one house shall it be eaten thou shalt not carry forth aught of the flesh thereof abroad out of the house; Neither shalt thou break a bone thereof."

"We here see that the case as it stands in Exodus, is a ceremony and not a prophecy; and totally unconnected with Jesus's bones or any part of him.

"John having thus filled up the measure of apostolic fable, concludes his book with something that beats all fable; for he says at the last verse, " and there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written."

"This is what in vulgar life is called a Thumper, that is, not only a lie, but a lie beyond the line of possibility; besides which, it is an absurdity, for if they should be written in the world, the world could contain them.-Here ends the examination of the passages called prophecies.

"I have now, reader, gone through and examined all the passages which the four books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, quote from the Old Testament, and call them prophecies of Jesus Christ. When I first set down to this examination, I expect to find cause for some censure, but little did I expect to find them so utterly destitute of truth, and of all pretensions to it, as I have shewn them to be.

"The practice which the writers of those books employ is not more false than it is absurd. They state some trifling case of the person they call Jesus Christ, and then cut out a sentence from some passage of the Old Testament and call it a prophecy of that case. But when the words thus cut out are restored to the place they are taken from, and read with the words before and after them, they give the lie to the New Testament. A short instance or two of this, will suffice for the whole.

"They make Joseph to dream of an angel who informs him that Herod is dead, and tells him to come with the child out of Egypt. They then cut out a sentence from the book of Hosea, Out of Egypt have I called my Son, and apply it as a prophecy in that case,

"The words, " And called my son out of Egypt," are in the Bible. But what of that? They are only part of a passage, and not a whole passage, and stand immediately connected with other words which shew they refer to the children of Israel coming out of Egypt in the time of Pharach, and to the idolatry they committed. afterwards.

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Again they tell us that when the soldiers came to break the legs of the crucified persons, they found Jesus was already dead and

therefore did not break his. They then, with some alteration of the original, cut out a sentence from Exodus, a bone of him shall not be broken, and apply it as a prophecy of that case.

"The words, "Neither shall ye break a bone thereof." (for they have altered the text) are in the Bible. But what of that? They are, as in the former case only part of a passage, and not a whole passage, and when read with the words they are immediately joined to shew it is the bones of a he-lamb, or a he-goat of which the passage speaks.

These repeated forgeries and falsifications create a well-founded suspicion, that all the cases spoken of concerning the person called Jesus Christ are made cases, on purpose to lug in, and that very clumsily, some broken sentences from the Old Testament, and apply them as prophecies of those cases; and that so far from his being the Son of God, he did not exist even as a man-that he is merely an imaginary or allegorical character, as Apollo, Hercules, Jupiter, and all the deities of antiquity were. There is no history written at the time Jesus Christ is said to have lived, that speaks of the existence of such a person even as a man.

"Did we find in any other book, pretending to give a system of religion, the falsehoods, falsifications, contradictions, and absurdities, which are to be met with in almost every page of the Old and New Testament, all the priests of the present day, who supposed themselves capable, would triumphantly shew their skill in criticism, and cry it down as a most glaring imposition. But since the books in question belong to their own trade and profession, they, or at least many of them, seek to stifle every inquiry into them, and abuse those who have the honesty and the courage to do it.

"When a book, as is the case with the Old and New Testament, is ushered into the world under the title of being the WORD OF God, it ought to be examined with the utmost strictness, in order to know if it has a well-founded claim to that title, or not, and whether we are, or are not, imposed upon; for as no poison is so dangerous as that which poisons the physic, so no falsehood is so fatal as that which is made an article of faith.

“This examination becomes more necessary, because when the New Testament was written, I might say invented, the art of printing was not known, and there were no other copies of the Old Testament than written copies. A written copy of that book would cost about as much as six hundred common printed Bibles now cost. Consequently, the book was in the hands but of very few persons, and those chiefly of the church. This gave an opportunity to the writers of the New Testament to make quotations from the Old Testament as they pleased, and call them prophecies with very little danger of being detected. Besides which, the terrors and inquisitorial fury of the church, like what they tell us of the flaming sword that turned every way, stood sentry over the New Testament; and time,

which brings every thing else to light, has served to thicken the darkness that guards it from detection.

"Were the New Testament now to appear for the first time, every priest of the present day, would examine it line by line, and compare the detached sentences it calls prophecies, with the whole passages in the Old Testament, from whence they are taken. Why then do they not make the same examination, at this time as they would make, had the New Testament never appeared before? If it be proper and right to make it in one case, it is equally proper and right to do it in the other case. Length of time can make no difference in the right to do it at any time. But instead of doing this, they go on as their predecessors went on before them, to tell the people there are prophecies of Jesus Christ, when the truth is there

are none.

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They tell us that Jesus rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. It is very easy to say so; a great lie is as easily told as a little one. But if he had done so, those would have been the only circumstances respecting him, that would have differed from the common lot of man; and consequently, the only case that would apply exclusively to him, as prophecy would be some passage in the Old Testament that foretold such things of him. But there is not a passage in the Old Testament that speaks of a person who after being crucified, dead, and buried, should rise from the dead and ascend into heaven. Our prophecy-mongers supply the silence, the Old Testament guards upon such things, by telling us of passages as they call prophecies, and that falsely so, about Joseph's dreams, old clothes, broken bones, and such like trifling stuff.

"In writing upon this, as upon every other subject, I speak a language full and intelligible. I deal not in hints and intimations. I have several reasons for this: First, that I may be clearly understood. Secondly, that it may be seen I am in earnest; and Thirdly, because it is an affront to truth to treat falsehood with complai

sance.

"I will close this treatise with a subject I have already touched upon, in the first part of the Age of Reason.

"The world has been amused with the term, revealed religion, and the generality of priests apply this term to the books called the Old and New Testament. The Mahometans apply the same term to the Koran. There is no man that believes in revealed religion stronger than I do; but it is not the reveries of the Old and New Testament, nor of the Koran, that I dignify with that sacred title, That which is revelation to me exists in something which no human mind can invent; no human hand can counterfeit or alter.

"The word of God is the Creation we behold; and this word of God revealeth to man all that is necessary for man to know of his Creator.

"Do we want to contemplate his power? we see it in the immensity of his creation.

"Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? we see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is go

verned.

"Do we want to contemplate his munificence? we see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth.

"Do we want to contemplate his mercy? we see it in his not withholding that abundance, even from the unthankful.

"Do we want to contemplate his will so far as it respects man? The goodness he shews to all is a lesson for our conduct to each other.

"In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search, not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, or any inpostor invent; but the scripture called the Creation,

"When, in the first part of the Age of Reason, I called the creation the true revelation of God to man, I did not know that any other person had expressed the same idea. But I lately met with the writings of Doctor Conyers Middleton, published the beginning of last century, in which he expresses himself in the same manner, with respect to the creation, as I have done in the Age of Reason.

"He was principal librarian of the University of Cambridge, in England, which furnished him with extensive opportunities of reading, and necessarily required he should be well acquainted with the dead as well as the living languages. He was a man of a strong original mind; had the courage to think for himself, and the honesty to speak his thoughts.

"He made a journey to Rome, from whence he wrote letters to shew that the forms and ceremonies of the Romish Christian Church were taken from the degenerate state of the heathen mythology, as He attackit stood in the latter times of the Greeks and Romans. ed, without ceremony, the miracles which the church pretended to perform; and in one of his treatises he calls the creation a revelation. The priests of England, of that day, in order to defend their citadel, by first defending its out-works, attacked him for attacking the Roman ceremonies; and one of them censures him for calling the creation a revelation. He thus replies to him:

Yet it is

"One of them,' says he, appears to be scandalized by the title of revelation, which I have given to that discovery which God made of himself, in the visible works of his creation. no other than what the wise, in all ages, have given to it; who consider it as the most authentic and indisputable revelation which God has ever given of himself, from the beginning of the world to this day. It was this by which the first notice of him was revealed to the inhabitants of the earth, and by which alone it has been kept up From this the reason of ever since, among the several nations of it. man was enabled to trace out his nature and attributes, and by a gra dual deduction of consequences, to learn his own nature also, with all the duties belonging to it, which relate either to God, or to his fellow-creatures. This constitution of things was ordained by God, as

a universal law or rule of conduct to man; the source of all his knowledge; the test of all truth, by which all subsequent revelations which are supposed to have been given by God in any other manner, must be tried and cannot be received as divine, any further than as they are found to tally and coincide with this original standard.

"It was this divine law, which I referred to in the passage above recited, (meaning the passage on which they had attacked him) being desirous to excite the reader's attention to it, as it would enable him to judge more freely of the argument I was handling. For by contemplating this law he would discover the genuine way, which God himself has marked out to us, for the acquisition of true knowledge; not from the authority or reports of our fellow creatures, but from the information of the fact, and material objects, which in his providential distribution of worldly things, he hath presented to the perpetual observation of our senses. For as it was from these that his existence and nature, the most important articles of all knowledge, were first discovered to man, so that grand discovery furnished new light, towards tracing out the rest, and made all the inferior subjects of human knowledge, more easily discoverable to us by the same method.

"I had another view likewise in the same passages, and applicable to the same end, of giving the reader a more enlarged notion of the question in dispute, who, by turning his thoughts to reflect on the works of the Creator, as they are manifested to us in this fabric of the world, could not fail to observe, that they are all of them great, noble, and suitable to the majesty of his nature; carrying with them the proofs of their origin, and shewing themselves to be the production of an all-wise and almighty being: and by accustoning his mind to these sublime reflections, he will be prepared to determine whether those miraculous interpositions so confidently affirined to us by the primitive fathers, can reasonably be thought to make a part in the grand scheme of the Divine administration, or whether it be agreeable, that God who created all things by his will, and can give what turn to them he pleases by the same will, should, for the particupurposes of his government and the services of the church, descend to the expedient of visions and revelations, granted sometimes to boys for the instruction of the elders, and sometimes to women to settle the fashion and length of their veils, and sometimes to Pastors of the Church, to enjoin them to ordain one man a lecturer, another a priest; or that he should scatter a profusion of miracles around the stake of a martyr, yet all of them vain and insignificant, and without any sensible effect either of preserving the life, or easing the sufferings of the saint, or even of mortifying his persecutors, who are always left to enjoy the full triumph of their cruelty, and the poor martyr to expire in a miserable death. When these things, I say, are brought to the original test, and compared with the genuine and indisputable works of the Creator; how minute, how trifling, how contemptible must they be? And how incredible must it be thought, that for the in

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