The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the only reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists than Christians.
They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and they call the scriptures a dead letter.[This is an interesting and correct testimony as to the beliefs of the earlier Quakers, one of whom was Paine's father.-- Editer.]
Had they called them by a worse name, they had been nearer the truth.
It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the Creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial miseries, and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among mankind, to expel all ideas of a revealed religion as a dangerous heresy, and an impious fraud.
What is it that we have learned from this pretended thing called revealed religion? Nothing that is useful to man, and every thing that is disbonourable to his Maker.What is it the Bible teaches us? -- repine, cruelty, and murder.What is it the Testament teaches us? -- to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly scattered in those books, they make no part of this pretended thing, revealed religion.
They are the natural dictates of conscience, and the bonds by which society is held together, and without which it cannot exist; and are nearly the same in all religions, and in all societies.The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous.The doctrine of not retaliating injuries is much better expressed in Proverbs, which is a collection as well from the Gentilcs as the Jews, than it is in the Testament.It is there said, (Xxv.2 I)"If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink:" [According to what is called Christ's sermon on the mount, in the book of Matthew, where, among some other [and] good things, a great deal of this feigned morality is introduced, it is there expressly said, that the doctrine of forbearance, or of not retaliating injuries, was not any part of the doctrine of the Jews; but as this doctrine is found in "Proverbs," it must, according to that statement, have been copied from the Gentiles, from whom Christ had leamed it.Those men whom Jewish and Christian idolators have abusively called heathen, had much better and clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be found in the Old Testament, so far as it is Jewish, or in the New.The answer of Solon on the question, "Which is the most perfect popular govemment," has never been exceeded by any man since his time, as containing a maxim of political morality, "That," says he, "where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole constitution."Solon lived about 500 years before Christ.-- Author.] but when it is said, as in the Testament, "If a man smite thee on the right chcek, turn to him the other also," it is assassinating the dignity of forbearance, and sinking man into a spaniel.
Loving, of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides no meaning.It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense, for there is no end to retaliation; each retaliates on the other, and calls it justice:
but to love in proportion to the injury, if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for a crime.Besides, the word enemies is too vague and general to be used in a moral maxim, which ought always to be clear and defined, like a proverb.If a man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon us, and it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we put the best construction upon a thing that it will bear.But even this erroneous motive in him makes no motive for love on the other part;and to say that we can love voluntarily, and without a motive, is morally and physically impossible.
Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first place, are impossible to be performed, and if they could be would be productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime.The maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine of loving enemies; for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity.
Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies, are in general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches.For my own part, I disown the doctrine, and consider it as a feigned or fabulous morality; yet the man does not exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the American Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that I have, in any case, returned evil for evil.But it is not incumbent on man to reward a bad action with a good one, or to return good for evil; and wherever it is done, it is a voluntary act, and not a duty.It is also absurd to suppose that such doctrine can make any part of a revealed religion.We imitate the moral character of the Creator by forbearing with each other, for he forbears with all; but this doctrine would imply that he loved man, not in proportion as he was good, but as he was bad.
If we consider the nature of our condition here, we must see there is no occasion for such a thing as revealed religion.What is it we want to know? Does not the creation, the universe we behold, preach to us the existence of an Almighty power, that governs and regulates the whole? And is not the evidence that this creation holds out to our senses infinitely stronger than any thing we can read in a book, that any imposter might make and call the word of God? As for morality, the knowledge of it exists in every man's conscience.
