66 I know not what sort of fellows the Jewish or Grecian Scribes were; but there is not a Lawyer's Clerk in England but has more knowledge than is exhibited in these astonishing" doctrines, I will stake my sayings against these sayings of the Christian God, and leave posterity to judge between them. I will not dishonour, Confucius, by putting his morals on a level with the pretended morals of the New Testament; nor will I underrate "The Moralist" by such a comparison; but I will say, that "The Republican," which has contained the ordinary run of my sentiments for five years, is far superior to the Bible as a book or books calculated to teach morality. If the Bible-mongers would turn their collections to the circulation of "The Republican" some good effects from it would soon make themselves visible; but it is now confessed, that crime increases with an increased circulation of the Bible! The reason is, that the Bible is not a book qualified to improve the character of any man; whilst its immoralities and exhibitions of vice in every shape must be qualified to corrupt all who are impressed with the reading of them, who are not either BIBLE PROOF as moralists, or equally depraved with the worst characters sketched in it. It is a book, certainly, that as a father, and anxious to make the most of my children, I shall never put into their hands in their youth. And I hope that before they reach mature age all controversy concerning it will have ceased. It would not be defended an hour in the present day, but for the immense profits connected with its being kept in countenance, some are blind enough to conclude, that my attack upon it, is a trifling circumstance, but they are sorry politicians. Is it nothing to annihilate Christianity and all religion throughout Europe and America? It is vastly more important to annihilate all disinterested attachment to the Bible, for the interested must follow, than to overthrow, at this moment, the Holy Alliance and every monarch in Europe! Without a Bible, monarchy will crumble to pieces in quick time, amidst the present state of knowledge; therefore, if I never say another word about monarchy or passing politics, and continue my assaults upon the Bible, I shall consider that I am at the very pinnacle of political rectitude, and at the acme of importance as a political writer. All other polical efforts are, in my eye, a mere trifling with the evils which afflict society. France, Spain, and even the United States of North America, exhibit the comparative inutility of overthrowing monarchy and leaving a priesthood standing. Overthrow the priesthood first, and all that is corrupt will of necessity follow; for they are the mainstay of all that is corrupt in every country, by encouraging every species of political depravity, and by blinding the mass of the people towards it. Further, the beauty of this sort of warfare, this overthrow of whatever is corrupt, by overthrowing the Bible and its Priests, is, that it is wholly moral, that it is not of the bloodshed kind, that it wastes no time, destroys no capital, the expence not worthy of mention as a taxation or contribution; for whilst we are assaulting the Bible with every sort of knowledge, we are gaining the most important knowledge, which is of itself the most important gain. All is gain in this warfare, we sacrifice nothing but prejudices and fears and a whole batch of evils, to sasacrifice which is gain and happiness. A little persecution we may sustain, before we make a sufficient progress, but not much more of that in this country. I may well and truly say-" Come unto me, ALL YE THAT LABOUR AND ARE HEAVY LADEN, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST." CHRISTIANITY HAS BEEN NOTHING BUT A BURTHEN AND A SOURCE OF UNPROFITABLE LABOUR TO YOU. COME TO MY PRINCIPLES KNOW YOUR IGNORANCE, AND RENOUNCE YOUR PRIESTS! Now, Bailey, what do you think of me as a critic upon Christian Sermons, upon a divine, god-like, sermou? What do you now think of the " peculiar wisdom" of this sermon, "so truly calculated to advance the happiness of man?" Was or was not Mr. Soame Jenyns an enthusiast? A sober, sensible, honest man could find nothing on an extensive scale to praise or to admire in the Bible; therefore, wherever I see a man committing himself with such indiscriminate praise and admiration, I set him down as very ignorant or as a great hypocrite. For Mr. Soame Jenyns and for yourself, you may take your choice of the characters. This sermon on the mount contains the bulk of the morality of the New Testament or of the Christian Religion: and I have here shewn it to be defective in almost every precept. So far from being "infinitely superior" to what had existed before, it is infinitely inferior to the moral precepts of Confucius. It will bear no comparison with the moral doctrine of Epicurus, and even Pythagoras and Isocrates were much superior to whatever has appeared under the name of Christianity. These all treated of realities: this of fictions and fanciful conceits. RICHARD CARLILE. In the Morning Chronicle for Wednesday, November 17, was the following religious squib, to which Mr. Carlile sent the accompanying answer. "At the late fire, Mr. Carlile took refuge in St. Bride's Church, and placed several parcels of Paine's Age of Reason there for safety. The Devil in time of need deserts his friends: * Query "pain.”—Printer. T. B." TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE. SIR, Dorchester Goal, November 20, 1824. THE head of this letter will inform you and your poetical correspondent of Wednesday last, T. B., that I was not in London to fly from the fire to the Church; but that I am now progressing with the sixth year of my imprisonment, with what object to my persecutors, I leave them to say, for I see none. But as this false, brutul, and ill-timed, though very religius, jest merits an answer, I hope you will do me the justice to insert the following lines: If the Devil deserts his friends in time of need, What must my neighbours think of such a creed As mine! The printed powers of which could say to flame: Neither Paine nor Carlile flies to Church or Devil, * No phantoms them affright, no foolish fears assail, For the damage done to the house, the Insurance Office, I expect, will account to the lessee; but from the late new regulations by our Judges, as to what does and what does not constitute property, I have been deterred from insuring my stock in trade; fearful, that my name would be enough in the Courts to constitute any kind of property or possession illigitimate, or beyond the pale of the law. The treatment which I have received * Devils. from seizures on account of my fines warrants me in saying this; for though the Judges have made it lawful to seize my property, they have found it beyond the pale of the law, when seized; and, in addition to two years imprisonment on account of fines of £1500., I have been fined in the shape of seized property to double the amount: the property unaccounted for! the imprisonment continued! I am, Sir, respectfully yours, RICHARD CARLILE. CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN A DOCTOR OF, MEDICINE AND A UNITARIAN PREACHER, BOTH OF DUNDEE. (Continued from page 573.) PRIEST IN GLASGOW, WISELY TURNING DOCTOR IN TIME, TO THE DOCTOR IN LONDON. Glasgow, August 26, 1824. I RECEIVED your letter on the 24th of August, and though to reply to it must tresspass on time, required for studies in which I am ardently engaged; I shall, nevertheless, for a little, leave the fair field of investigation, on which I have been for some time expatiating, for the more thorny one of controversy. You give at the outset a very lamentable picture of a religionist. You first describe him as a "being lost to the dictates of reason!" This is exceedingly modest! The sagacious Boyle, the acute and judicious Locke, the sublime Newton'; these exalted souls, with innumerable other worthies, the ornaments not only of their country, but of their race, were lost to the dictates of reason. This I say again is exceedingly modest. You farther tell us, that a religionist continually crouches under the yoke of priests. Where did you draw your picture of a religionist? In a land of Brahmins, or of Dervises, or of Monks and Friars. It is 1 Was a ninny as a theologian. 2 So far as they were theologians. R. C. Oh! no! The Doctor saw enough in Dundee. And quite enough in the Unitarian Chapel, where a priest obtained a living by preaching what he could not prove about one God. The Unitarian priest is to every intent and purpose a Brahmin, a Dervise, and a Monk and Friar. R.. no picture of the innumerable enlightened thinkers, who embraced religion from personal conviction and own no human authority in matters of faith, and whom it was strange that you should over look, when you penned the sentence on which I am animadverting, or whom, if you did not forget, stranger still, that the remembrance of them did not blot from your pages the insinuation that a religionist is a creature, that continually crouches under priests. 10 You call faith a bugbear. Yes, to the faithless it is a bugbear, to those who may have reason to bear the terrors of a judgment" faith is a bughear. Enemies to faith, faith cannot but be an enemy to them. But to the sincere servant of God conscious of ardent endeavour to fulfill his commandments, and animated with love to him, what sublimer idea can there be, than that of an eternal, infinite 1o, intelligent power, the fountain of all existence, and the sovereign of worlds", what dearer idea than that such a being is a father", is his father, and what more inspiring than the prospect of an eternity of glory and of bliss beyond the grave--the thought that his existence instead of being that little span which extends to the grave and no farther, is merely the first step of a career glorious above "what eye hath seen, or ear hath heard, or hath entered into the heart of man to conceive," "3 and boundless as eternity. If you can take more pleasure in worshipping motion than in adoring the living God". If the God motion can be dearer to you than God the father, or if the gloomy prospect of everlasting forgetfulness; if the prospect of the everlasting vanishment of your spirit like a vapour can cheer you more than the assurance of immortality, I must be at a loss to ascertain the cause of such a There can be none such; if there were, there could be no Atheists. The Atheists are the thinkers: the Theists only preachers and hearers. Have not the Unitarians Priests? 6 What judgment? 7 What is faith? 8 What is God? How to be served? ? What are they? How do you identify them? R. C. R. C. R. C. R. C.. R. C. R. C. 10 What is eternal, what does it mean, how do you define the word? What is infinite? All power is finite. If your God be without end he is without power, and has no definite means of action. He is nothing, all things are finite. R. C. How many are ye all? Are they finite or infinite? If finite your God cannot be infinite. If infinite, they admit of no sovereign. 12 How a father? 13 What then does your prospect rest upon? 14 What is it? R. C. R. C. R. C. R. C. |