January 27, O. S. 1794.
AGE OF REASON.
PART FIRST.
IT has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my thoughts upon religion. I
am well aware of the difficulties that attend the subject, and from that consideration,
had reserved it to a more advanced period of life. I intended it to be the last offering I
should make to my fellow-citizens of all nations, and that at a time when the purity of
the motive that induced me to it, could not admit of a question, even by those who might
disapprove the work.
The circumstance that has now taken place in France of the total abolition of the whole
national order of priesthood, and of everything appertaining to compulsive systems of
religion, and compulsive articles of faith, has not only precipitated my intention, but
rendered a work of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest in the general wreck of
superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology, we lose sight of
morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true.
As several of my colleagues and others of my fellow-citizens of France have given me
the example of making their voluntary and individual profession of faith, I also will make
mine; and I do this with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man
communicates with itself.
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing
justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
But, lest it should be supposed that I believe in many other things in addition to
these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my
reasons for not believing them.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by
the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that
I know of. My own mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to
me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize
power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the
same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man,
that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in
disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental
lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the
chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not
believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the
trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he
begins with a perjury. Can we conceive any thing 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 pure, unmixed and unadulterated
belief of one God, and no more.
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 show 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
accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.
As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into
the subject, offer some other observations on the word revelation. Revelation, when
applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.
No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if
he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a
certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person
only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and
so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first
person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe
it.
It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to
us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the
first communication- after this, it is only an account of something which that person says
was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it
cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation
made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.
When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the
commandments from the hands 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 carry 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.
*
*It is, however, necessary to except the declaration which says that God visits the
sins of the fathers upon the children; it is contrary to every principle of moral justice.
When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven and brought to Mahomet by an angel,
the account comes too near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second-hand authority as
the former. I did not see the angel myself, and, therefore, I have a right not to believe
it.
When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she
was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband,
Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not; such a
circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it; but we have
not even this- for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves; it is only
reported by others that they said so- it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to
rest my belief upon such evidence.
It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the story of
Jesus Christ being the son of God. He was born when the heathen mythology had still some
fashion and repute in the world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief
of such a story. Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology
were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new thing, at that time,
to believe a man to have been celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was
then a matter of familiar opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had
cohabited with hundreds: the story, therefore, had nothing in it either new, wonderful, or
obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among the people called
Gentiles, or Mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it. The Jews who had
kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the
heathen mythology, never credited the story.
It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian church sprung
out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct incorporation took place in the first
instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods
that then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which was about
twenty or thirty thousand: the statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus;
the deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints; the Mythologists had
gods for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything; the church
became as crowded with one, as the Pantheon had been with the other, and Rome was the
place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient
Mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to
reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.
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 practised was of the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of
morality had been preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many years
before; by the Quakers since; and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded
by any.
Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or any thing else;
not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his own writing. The history of him
is altogether the work of other people; and as to the account given of his resurrection
and ascension, it was the necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. His historians
having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out
again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.
The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told exceeds every thing that
went before it. The first part, that of the miraculous conception, was not a thing that
admitted of publicity; and therefore the tellers of this part of the story had this
advantage, that though they might not be credited, they could not be detected. They could
not be expected to prove it, because it was not one of those things that admitted of
proof, and it was impossible that the person of whom it was told could prove it himself.
But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension through the
air, is a thing very different as to the evidence it admits of, to the invisible
conception of a child in the womb. The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have
taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a
balloon, or the sun at noon-day, to all Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody is
required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all,
and universal; and as the public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence
that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the ground, because
that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small number of persons, not more than
eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all
the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did not
believe the resurrection, and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and
manual demonstration himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for me,
and for every other person, as for Thomas.
It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The story, so far as
relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the
face of it. Who were the authors of it is as impossible for us now to know, as it is for
us to be assured that the books in which the account is related were written by the
persons whose names they bear; the best surviving evidence we now have respecting that
affair is the Jews. They are regularly descended from the people who lived in the times
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 apprehensions 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. 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 afterward under Mount Etna, and that every time the Giant
turns himself Mount Etna belches fire.
It is here easy to see that the circumstance of the mountain, that of its being a
volcano, suggested the idea of the fable; and that the fable is made to fit and wind
itself up with that circumstance.
The Christian Mythologists tell us that their Satan made war against the Almighty, who
defeated him, and confined him afterward, not under a mountain, but in a pit. It is here
easy to see that the first fable suggested the idea of the second; for the fable of
Jupiter and the Giants was told many hundred years before that of Satan. Thus far the
ancient and the Christian Mythologists differ very little from each other. But the latter
have contrived to carry the matter much farther. They have contrived to connect the
fabulous part of the story of Jesus Christ with the fable originating from Mount Etna; and
in order to make all the parts of the story tie together, they have taken to their aid the
traditions of the Jews; for the Christian mythology is made up partly from the ancient
mythology and partly from the Jewish traditions.
The Christian Mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit, were obliged to let
him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is then introduced into the Garden
of Eden, in the shape of a snake or a serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar
conversation with Eve, who is no way surprised to hear a snake talk; and the issue of this
tete-a-tete is that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the eating of that apple damns
all mankind.
After giving Satan this triumph over the whole creation, one would have supposed that
the Church Mythologists would have been kind enough to send him back again to the pit; or,
if they had not done this, that they would have put a mountain upon him (for they say that
their faith can remove a mountain), or have put him under a mountain, as the former
mythologists had done, to prevent his getting again among the women and doing more
mischief. But instead of this they leave him at large, without even obliging him to give
his parole- the secret of which is, that they could not do without him; and after being at
the trouble of making him, they bribed him to stay. They promised him ALL the Jews, ALL
the Turks by anticipation, nine-tenths of the world beside, and Mahomet into the bargain.
After this, who can doubt the bountifulness of the Christian Mythology?
Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in Heaven, in which none of the
combatants could be either killed or wounded- put Satan into the pit- let him out again-
giving him a triumph over the whole creation- damned all mankind by the eating of an
apple, these Christian Mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together. They
represent this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both God and Man, and
also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on purpose to be sacrificed, because they say
that Eve in her longing had eaten an apple.
Putting aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity, or detestation by
its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to an examination of the parts, it is
impossible to conceive a story more derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his
wisdom, more contradictory to his power, than this story is. In order to make for it a
foundation to rise upon, the inventors were under the necessity of giving to the being
whom they call Satan, a power equally as great, if not greater than they attribute to the
Almighty. They have not only given him the power of liberating himself from the pit, after
what they call his fall, but they have made that power increase afterward to infinity.
Before this fall they represent him only as an angel of limited existence, as they
represent the rest. After his fall, he becomes, by their account, omnipresent. He exists
everywhere, and at the same time. He occupies the whole immensity of space.
Not content with this deification of Satan, they represent him as defeating, by
stratagem, in the shape of an animal of the creation, all the power and wisdom of the
Almighty. They represent him as having compelled the Almighty to the direct necessity
either of surrendering the whole of the creation to the government and sovereignty of this
Satan, or of capitulating for its redemption by coming down upon earth, and exhibiting
himself upon a cross in the shape of a man.
Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is, had they represented
the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit himself on a cross, in the shape of a snake,
as a punishment for his new transgression, the story would have been less absurd- less
contradictory. But instead of this, they make the transgressor triumph, and the Almighty
fall.
That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived very good lives under
that belief (for credulity is not a crime), is what I have no doubt of. In the first
place, they were educated to believe it, and they would have believed anything else in the
same manner. There are also many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they
conceived to be the infinite love of God to man, in making a sacrifice of himself, that
the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred them from examining into the
absurdity and profaneness of the story. The more unnatural anything is, the more it is
capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration.
But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present
themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us
the instant we are born- a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we
that light up the sun, that pour down the rain, and fill the earth with abundance? Whether
we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things, and
the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to us? Can our gross feelings be excited by
no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so
intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator?
I know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it would be paying too great a
compliment to their credulity to forbear it on their 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 object freely investigated. I therefore pass on to an examination of the books
called the Old and New Testament.
These books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation (which, by the by, 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
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 Gut 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 called themselves by the general name of the Church, and this is all we
know of the matter.
As we have no other external evidence or authority for believing these books to be the
word of God than what I have mentioned, which is no evidence or authority at all, I come,
in the next place, to examine the internal evidence contained in the books themselves. In
the former part of this Essay, I have spoken of revelation; I now proceed further with
that subject, for the purpose of applying it to the books in question.
Revelation is a communication of something which the person to whom that thing is
revealed did not know before. For if I have done a thing, or seen it done, it needs no
revelation to tell me I have done it, or seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write
it.
Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth, of which man
himself is the actor or the witness; and consequently all the historical and anecdotal
parts of the Bible, which is almost the whole of it, is not within the meaning and compass
of the word revelation, and, therefore, is not the word of God.
When Samson ran off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did so (and whether he did
or not is nothing to us), or when he visited his Delilah, or caught his foxes, or did any
thing 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 Lord spake unto Moses,
saying."
Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the Creation, I am at a loss to conceive.
Moses, I believe, was too good a judge of such subjects to put his name to that account.
He had been educated among The Egyptians, who were a people as well skilled in science,
and particularly in astronomy, as any people of their day; and the silence and caution
that Moses observes in not authenticating the account, is a good negative evidence that he
neither told it nor believed it The case is, that every nation of people has been
world-makers, and the Israelites had as much right to set up the trade of world-making as
any of the rest; and as Moses was not an Israelite, he might not choose to contradict the
tradition. The account, however, is harmless; and this is more than can be said of many
other parts of the Bible.
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and
torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible
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 part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.
We scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but what deserves either our
abhorrence or our contempt, till we come to the miscellaneous parts of the Bible. In the
anonymous publications, the Psalms, and the Book of Job, more particularly in the latter,
we find a great deal of elevated sentiment reverentially expressed of the power and
benignity of the Almighty; but they stand on no higher rank than many other compositions
on similar subjects, as well before that time as since.
The Proverbs which are said to be Solomon's, though most probably a collection (because
they discover a knowledge of life which his situation excluded him from knowing), are an
instructive table of ethics. They are inferior in keenness to the proverbs of the
Spaniards, and not more wise and economical than those of the American Franklin.
All the remaining parts of the Bible, generally known by the name of the Prophets, are
the works of the Jewish poets and itinerant preachers, who mixed poetry,
* anecdote,
and devotion together- and those works still retain the air and style of poetry, though in
translation.
*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 these books, called
the Prophets, appertains altogether to poetry. It is fictitious, and oft en extravagant,
and not admissible in any other kind of writing than poetry. To show that these writings
are composed in poetical numbers, I will take ten syllables, as they stand in the book,
and make a line of the same number of syllables, (heroic measure) that shall rhyme with
the last word. It will then be seen that the composition of these books is poetical
measure. The instance I shall produce is from Isaiah:
"Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth!"
'Tis 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 the
poet:
"O! that mine head were waters and mine eyes"
Were fountains flowing like the liquid skies;
Then would I give the mighty flood release,
And weep a deluge for the human race.
