employment he followed that had connection with the principles of the creation,

as everything of agriculture, of science, and of the mechanical arts, has, would teach him more of God,

and of the gratitude he owes to him, than any theological Christian sermon he now hears. Great objects

inspire great thoughts; great munificence excites great gratitude; but the grovelling tales and doctrines of the

Though man cannot arrive, at least in this life, at the actual scene I have described, he can demonstrate it,

because he has knowledge of the principles upon which the creation is constructed. We know that the greatest

works can be represented in inodel, and that the universe can be represented by the same means. The same

principles by which we measure an inch or an acre of ground will measure to millions in extent. A circle of

an inch diameter has the same geometrical properties as a circle that would circumscribe the universe. The

same properties of a triangle that will demonstrate upon paper the course of a ship, will do it on the ocean;

and, when applied to what are called the heavenly bodies, will ascertain to a minute the time of an eclipse,

though those bodies are millions of miles distant from us. This knowledge is of divine origin; and it is from

the Bible of the creation that man has learned it, and not from the stupid Bible of the church, that teaches man

nothing. [The Biblemakers have undertaken to give us, in the first chapter of Genesis, an account of the

creation; and in doing this they have demonstrated nothing but their ignorance. They make there to have been

three days and three nights, evenings and mornings, before there was any sun; when it is the presence or

absence of the sun that is the cause of day and night and what is called his rising and setting that of

moming and evening. Besides, it is a puerile and pitiful idea, to suppose the Almighty to say, "Let there be

light." It is the imperative manner of speaking that a conjuror uses when he says to his cups and balls, Presto,

be gone and most probably has been taken from it, as Moses and his rod is a conjuror and his wand.

Longinus calls this expression the sublime; and by the same rule the conjurer is sublime too; for the manner

of speaking is expressively and grammatically the same. When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they

see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous. The sublime of the critics, like some parts of Edmund Burke's

sublime and beautiful, is like a windmill just visible in a fog, which imaginanation might distort into a flying

All the knowledge man has of science and of machinery, by the aid of which his existence is rendered

comfortable upon earth, and without which he would be scarcely distinguishable in appearance and condition

from a common animal, comes from the great machine and structure of the universe. The constant and

unwearied observations of our ancestors upon the movements and revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in what

are supposed to have been the early ages of the world, have brought this knowledge upon earth. It is not

Moses and the prophets, nor Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, that have done it. The Almighty is the great

mechanic of the creation, the first philosopher, and original teacher of all science. Let us then learn to

Had we, at this day, no knowledge of machinery, and were it possible that man could have a view, as I have

before described, of the structure and machinery of the universe, he would soon conceive the idea of

constructing some at least of the mechanical works we now have; and the idea so conceived would

progressively advance in practice. Or could a model of the universe, such as is called an orrery, be presented

before him and put in motion, his mind would arrive at the same idea. Such an object and such a subject

would, whilst it improved him in knowledge useful to himself as a man and a member of society, as well as

entertaining, afford far better matter for impressing him with a knowledge of, and a belief in the Creator, and

of the reverence and gratitude that man owes to him, than the stupid texts of the Bible and the Testament,

from which, be the talents of the preacher; what they may, only stupid sermons can be preached. If man must

preach, let him preach something that is edifying, and from the texts that are known to be true.

The Bible of the creation is inexhaustible in texts. Every part of science, whether connected with the

geometry of the universe, with the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties of inanimate

matter, is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy for gratitude, as for human improvement. It will

perhaps be said, that if such a revolution in the system of religion takes place, every preacher ought to be a

It has been by wandering from the immutable laws of science, and the light of reason, and setting up an

invented thing called "revealed religion," that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have been formed of

the Almighty. The Jews have made him the assassin of the human species, to make room for the religion of

the Jews. The Christians have made him the murderer of himself, and the founder of a new religion to

supersede and expel the Jewish religion. And to find pretence and admission for these things, they must have

supposed his power or his wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable; and the changeableness of the will is the

imperfection of the judgement. The philosopher knows that the laws of the Creator have never changed, with

respect either to the principles of science, or the properties of matter. Why then is it to be supposed they have

I here close the subject. I have shown in all the foregoing parts of this work that the Bible and Testament are

impositions and forgeries; and I leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it to be refuted, if any one can

do it; and I leave the ideas that are suggested in the conclusion of the work to rest on the mind of the reader;

certain as I am that when opinions are free, either in matters of govemment or religion, truth will finally and