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                              VII.

                ANSWER TO THE BISHOP OF LLANDAFF.

                         EDITORIAL NOTE.

     IMMEDIATELY after perusal of Bishop Watson's reply to "The Age
of Reason" ("An Apology for the Bible," 1796) Paine began his
answer to it. By reference to his letter to Jefferson (vol. iii. P.
377 of this edition) it will be seen that in October, 1800, he was
still writing on it, and intended to publish it as Part III. of
"The Age of Reason." This plan, however, was changed, and in His
Will (q.v.) this Part III. and the "Answer" are mentioned as
different manuscripts. That both were not published by Paine was
due to several considerations. After his arrival in America,
October 30, 1802, he found the odium theologicum against him so
strong that it involved President Jefferson and other friends,
personal and political, and it even seems doubtful whether he could
have found a publisher. His last pamphlet "Examination of the
Prophecies" was, it will be seen, "printed for the Author," no
other publisher being named. Madame Bonneville mentions that "he
left the manuscript of his Answer to the Bishop of Llandaff; the
Third Part of his "Age of Reason"; several pieces on Religious
Subjects, prose and verse." (See my "Life of Paine," vol. ii., p.
486.) Soon after Paine's death Madame Bonneville's reactionary
religious tendencies which drew her back to the Catholic Church,
led her to mutilate the manuscripts bequeathed to her. Her pious
destructiveness was, however, to some extent, limited by her
impecuniosity, as has been said in my introduction to "The Age of
Reason," and Col. Fellows managed to rescue several fragments and
restore passages that had been erased. Fortunately another woman,
without reactionary tendencies, the widow of Elihu Palmer, attended
Paine during his illness in 1806, in the house of William Carver.
(See 'Post,' note on the "Prospect Papers.") About that time he
gave Mrs. Palmer a portion of the manuscript of the "Answer" which
he had transcribed, and after his death she presented this to the
editor of the Theophilanthropist (New York), in which it was
published, 1810, and from which (loaned me by Mr. E. Truelove) it
is here reprinted. The strange fate that brought Paine's latest
religious writings under expurgation of the Catholic priesthood
ultimately consigned some, though accidentally, to the flames. (See
preface to my "Life of Paine.") The chief loss was, I believe, the
part of his Anrwer alluded to in the opening fragment: "Of these
things I shall speak fully when I come in another part to treat of
the ancient religion of the Persians, and compare it with the
modern religion of the New Testament." The incidental sentences in
the further fragment, on Job, in which he accuses the Jews of
dishonoring God by ascribing to him the evils of nature, rendered
it certain that Paine had grappled with Bishop Butler's argument
against the Deists (that the God of the Bible was no more cruel
than their God of Nature) which had been pressed by Bishop Watson.
Although it is clear from other passages that Paine had no belief
in a personal Ahriman (as indeed Zoroaster had not) he probably
adopted something like the Zoroastrian dualism.

     Concerning the Bishop's "Apology" it may be remarked that
those who circulated it so industriously could have hardly been
aware, generally, of its heretical contents. It concedes that Paine


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had discovered "real difficulties" in the Old Testament, in the
Christian grove some "unsightly shrubs," discrepancies in the
genealogies of Christ, and inconsistencies in Ezra; it admits that
a certain law in Deuteronomy is "improper," that Moses did not
write some parts of the Pentateuch, and that "many learned men and
good Christians" regard the Bible as fallible in matters not
distinctively religious. Others who replied to Paine made large
concessions in other points, the result being that when these
concessions are added together they amount very nearly to a
surrender of the biblical stronghold which Paine assailed. But as
for Watson's "Apology," it is well known in the history of
"Freethought" that the Bishop's work was second only to Paine's in
the propagation of scepticism, partly, no doubt, through the
extracts from the "Age of Reason" contained in it. Indeed the
Bishop's own orthodoxy was suspected, his legitimate promotion was
prevented, and among his papers was found (dated 1811) this bitter
note: "I have treated my divinity as I twenty-five years ago
treated my chemical papers: I have lighted my fire with the labour
of a great portion of my life." There appears to me no doubt that
both the Broad Church in England, and the rationalistic wing of the
Quakers in America (Hicksites), were founded by "The Age of Reason"
and the controversies raised by it.

     In criticising these fragments it must be remembered that the
portions published in 1810 were those thrown aside by Paine after
transcribing or using them for a statement now lost, that the other
portions were obtained only with Madame Bonneville's erasures, and
that none of them ever received Paine's revision. (Conway's note)

                          ****     ****
                    FRAGMENTS OF THE ANSWER.

                            GENESIS.

     THE bishop says, "the oldest book in the world is Genesis."
This is mere assertion; he offers no proof of it, and I go to
controvert it, and to show that the book of job, which is not a
Hebrew book, but is a book of the Gentiles translated into
Hebrew, is much older than the book of Genesis.

     The book of Genesis means the book of Generations; to which
are prefixed two chapters, the first and second, which contain
two different cosmogonies, that is, two different accounts of the
creation of the world, written by different persons, as I have
shown in the preceding part of this work.

     The first cosmogony begins at chapter i. 1, and ends at ii.
3; for the adverbial conjunction thus, with which chapter ii.
begins, shows those three verses to belong to chapter 1. The
second cosmogony begins at ii. 4, and ends with that chapter.

     In the first cosmogony the name of God is used without any
epithet joined to it, and is repeated thirty-five times. In the
second cosmogony it is always the Lord-God, which is repeated
eleven times. These two different stiles of expression show these
two chapters to be the work of two different persons, and the
contradictions they contain, shew they cannot be the work of one 


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and the same person, as I have already shown. The third chapter,
in which the style of Lord God is continued in every instance
except in the supposed conversation between the woman and the
serpent (for in every place in that chapter where the writer
speaks, it is always the Lord God) shows this chapter to belong
to the second cosmogony.

     This chapter gives an account of what is called the 'fall of
Man,' which is no other than a fable borrowed from, and
constructed upon, the religious allegory of Zoroaster, or the
Persians, of the annual progress of the sun through the twelve
signs of the Zodiac. It is the fall of the Year, the approach and
evil of winter, announced by the ascension of the autumnal
constellation of the serpent of the Zodiac, and not the moral
fall of man, that is the key of the allegory, and of the fable in
Genesis borrowed from it.

     The Fall of Man in Genesis is said to have been produced by
eating a certain fruit, generally taken to be an apple. The fall
of the year is the season for the gathering and eating the new
apples of that year. The allegory, therefore, holds with respect
to the fruit, which it would not have done had it been an early
summer fruit. It holds also with respect to place. The tree is
said to have been placed in ihe midst of the garden. But why in
the midst of the garden more than in any other place? The
solution of the allegory gives the answer to this question, which
is, that the fall of the year, when apples and other autumnal
fruits are ripe, and when days and nights are of equal length, is
the mid-season between summer and winter.

     It holds also with respect to cloathing, and the temperature
of the air. It is said in Genesis (iii. 21), "Unto Adam and his
wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and cloathed them."
But why are coats of skins mentioned? This cannot be understood
as referring to anything of the nature of moral evil. The
solution of the allegory gives again the answer to this question,
which is, that the evil of winter, which follows the fall of the
year, fabulously called in Genesis the fall of man, makes warm
cloathing necessary.

     But of these things I shall speak fully when I come in
another part to treat of the ancient religion of the Persians,
and compare it with the modern religion of the New Testament.
[NOTE: See editorial note prefixed to these fragments. The views
of Paine as to the Persian origin of the story in Genesis are
those of many learned critics, among others Rosenmaller and Von
Bohlen; while Julius Millier insists that not sin but physical
suffering is connected with the Fall in the narrative. (Doctrine
of Sin, Edinb., p. 78.) For the Eastern and Oriental legends see
my Demonology and Devil-Lore, ii., pp. 68-104. -- Editor.] At
present, I shall confine myself to the comparative antiquity of
the books of Genesis and job, taking, at the same time, whatever
I may find in my way with respect to the fabulousness of the book
of Genesis; for if what is called the Fall of Man, in Genesis, be
fabulous or allegorical, that which is called the redemption in
the New Testament cannot be a fact. It is logically impossible,
and impossible also in the nature of things, that moral good can 
redeem 'physical evil.' I return to the bishop.

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     If Genesis be, as the bishop asserts, the oldest book in the
world, and, consequently, the oldest and first written book of
the bible, and if the extraordinary things related in it; such as
the creation of the world in six days, the tree of life, and of
good and evil, the story of Eve and the talking serpent, the fall
of man and his being turned out of Paradise, were facts, or even
believed by the Jews to be facts, they would be referred to as
fundamental matters, and that very frequently, in the books of
the bible that were written by various authors afterwards;
whereas, there is not a book, chapter, or verse of the bible,
from the time that Moses is said to have written the book of
Genesis, to the book of Malachi, the last book in the Bible,
including a space of more than a thousand years, in which there
is any mention made of these things, or any of them, nor are they
so much as alluded to. How will the bishop solve this difficulty,
which stands as a circumstantial contradiction to his assertion?

     There are but two ways of solving it:

     First, that the book of Genesis is not an ancient book, that
it has been written by some (now) unknown person, after the
return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, about a
thousand years after the time that Moses is said to have lived,
and put as a preface or introduction to the other books when they
were formed into a canon in the time of the second temple, and
therefore not having existed before that time, none of these
things mentioned in it could be referred to in those books.

     Secondly, that admitting Genesis to have been written by
Moses, the Jews did not believe the things stated in it to be
true, and therefore, as they could not refer to them as facts,
they would not refer to them as fables. The first of these
solutions goes against the antiquity of the book, and the second
against its authenticity; and the bishop may take which he
please.

     But be the author of Genesis whoever it may, there is
abundant evidence to show, as well from the early christian
writers as from the Jews themselves, that the things stated in
that book were not believed to be facts. Why they have been
believed as facts since that time, when better and fuller
knowledge existed on the case than is known now, can be accounted
for only on the imposition of priestcraft.

     Augustine, one of the early champions of the christian
church, acknowledges in his 'City of God' that the adventure of
Eve and the serpent, and the account of Paradise, were generally
considered as fiction or allegory. He regards them as allegory
himself, without attempting to give any explanation, but he
supposes that a better explanation might be found than those that
had been offered.

     Origen, another early champion of the church, says, "What
man of good sense can ever persuade himself that there were a
first, a second, and a third day, and that each of these days had
a night when there were yet neither sun, moon, nor stars? What
man can be stupid enough to believe that God, acting the part of 


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a gardener, had planted a garden in the east, that the tree of
life was a real tree, and that its fruit had the virtue of making
those who eat of it live forever?"

     Maimonides, one of the most learned and celebrated of the
Jewish Robbins, who lived in the eleventh century (about seven or
eight hundred years ago) and to whom the bishop refers in his
answer to me, is very explicit in his book entitled 'Moreh
Nebuchim,' upon the non-reality of the things stated in the
account of the Creation in the book of Genesis.

          We ought not (says he) to understand, nor take
     according to the letter, that which is written in the book
     of the creation, nor to have the same ideas of it which
     common men have; otherwise our ancient sages would not have
     recommended with so much care to conceal the sense of it,
     and not to raise the allegorical veil which envelopes the
     truths it contains. The book of Genesis, taken according to
     the letter, gives the most absurd and the most extravagant
     ideas of the divinity. Whoever shall find out the sense of
     it, ought to restrain himself from divulging it. It is a
     maxim which all our sages repeat, and above all with respect
     to the work of six days. It may happen that some one, with
     the aid he may borrow from others, may hit upon the meaning
     of it. In that case he ought to impose silence upon himself;
     or if he speak of it, he ought to speak obscurely, and in an
     enigmatical manner, as I do myself, leaving the rest to be
     found out by those who can understand me."

     This is, certainly, a very extraordinary declaration of
Mairnonides taking all the parts of it. First, be declares, that
the account of the Creation in the book of Genesis is not a fact,
and that to believe it to be a fact gives the most absurd and the
most extravagant ideas of the divinity. Secondly, that it is an
allegory. Thirdly, that the allegory has a concealed secret.
Fourthly, that whoever can find the secret ought not to tell it.

     It is this last part that is the most extraordinary. Why all
this care of the Jewish Robbins, to prevent what they call the
concealed meaning, or the secret, from being known, and if known
to prevent any of their people from telling it? It certainly must
be something which the Jewish nation are afraid or ashamed the
world should know. It must be something personal to them as a
people, and not a secret of a divine nature, which the more it is
known the more it increases the glory of the creator, and the
gratitude and bappiness of man. It is not God's secret but their
own they are keeping. I go to unveil the secret.

     The case is, the Jews have stolen their cosmogony, that is,
their account of the creation, from the cosmogony of the
Persians, contained in the books of Zoroaster, the Persian law-
giver, and brought it with them when they returned from captivity
by the benevolence of Cyrus, king of Persia. For it is evident,
from the silence of all the books of the bible upon the subject
of the creation, that the Jews had no cosmogony before that time.
If they had a cosmogony from the time of Moses, some of their
judges who governed during more than four hundred years, or of 


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their kings, the Davids and Solomons of their day, who governed
nearly five hundred years, or of their prophets and psalmists,
who lived in the mean time, would have mentioned it. It would,
either as fact or fable, have been the grandest of all subjects
for a psalm. It would have suited to a tittle the ranting
poetical genius of Isaiah, or served as a cordial to the gloomy
Jeremiah. But not one word, not even a whisper, does any of the
bible authors give upon the subject.

     To conceal the theft, the Robbins of the second temple have
published Genesis as a book of Moses, and have enjoined secresy
to all their people, who by travelling or otherwise might happen
to discover from whence the cosmogony was borrowed, not to tell
it. The evidence of circumstances is often unanswerable, and
there is no other than this which I have given that goes to the
whole of the case, and this does.

     Disgenes Laertius, an ancient and respectable author, whom
the bishop in his answer to me quotes on another occasion, has a
passage that corresponds with the solution here given. In
speaking of the religion of the Persians as promulgated by their
priests or magi, he says the Jewish Robbins were the successors
of their doctrine. Having thus spoken on the plagiarism, and on
the non-reality of the book of Genesis, I will give some
additional evidence that Moses is not the author of that book.

     Aben-Ezra, a celebrated Jewish author, who lived about seven
hundred years ago, and whom the bishop allows to have been a man
of great erudition, has made a great many observations, too
numerous to be repeated bere, to show that Moses was not, and
could not be, the author of the book of Genesis, nor of any of
the five books that bear his name.

     Spinoza, another learned Jew, who lived about a hundred and
thirty years ago, recites, in his treatise on the ceremonies of
the Jews, ancient and modern, the observations of Aben-Ezra, to
which he adds many others, to shew that Moses is not the author
of those books. He also says, and shews his reasons for saying
it, that the bible did not exist as a book till the time of the
Maccabees, which was more than a hundred years after the return
of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity.

     In the second part of the Age of Reason, I have, among other
things, referred to nine verses in Genesis xxxvi. beginning at
ver. 31, (These are the kings that reigned in Edom, before there
reigned any king over the children of Israel,) which it is
impossible could have been written by Moses, or in the time of
Moses, and which could not have been written till after the Jew
kings began to reign in Israel, which was not till several
hundred years after the time of Moses.

     The bishop allows this, and says "I think you say true." But
he then quibbles, and says, that "a small addition to a book does
not destroy either the genuineness or authenticity of the whole
book." This is priestcraft. These verses do not stand in the book
as an addition to it, but as making a part of the whole book, and
which it is impossible that Moses could write. The bishop would 


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reject the antiquity of any other book if it could be proved from
the words of the book itself that a part of it could not have
been written till several hundred years after the reputed author
of it was dead. He would call such a book a forgery. I am
authorised, therefore, to call the book of Genesis a forgery.

     Combining, then, all the foregoing circumstances together,
respecting the antiquity and authenticity of the book of Genesis,
a conclusion will naturally follow therefrom. Those circumstances
are --

     First, that certain parts of the book cannot possibly have
been written by Moses, and that the other parts carry no evidence
of having been written by him.

     Secondly, the universal silence of all the following books
of the bible, for about a thousand years, upon the extraordinary
things spoken of in Genesis, such as the creation of the world in
six days -- the garden of Eden -- the tree of knowledge -- the
tree of life -- the story of Eve and the Serpent -- the fall of
man and of his being turned out of this fine garden, together
with Noah's flood, and the tower of Babel.

     Thirdly, the silence of all the books of the bible upon even
the name of Moses, from the book of Joshua until the second book
of Kings, which was not written till after the captivity, for it
gives an account of the captivity, a period of about a thousand
years. Strange that a man who is proclaimed as the historian of
the creation, the privy-counsellor and confidant of the Almighty
-- the legislator of the Jewish nation and the founder of its
religion; strange, I say, that even the name of such a man should
not find a place in their books for a thousand years, if they
knew or believed anything about him or the books he is said to
have written.

     Fourthly, the opion of some of the most celebrated of the
Jewish commentators that Moses is not the author of the book of
Genesis, founded on the reasons given for that opinion.

     Fifthly, the opinion of the early christian writers, and of
the great champion of Jewish literature, Maimonides, that the
book of Genesis is not a book of facts.

     Sixthly, the silence imposed by all the Jewish Robbins, and
by Maimonides himself, upon the Jewish nation, not to speak of
anything they may happen to know or discover respecting the
cosmogony (or creation of the world) in the book of Genesis.

     From these circumstances the following conclusions offer:

     First, that the book of Genesis is not a book of facts.

     Secondly, that as no mention is made throughout the bible of
any of the extraordinary things related in [it], Genesis has not
been written till after the other books were written, and put as
a preface to the Bible. Every one knows that a preface to a book,
though it stands first, is the last written.


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     Thirdly, that the silence imposed by all the Jewish Rabbins
and by Maimonides upon the Jewish nation, to keep silence upon
every thing related in their cosmogony, evinces a secret they are
not willing should be known. The secret therefore explains itself
to be, that when the Jews were in captivity in Babylon and Persia
they became acquainted with the cosmogony of the Persians, as
registered in the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster, the Persian law-
giver, which, after their return from captivity, they
manufactured and modelled as their own, and ante-dated it by
giving to it the name of Moses. The case admits of no other
explanation.

     From all which it appears that the book of Genesis, instead
of being the oldest book in the world, as the bishop calls it,
has been the last written book of the bible, and that the
cosmogony it contains has been manufactured.

     OF THE NAMES IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS. Every thing in Genesis
serves as evidence or symptom that the book has been composed in
some late period of the Jewish nation. Even the names mentioned
in it serve to this purpose.

     Nothing is more common or more natural than to name the
children of succeeding generations after the names of those who
had been celebrated in some former generation. This holds good
with respect to all the people and all the histories we know of,
and it does not hold good with the bible. There must be some
cause for this.

     This book of Genesis tells us of a man whom it calls Adam,
and of his sons Abel and Seth; of Enoch, who lived 365 years (it
is exactly the number of days in a year,) and that then God took
him up. (It has the appearance of being taken from some allegory
of the Gentiles on the commencement and termination of the year,
by the progress of the sun through the twelve signs of the
Zodiac, on which the allegorical religion of the Gentiles was
founded.) It tells us of Methuselah who lived 969 years, and of a
long train of other names in the fifth chapter. It then passes on
to a man whom it calls Noah, and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet;
then to Lot, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and his sons, with which
the book of Genesis finishes.

     All these, according to the account given in that book, were
the most extraordinary and celebrated of men. They were moreover
heads of families. Adam was the father of the world. Enoch, for
his righteousness, was taken up to heaven. Methuselah lived to
almost a thousand years. He was the son of Enoch, the man of 365,
the number of days in a year. It has the appearance of being the
continuation of an allegory on the 365 days of the year, and its
abundant productions. Noah was selected from all the world to be
preserved when it was drowned, and became the second father of
the world. Abraham was the father of the faithful multitude.
Isaac and Jacob were the inheritors of his fame, and the last was
the father of the twelve tribes.





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     Now, if these very wonderful men and their names, and the
book that records them, had been known by the Jews before the 
Babylonian captivity, those names would have been as common among
the Jews before that period as they have been since. We now hear
of thousands of Abrahams, Isaacs, and Jacobs among the Jews, but
there were none of that name before the Babylonian captivity. The
Bible does not mention one, though from the time that Abrabam is
said to have lived to the time of the Babylonian captivity is
about 1400 years.

     How is it to be accounted for, that there bave been so many
thousands, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Jews of the names
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob since that period, and not one
before? It can be accounted for but one way, which is, that
before the Babylonian captivity the Jews had no such book as
Genesis, nor knew anything of the names and persons it mentions,
nor of the things it relates, and that the stories in it have
been manufactured since that time. From the Arabic name Ibrahim
(which is the manner the Turks write that name to this day) the
Jews have, most probably, manufactured their Abrabam.

     I will advance my observations a point further, and speak of
the names of Moses and Aaron, mentioned for the first time in the
book of Exodus. There are now, and have continued to be from the
time of the Babylonian captivity, or soon after it, thousands of
Jews of the names of Moses and Aaron, and we read not of any of
that name before that time. The Bible does not mention one. The
direct inference from this is, that the Jews knew of no such book
as Exodus before the Babylonian captivity. In fact, that it did
not exist before that time, and that it is only since the book
has been invented that the names of Moses and Aaron have been
common among the Jews.

     It is applicable to the purpose to observe, that the
picturesque work, called 'Mosaic-work,' spelled the same as you
would say the Mosaic account of the creation, is not derived from
the word Moses but from Muses, (the Muses,) because of the
variegated and picturesque pavement in the temples dedicated to
the Muses. This carries a strong implication that the name Moses
is drawn from the same source, and that he is not a real but an
allegorical person, as Maimonides describes what is called the
Mosaic account of the Creation to be.

     I will go a point still further. The Jews now know the book
of Genesis, and the names of all the persons mentioned in the
first ten chapters of that book, from Adam to Noah: yet we do not
hear (I speak for myself) of any Jew of the present day, of the
name of Adam, Abel, Seth, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Shem, Ham, or
Japhet, (names mentioned in the first ten chapters,) though these
were, according to the account in that book, the most
extraordinary of all the names that make up the catalogue of the
Jewish chronology. The names the Jews now adopt, are those that
are mentioned in Genesis after the tenth chapter, as Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, etc. How then does it happen that they do not adopt
the names found in the first ten chapters? Here is evidently a
line of division drawn between the first ten chapters of Genesis 



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and the remaining chapters, with respect to the adoption of
names, There must be some cause for this, and I go to offer a
solution of the problem.

     The reader will recollect the quotation I have already made
from the Jewish Rabbin, Maimonides, wherein he says, "We ought
not to understand nor to take according to the letter that which
is written in the book of the Creation. . . . It is a maxim (says
he) which all our sages repeat, above all with respect to the
work of six days." The qualifying expression above all, implies
there are other parts of the book, though not so important, that
ought not to be understood or taken according to the letter, and
as the Jews do not adopt the names mentioned in the first ten
chapters, it appears evident those chapters are included in the
injunction not to take them in a literal sense, or according to
the letter: From which it follows, that the persons or characters
mentioned in the first ten chapters, as Adam, Abel, Seth, Enoch,
Methuselah, and so on to Noah, are not real, but fictitious or
allegorical persons, and therefore the Jews do not adopt their
names into their families. If they affixed the same idea of
reality to them as they do to those that follow after the tenth
chapter, the names of Adam, Abel, Seth, etc., would be as common
among the Jews of the present day as are those of Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, Moses, and Aaron. In the superstition they have been in,
scarcely a Jew family would have been without an Enoch, as a
presage of his going to Heaven as ambassador for the whole
family. Every mother who wished that the days of her son might be
long in the land would call him Methuselah; and all the Jews that
might have to traverse the ocean would be named Noah, as a charm
against shipwreck and drowning.

     This is domestic evidence against the book of Genesis,
which, joined to the several kinds of evidence before recited,
show the book of Genesis not to be older than the Babylonian
captivity, and to be fictitious. I proceed to fix the character
and antiquity of the book of

     JOB. The book of Job has not the least appearance of being a
book of the Jews, and though printed among the books of the
bible, does not belong to it. There is no reference to it in any
Jewish law or ceremony. On the contrary, all the internal
evidence it contains shows it to be a book of the Gentiles,
either of Persia or Chaldea.

     The name of Job does not appear to be a Jewish name. There
is no Jew of that name in any of the books of the bible, neither
is there now that I ever heard of. The country where Job is said
or supposed to have lived, or rather where the scene of the drama
is laid, is called Uz, and there was no place of that name ever
belonging to the Jews. [The land of Uz is mentioned in Jeremiah
xxv. 20, and Lamentations iv. 21; in both cases the indications
are that it was a region of the Gentiles. Biblical geographers
generally locate Uz in Arabia Petrea. -- Editor.] If Uz is the
same as UT, it was in Chaldea, the country of the Gentiles.

     The Jews can give no account how they came by this book, nor
who was the author, nor the time when it was written. Origen, in
his work against Celsus, (in the first ages of the Christian 

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church,) says that the book of Job is older than Moses. Aben-
Ezra, the Jewish commentator, whom (as I have before said) the
bishop allows to have been a man of great erudition, and who
certainly understood his own language, says that the book of Job
has been translated from another language into Hebrew. Spinoza,
another Jewish commentator of great learning, confirms the
opinion of Aben-Ezra, and says moreover, "Fe crois que Fob etait
Gentil"; [NOTE by PAINE: Spinoza on the Ceremonies of the Jews,
p. 296, published in French at Amsterdam 1678. -- Author.] I
believe that Job was a Gentile.'

     The bishop, (in his answer to me,) says, that "the structure
of the whole book of Job, in whatever light of history or drama
it be considered, is founded on the belief that prevailed with
the Persians and Chaldeans, and other Gentile nations, of a good
and an evil spirit." In speaking of the good and evil spirit of
the Persians, the bishop writes them 'Arimanius' and 'Oromasdes.'
I will not dispute about the orthography, because I know that
translated names are differently spelled in different language.
But he has nevertheless made a capital error. He has put the
Devil first; for Arimanius, or, as it is more generally written,
Ahriman, is the evil spirit, and Oromasdes or Ormusd the good
spirit. He has made the same mistake in the same paragraph, in
speaking of the good and evil spirit of the ancient Egyptians,
Osiris and Typho; he puts Typho before Osiris. The error is just
the same as if the bishop in writing about the christian
religion, or in preaching a sermon, were to say the Devil and
God. A priest ought to know his own trade better. We agree,
however, about the structure of the book of Job, that it is
Gentile. I have said in the second part of the Age of Reason, and
given my reasons for it, that the Drama of it is not Hebrew.

     From the Testimonies I have cited, that of Origen, who,
about fourteen hundred years ago said that the book of Job was
more ancient than Moses, that of Aben-Ezra who, in his commentary
on Job, says it has been translated from another language (and
consequently from a Gentile language) into Hebrew; that of
Spinoza, who not only says the same thing, but that the author of
it was a Gentile; and that of the bishop, who says that the
structure of the whole book is Gentile; it follows, in the first
place, that the book of Job is not a book of the Jews originally.

     Then, in order to determine to what people or nation any
book of religion belongs, we must compare it with the leading
dogmas and precepts of that people or nation; and therefore, upon
the bishop's own construction, the book of Job belongs either to
the ancient Persians, the Chaldeans, or the Egyptians; because
the structure of it is consistent with the dogma they held, that
of a good and an evil spirit, called in Job God and Satan,
existing as distinct and separate beings, and it is not
consistent with any dogma of the Jews.

     The belief of a good and an evil spirit, existing as
distinct and separate beings, is not a dogma to be found in any
of the books of the bible. It is not till we come to the New
Testament that we hear of any such dogma. There the person called
the Son of God, bolds conversation with Satan on a mountain, as 


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familiarly as is represented in the drama of Job. Consequently
the bishop cannot say, in this respect, that the New-Testament is
founded upon the Old. According to the Old, the God of the Jews
was the God of every thing. All good and evil came from him.
According to Exodus it was God, and not the Devil, that hardened
Pharoah's heart. According to the book of Samuel, it was an evil
spirit from 'God' that troubled Saul. And Ezekiel makes God to
say, in speaking of the Jews, "I gave them the statutes that were
not good, and judgments by which they should not live." The bible
describes the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in such a
contradictory manner, and under such a twofold character, there
would be no knowing when he was in earnest and when in irony;
when to believe, and when not.

     As to the precepts, principles, and maxims in the book of
Job, they shew that the people abusively called the heathen, in
the books of the Jews, had the most sublime ideas of the creator,
and the most exalted devotional morality. It was the Jews who
dishonoured God. It was the Gentiles who glorified him. As to the
fabulous personifications introduced by the Greek and Latin
poets, it was a corruption of the ancient religion of the
Gentiles, which consisted in the adoration of a first cause of
the works of the creation, in which the sun was the great visible
agent. It appears to have been a religion of gratitude and
adoration, and not of prayer and discontented solicitation. In
Job we find adoration and submission, but not prayer. Even the
Ten Commandments enjoin not prayer. Prayer has been added to
devotion by the church of Rome, as the instrument of fees and
perquisites. All prayers by the priests of the christian Church,
whether public or private, must be paid for. It may be right,
individually, to pray for virtues, or mental instruction, but not
for things. [NOTE: On the other hand some devout reasoners, among
them Cicero, have maintained that men may pray for physical
benefits which they cannot obtain by work, but not for virtue
which depends on the man himself, and is within the reach of
everyone. -- Editor. (Conway)] It is an attempt to dictate to the
Almighty in the government of the world. -- But to return to the
book of Job.

     As the book of Job decides itself to be a book of the
Gentiles, the next thing is to find out to what particular nation
it belongs, and lastly, what is its antiquity.

     As a composition, it is sublime, beautiful, and scientific:
full of sentiment, and abounding in grand metaphorical
description. As a Drama it is regular. The Dramatis Personas, the
persons performing the several parts, are regularly introduced,
and speak without interruption or confusion. The scene, as I have
before said, is laid in the country of the Gentiles, and the
unities, though not always necessary in a drama, are observed
here as strictly as the subject would admit.

     In the last act, where the Almighty is introduced as
speaking from the whirlwind, to decide the controversy between
Job and his friends, it is an idea as grand as poctical
imagination can conceive. What follows of Job's future prosperity
does not belong to it as a drama. It is an epilogue of the 


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writer, as the first verses of the first chapter, which gave an
account of Job, his country and his riches, are the prologue.

     The book carries the appearance of being the work of some of
the Persian Magi, not only because the structure of it
corresponds to the dogma of the religion of those people, as
founded by Zoroaster, but from the astronomical references in it
to the constellations of the Zodiac and other objects in the
heavens, of which the sun, in their religion called Mithra, was
the chief. Job, in describing the power of God, (ix. 7-9,) says,
"Who commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, and sealeth up the
stars. Who alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the
waves of the sea. Who maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and
the chambers of the south." All this astronomical allusion is
consistent with the religion of the Persians.

     Establishing then the book of Job as the work of some of the
Persian or Eastern Magi, the case naturally follows that when the
Jews returned from captivity, by the permission of Cyrus king of
Persia, they brought this book with them, had it translated into
Hebrew, and put into their scriptural canons, which were not
formed till after their return. This will account for the name of
Job being mentioned in Ezekiel, (xiv. i4,) who was one of the
captives, and also for its not being mentioned in any book said
or supposed to have been written before the captivity.

     Among the astronomical allusions in the book, there is one
which serves to fix its antiquity. It is that where God is made
to say to Job, in the style of reprimand, " Canst thou bind the
sweet influences of Pleiades." (xxxviii. 31.) As the explanation
of this depends upon astronomical calculation, I will, for the
sake of those who would not otherwise understand it, endeavour to
explain it as clearly as the subject will admit.

     The Pleiades are a cluster of pale, milky stars, about the
size of a man's hand, in the constellation Taurus, or in English,
the Bull. It is one of the constellations of the Zodiac, of which
there are twelve, answering to the twelve months of the year. The
Pleiades are visible in the winter nights, but not in the summer
nights, being then below the horizon.

     The Zodiac is an imaginary belt or circle in the heavens,
eighteen degrees broad, in which the sun apparently makes his
annual course, and in which all the planets move. When the sun
appears to our view to be between us and the group of stars
forming such or such a constellation, he is said to be in that
constellation. Consequently the constellations he appears to be
in, in the summer, are directly opposite to those he appeared in
in the winter, and the same with respect to spring and autumn.

     The Zodiac, besides being divided into twelve
constellations, is also, like every other circle, great or small,
divided into 360 equal parts, called degrees; consequently each
constellation contains 30 degrees. The constellations of the
Zodiac are generally called signs, to distinguish them from the
constellations that are placed out of the Zodiac, and this is the
name I shall now use.


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     The procession of the Equinoxes is the part most difficult
to explain, and it is on this that the explanation chiefly
depends.

     The Equinoxes correspond to the two seasons of the year when
the sun makes equal day and night. [NOTE: The fragments published
by Mrs. Palmer in the Theothilanthropist, 1810, end here, the
editor adding: "We are sorry to say that it is somewhat doubtful
whether the entire work will ever meet the public eye." The
fragments that follow are those sold with many erasures by Madame
Bonneville to an American editor, who recovered as much as he
could, and printed them in 1824. -- Editor.]

     SABBATH, OR SUNDAY. -- The seventh day, or more properly
speaking the period of seven days, was originally a numerical
division of time and nothing more; and had the bishop been
acquainted with the history of astronomy, he would have known
this. The annual revolution of the earth makes what we call a
year. The year is artificially divided into months, the months
into weeks of seven days, the days, the days into hours, etc. The
period of seven days, like any other of the artificial divisions
of the year, is only a fractional part thereof, contrived for the
convenience of countries. It is ignorance, imposition, and
priest-craft, that have called it otherwise. They might as well
talk of the Lord's month, of the Lord's week, of the Lord's hour,
as of the Lord's day. All time is his, and no part of it is more
holy or more sacred than another. It is, however, necessary to
the trade of a priest, that he should preach up a distinction of
days.

     Before the science of astronomy was studied and carried to
the degree of eminence to which it was by the Egyptians and
Chaldeans, the people of those times had no other helps than what
common observation of the very visible changes of the sun and
moon afforded, to enable them to keep an account of the progress
of time. As far as history establishes the point, the Egyptians
were the first people who divided the year into twelve months.
Herodotus, who lived above two thousand two hundred years ago,
and is the most ancient historian whose works have reached our
time, says, 'they did this by the knowledge they had of the
stars.' As to the Jews, there is not one single improvement in
any science or in any scientific art that they ever produced.
They were the most ignorant of all the illiterate world. If the
word of the Lord had come to them, as they pretend, and as the
bishop professes to believe, and that they were to be the
harbingers of it to the rest of the world, the Lord would have
taught them the use of letters, and the art of printing; for
without the means of communicating the word, it could not be
communicated; whereas letters were the invention of the Gentile
world, and printing of the modern world. But to return to my
subject --

     Before the helps which the science of astronomy afforded,
the people, as before said, had no other whereby to keep an
account of the progress of time, than what the common and very
visible changes of the sun and moon afforded. They saw that a
great number of days made a year, but the account of them was too


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tedious and too difficult to be kept numerically, from one to
three hundred and sixty-five; neither did they know the true time
of a solar year. It therefore became necessary, for the purpose
of marking the progress of days, to put them into small parcels,
such as are now called weeks; and which consisted as they now do
of seven days. By this means the memory was assisted as it is
with us at this day; for we do not say of any thing that is past,
that it was fifty, sixty, or seventy days ago, but that it was so
many weeks, or, if longer time, so many months. It is impossible
to keep an account of time without helps of this kind.

     Julian Scaliger, the inventer of the Julian period of 7,980
years, produced by multiplying the cycle of the moon, the cycle
of the sun, and the years of an indiction, 19, 28, 15, into each
other, says that the custom of reckoning by periods of seven days
was used by the Assyrians, the Epyptians, the Hebrews, the people
of India, the Arabs, and by all the nations of the east. In
addition to what Scaliger says, it is evident that in Britain, in
Germany, and the north of Europe, they reckoned by periods of
seven days long before the book called the bible was known in
those parts; and, consequently, that they did not take that mode
of reckoning from any thing written in that book. That they
reckoned by periods of seven days is evident from their having
seven; names and no more for the several days; and which have not
the most distant relation to any thing in the book of Genesis, or
to that which is called the fourth commandment.

     Those names are still retained in England, with no other
alteration than what has been produced by moulding the Saxon and
Danish languages into modern English:

     1. Sun-day from 'Sunne' the sun, and dag, day, Saxon.
'Sondag,' Danish. The day dedicated to the sun.

     2. Monday, that is, moonday, from 'Mona,' the moon Saxon.
Moano, Danish. Day dedicated to the moon.

     3. Tuesday, that is Tuisco's-day. The day dedicated to the
Idol 'Tuisco.'

     4. Wednes-day, that is Woden's-day. The day dedicated to
Woden, the Mars of the Germans.

     5. Thursday, that is Thor's-day, dedicated to the Idol
'Thor.'

     6. Friday, that is Friga's-day. The day dedicated to
'Friga,' the Venus of the Saxons.

     7. Saturday from 'Seaten' (Saturn) an Idol of the Saxons;
one of the emblems representing time, which continually
terminates and renews itself; the last day of the period of seven
days.

     When we see a certain mode of reckoning general among
nations totally unconnected, differing from each other in
religion and in government, and some of them unknown to each 


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other, we may be certain that it arises from some natural and
common cause, prevailing alike over all, and which strikes every
one in the same manner. Thus all nations have reckoned
arithmetically by tens, because the people of all nations have
ten fingers. If they had more or less than ten, the mode of
arithmetical reckoning would have followed that number, for the
fingers are a natural numeration table to all the world. I now
come to shew why the period of seven days is so generally
adopted.

     Though the sun is the great luminary of the world, and the
animating cause of all the fruits of the earth, the moon by
renewing herself more than twelve times oftener than the sun,
which does it but once a year, served the rustic world as a
natural Almanac, as the fingers served it for a numeration table.
All the world could see the moon, her changes, and her monthly
revolutions; and their mode of reckoning time was accommodated,
as nearly as could possibly be done in round numbers, to agree
with the changes of that planet, their natural Almanac. The moon
performs her natural revolution round the earth in twenty-nine
days and a half. She goes from a new moon to a half moon, to a
full moon, to a half moon gibbous or convex, and then to a new
moon again. Each of these changes is performed in seven days and
nine hours; but seven days is the nearest division in round
numbers that could be taken; and this was sufficient to suggest
the universal custom of reckoning by periods of seven days, since
it is impossible to reckon time without some stated period.

     How the odd hours could be disposed of without interfering
with the regular periods of seven days, in case the ancients
recommenced a new Septenary period with every new moon, required
no more difficulty than it did to regolate the Egyptian Calendar
afterwards of twelve months of thirty days each, or the odd hour
in the Julian Calendar, or the odd days and hours in the French
Calendar. In all cases it is done by the addition of
complementary days; and it can be done in no otherwise.

     The bishop knows that as the solar year does not end at the
termination of what we call a day, but runs some bours into the
next day, as the quarter of the Moon runs some hours beyond seven
days; that it is impossible to give the year any fixed number of
days that will not in course of years become wrong, and make a
complementary time necessary to keep the nominal year parallel
with the solar year. The same must have been the case with those
who regulated time formerly by lunar revolutions. They would have
to add three days to every second moon, or in that proportion, in
order to make the new moon and the new week commence together,
like the nominal year and the solar year.

     Diodorus of Sicily, who, as before said, lived before Christ
was born, in giving an account of times much anterior to his own,
speaks of years of three months, of four months, and of six
months. These could be of no other than years composed of lunar
revolutions, and therefore, to bring the several periods of seven
days to agree with such years, there must have been complementary
days.



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     The moon was the first Almanac the world knew; and the only
one which the face of the heavens afforded to common spectators.
Her changes and her revolutions have entered into all the
Calendars that have been known in the known world.

     The division of the year into twelve months, which, as
before shewn, was first done by the Egyptians, though arranged
with astronomical knowledge, had reference to the twelve moons,
or more properly speaking to the twelve lunar revolutions, that
appear in the space of a solar year; as the period of seven days
had reference to one revolution of the moon. The feasts of the
Jews were, and those of the Christian church still are, regulated
by the moon. The Jews observed the feasts of the new moon and
full moon, and therefore the period of seven days was necessary
to them.

     All the feasts of the Christian church are regulated by the
moon. That called Easter governs all the rest, and the moon
governs Easter. It is always the first Sunday after the first
full moon that happens after the vernal Equinox, or 21st of
March.

     In proportion as the science of astronomy was studied and
improved by the Egyptians and Chaldeans, and the solar year
regulated by astronomical observations, the custom of reckoning
by lunar revolutions became of less use, and in time
discontinued. But such is the harmony of all parts of the
machinery of the universe, that a calculation made from the
motion of one part will correspond with the motion of some other.

     The period of seven days, deduced from the revolution of the
moon round the earth, corresponded nearer than any other period
of days would do to the revolution of the earth round the sun.
Fifty-two periods of seven days make 364, which is within one day
and some odd hours of a solar year; and there is no other
periodical number that will do the same, till we come to the
number thirteen, which is too great for common use, and the
numbers before seven are too small. The custom therefore of
reckoning by periods of seven days, as best suited to the
revolution of the moon, applied with equal convenience to the
solar year, and became united with it. But the decimal division
of time, as regulated by the French Calendar, is superior to
every other method. [NOTE: This division of time was adopted by
the National Convention, in 1793. The year was divided into 12
months of 30 days each, with 5 extra days (six every fourth year)
which were festivals. The months were divided by decades, and the
days into 10 hours of 100 minutes each. -- Editor.]

     There is no part of the Bible that is supposed to have been
written by persons who lived before the time of Josiah, (which
was a thousand years after the time of Moses,) that mentions any
thing about the sabbath as a day consecrated to that which is
called the fourth commandment, or that the Jews kept any such
day. Had any such day been kept, during the thousand years of
which I am speaking, it certainly would have been mentioned
frequently; and that it should never be mentioned is strong
presumptive and circumstantial evidence that no such day was 


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kept. But mention is often made of the feasts of the new-moon,
and of the full-moon; for the Jews, as before shown, worshipped
the moon; and the word Sabbath was applied by the Jews to the
feasts of that planet, and to those of their other deities. It is
said in Hosea ii. II, in speaking of the Jewish nation, "And I
will cause all her mirth to cease, her feast-days, her new-moons,
and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts." Nobody will be so
foolish as to contend that the sabbaths here spoken of are Mosaic
Sabbaths. The construction of the verse implies they are lunar
sabbaths, or sabbaths of the moon. It ought also to be observed
that Hosea lived in the time of Ahaz and Hezekiah, about seventy
years before the time of Josiah, when the law called the law of
Moses is said to have been found; and, consequently, the sabbaths
that Hosea speaks of are sabbaths of the Idolatry.

     When those priestly reformers, (impostors I should call
them,) Hilkiah, Ezra, and Nehemiah, began to produce books under
the name of the books of Moses, they found the word sabbath in
use: and as to the period of seven days, it is, like numbering
arithmetically by tens, from time immemortal. But having found
them in use, they continued to make them serve to the support of
their new imposition. They trumped up a story of the creation
being made in six days, and of the Creator resting on the
seventh, to suit with the lunar and chronological period of seven
days; and they manufactured a commandment to agree with both.
Impostors always work in this manner. They put fables for
originals, and causes for effects.

     There is scarcely any part of science, or anything in
nature, which those impostors and blasphemers of science, called
priests, as well Christians as Jews, have not, at some time or
other, perverted, or sought to pervert to the purpose of
superstition and falsehood. Every thing wonderful in appearance,
has been ascribed to angels, to devils, or to saints. Every thing
ancient has some legendary tale annexed to it. The common
operations of nature have not escaped their practice of
corrupting every thing.

     FUTURE STATE. The idea of a future state was an universal
idea to all nations except the Jews. At the time, and long
before, Jesus Christ and the men callcd his disciples were born,
it had been sublimely treated of by Cicero (in his book on Old
Age,) by Plato, Socrates, Xenophon, and other of the ancient
theologists, whom the abusive Christian Church calls heathen.
Xenophon represents the elder Cyrus speaking after this manner:

          Think not, my dearest children, that when I depart from
     you, I shall be no more: but remember that my soul, even
     while I lived among you, was invisible to you; yet by my
     actions you were sensible it existed in this body. Believe
     it therefore existing still, though it be still unseen. How
     quickly would the honours of illustrious men perish after
     death, if their souls performed nothing to preserve their
     fame? For my own part, I could never think that the soul
     while in a mortal body lives, but when departed from it
     dies; or that its consciousness is lost when it is
     discharged out of an unconscious habitation. But when it is
     freed from all corporeal alliance, it is then that it truly
     exists."
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     Since then the idea of a future existence was universal, it
may be asked, what new doctrine does the New Testament contain? I
answer, that of corrupting the theory of the ancient theologists,
by annexing to it the heavy and gloomy doctrine of the
resurrection of the body.

     As to the resurrection of the body, whether the same body or
another, it is a miserable conceit, fit only to be preached to
man as an animal. It is not worthy to be called doctrine. Such an
idea never entered the brain of any visionary but those of the
Christian church; yet it is in this that the novelty of the New
Testament consists! All the other matters serve but as props to
this, and those props are most wretchedly put together.

     MIRACLES. The Christian church is full of miracles. In one
of the churches of Brabant they shew a number of cannon balls
which, they say, the Virgin Mary, in some former war, caught in
her muslin apron as they came roaring out of the cannon's mouth,
to prevent their hurting the saints of her favourite army. She
does no such feats now-a-days. Perhaps the reason is, that the
infidels have taken away her muslin apron. They show also,
between Montmartre and the village of St. Denis, several places
where they say St. Denis stoped with his head in his hands after
it had been cut off at Montmartre. The Protestants will call
those things lies; and where is the proof that all the other
things called miracles are not as great lies as those?

     CABALISM. Christ, say those Cabalists, came in the fulness
of time. And pray what is the fulness of time? The words admit of
no idea. They are perfectly Cabalistical. Time is a word invented
to describe to our conception a greater or less portion of
eternity. It may be a minute, a portion of eternity measured by
the vibration of a pendulum of a certain length; it may be a day,
a year, a hundred, or a thousand years, or any other quantity.
Those portions are only greater or less comparatively.

     The word `fulness` applies not to any of them. The idea of
fulness of time cannot be conceived. A woman with child and ready
for delivery, as Mary was when Christ was born, may be said to
have gone her full time; but it is the woman that is full, not
time.

     It may also be said figuratively, in certain cases, that the
times are full of events; but time itself is incapable of being
full of itself. Ye hypocrites! learn to speak intelligible
language.

     It happened to be a time of peace when they say Christ was
born; and what then? There had been many such intervals; and have
been many such since. Time was no fuller in any of them than in
the other. If he were he would be fuller now than he ever was
before. If he was full then he must be bursting now. But peace or
war have relation to circumstances, and not to time; and those
Cabalists would be at as much loss to make out any meaning to
fulness of circumstances, as to fulness of time. And if they
could, it would be fatal; for fulness of circumstances would mean
when there are no more circumstances to happen; and fulness of 
time when there is no more time to follow.

                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               19

                ANSWER TO THE BISHOP OF LLANDAFF.

     Christ, therefore, like every other person, was neither in
the fulness of one nor the other.

     But though we cannot conceive the idea of fulness of time,
because we cannot have conception of a time when there shall be
no time; nor of fulness of circumstance, because we cannot
conceive a state of existence to be without circumstances; we can
often see, after a thing is past, if any circumstance necessary
to give the utmost activity and success to that thing was wanting
at the time that thing took place. If such a circumstance was
wanting, we may be certain that the thing which took place was
not a thing of God's ordaining; whose work is always perfect, and
his means perfect means. They tell us that Christ was the Son of
God: in that case, he would have known every thing; and he came
upon earth to make known the will of God to man throughout the
whole earth. If this had been true, Christ would have known and
would have been furnished with all the possible means of doing
it; and would have instructed mankind, or at least his apostles,
in the use of such of the means as they could use themselves to
facilitate the accomplishment of the mission; consequently he
would have instructed them in the art of printing, for the press
is the tongue of the world, and without which, his or their
preaching was less than a whistle compared to thunder. Since then
he did not do this, he had not the means necessary to the
mission; and consequently had not the mission.

     They tell us in the book of Acts (ii.), a very stupid story
of the Apostles' having the gift of tongues; and 'cloven tongues
of fire' descended and sat upon each of them. Perhaps it was this
story of cloven tongues that gave rise to the notion of slitting
jackdaws' tongues to make them talk. Be that however as it may,
the gift of tongues, even if it were true, would be but of little
use without the art of printing. I can sit in my chamber, as I do
while writing this, and by the aid of printing can send the
thoughts I am writing through the greatest part of Europe, to the
East Indies, and over all North America, in a few months. Jesus
Christ and his apostles could not do this. They had not the
means, and the want of means detects the pretended mission.

     There are three modes of communication. Speaking, writing,
and printing. The first is exceedingly limited. A man's voice can
be heard but a few yards of distance; and his person can be but
in one place. Writing is much more extensive; but the thing
written cannot be multiplied but at great expense, and the
multiplication will be slow and incorrect. Were there no other
means of circulating what priests call the word of God (the Old
and New Testament) than by writing copies, those copies could not
be purchased at less than forty pounds sterling each;
consequently, but few people could purchase them, while the
writers could scarcely obtain a livelihood by it. But the art of
printing changes all the cases, and opens a scene as vast as the
world. It gives to man a sort of divine attribute. It gives to
him mental omnipresence. He can be every where and at the same
instant; for wherever he is read he is mentally there.





                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               20

                ANSWER TO THE BISHOP OF LLANDAFF.

     The case applies not only against the pretended mission of
Christ and his Apostles, but against every thing that priests 
call the Word of God, and against all those who pretend to
deliver it; for had God ever delivered any verbal word, he would
have taught the means of communicating it. The one without the
other is inconsistent with the wisdom we conceive of the Creator.

     Genesis iii. 21 tells us that 'God made coats of skin and
clothed Adam and Eve.' It was infinitely more important that man
should be taught the art of printing, than that Adam should be
taught to make a pair of leather breeches, or his wife a
petticoat.

     There is another matter, equally striking and important,
that connects itself with these observations against this
pretended word of God, this manufactured book called 'Revealed
Religion.' We know that whatever is of God's doing is unalterable
by man beyond the laws which the Creator has ordained. We cannot
make a tree grow with the root in the air and the fruit in the
ground; we cannot make iron into gold nor gold into iron; we
cannot make rays of light shine forth rays of darkness, nor
darkness shine forth light. If there were such a thing, as a Word
of God, it would possess the same properties which all his other
works do. It would resist destructive alteration. But we see that
the book which they call the Word of God has not this property.
That book says, (Genesis i. 27), "So God created man in his own
image;" but the printer can make it say, So man created God in
his own image. The words are passive to every transposition of
them, or can be annihilated and others put in their places. This
is not the case with anything that is of God's doing; and,
therefore, this book called the Word of God, tried by the same
universal rule which every other of God's works within our reach
can be tried by, proves itself to be a forgery.

     The bishop says, that "miracles are proper proofs of a
divine mission." Admitted. But we know that men, and especially
priests, can tell lies and call them miracles., It is therefore
necessary that the thing called a miracle be proved to be true,
and also to be miraculous, before it can be admitted as proof of
the thing called revelation. The Bishop must be a bad logician
not to know that one doubtful thing cannot be admitted as proof
that another doubtful thing is true. It would be like attempting
to prove a liar not to be a liar, by the evidence of another who
is as great a liar as himself.

     Though Jesus Christ, by being ignorant of the art of
printing, shows he had not the means necessary to a divine
mission, and consequently had no such mission; it does not follow
that if he had known that art the divinity of what they call his
mission would be proved thereby, any more than it proved the
divinity of the man who invented printing. Something therefore
beyond printing, even if he had known it, was necessary as a
miracle, to have proved that what he delivered was the word of
God; and this was that the book in which that word should be
contained, which is now called the Old and New Testament, should
possess the miraculous property, distinct from all human books,
of resisting alteration. This would be not only a miracle, but an


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               21

                ANSWER TO THE BISHOP OF LLANDAFF.

ever existing and universal miracle; whereas, those which they
tell us of, even if they had been true, were momentary and local;
they would leave no trace behind, after the lapse of a few years,
of having ever existed; but this would prove, in all ages and in
all places, the book to be divine and not human, as effectually,
and as conveniently, as aquafortis proves gold to be gold by not
being capable of acting upon it, and detects all other metals and
all counterfeit composition, by dissolving them. Since then the
only miracle capable of every proof is wanting, and which every
thing that is of a divine origin possesses, all the tales of
miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are
fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe.

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    Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.

                          ****     ****













   The Bank of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful,
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the
Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and
religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
that America can again become what its Founders intended --

                 The Free Market-Place of Ideas.

   The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old,
hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts
and information for today. If you have such books please contact
us, we need to give them back to America.

                          ****     ****





                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               22
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