INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. WHEN it is apparent that religious prejudices and bigotry are fast wearing off the human mind, and that the greater portion of the human race are stimulated with an inquiry into the grounds of their religious creeds, it is presumed that a publication of this description now offered to the public, even under the title of the "DEIST," will be very acceptable. The miseries which have been entailed on the nations of the earth by propagating creeds with the sword, faggot, torture, and imprisonments, are fast dispelling by the genuine spirit of philosophy and free inquiry. The religion of the Jews commenced with Abraham, who it appears had such an horrid idea of the attributes of the Deity as to have been in the act of sacrificing his own and only son to the caprice of his own imagination. When the descendants of Abraham had become sufficiently numerous to shake off the yoke of the Egyptians, they commenced their mad and bloody career under the mask of worshipping the only true God, and extirpating all the nations around who differed with them. No sooner had Mahomet attracted a sufficient number of followers, than he commenced a similar career to the descendants of Abraham, and wherever his authority reached he destroyed all those who did not embrace his tenets. The Christians of Europe feeling strength within themselves, were actuated in their turn by the same spirit, and quitted their own territories in arms, and in immense numbers, to exterminate the followers of Mahomet; so that it is an incontrovertible fact, that whenever any sect or party bemore powerful than their neighbours, they have invariably taken up arms to destroy the weaker party. came To exterminate such prejudices from the human mind, must be the wish of every virtuous man; it is with this feeling, and this only, that the present publication is offered to the public, by whose approbation and patronage it must stand or fall. CONTENTS. The Doubts of Infidels, or Queries relative to Scriptural Incon- sistencies and Contradictions. Watson Refuted: being an Answer to the Apology for the Bible. In a Series of Letters to the Bishop of Llandaff. Christian Mystery: a Chinese Tale. Thoughts on the Christian Religion; Deism Examined; and a few Ideas on Miraculous Conversion. A Letter to Sir Samuel Shepherd, Knt. upon his Prosecutions of Principles of Nature; or, a Developement of the moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the human Species. The God of the Jews; or, Jehovah Unveiled: with Strictures on Thoughts on the Inconsistency of Religious Persecutions. THOUGHTS, &c. &c. THE man who attempts to stand forward in opposition to the opinions of mankind, which have been held by their ancestors as sacred, and received by them as genuine, braves a world of difficulties; he has to combat a second nature, custom and education. Great as the difficulty appears by reflection, much as the bigotry of man may be increased by my feeble effort to burst asunder the chain of superstition, which has bound them down to a savage barbarity, yet I feel a conscious pleasure in the reflection, that my intention is to pour the balm of consolation on those wounds which enthusiastic madness has left still bleeding in the human frame. Should my efforts be crowned with success; should my first faint effort at publicity be the means of weakening that religious rancour which man, differing from his brother, nourishes in his bosom, I shall be amply paid. If I fail, I shall enjoy the pleasing reflection of a good intention, From my earliest contemplations of the actions of men, I have been struck with wonder and surprize at the religious animosities which they have nourished against each other; and I have marked with amazement and horror the settled rancour and antipathy which their infatuated hearts bore against their fellow-men. I be held them perpetrating every act of cruelty against each other which the laws of their country would suffer, and letting slip no opportunity of revenge on which their malice could lay hold of by words or actions. I have attended the religious worship and lectures of the different sectaries calling themselves Christians, and have conversed with the followers of Moses. I have examined the tenets of the creeds of each, and though differing materially from each other, in all I found something to admire; yet was my admiration blasted by the settled animosity which I discovered ever uppermost in the whole. If my mind has been hurt by reviewing the actions of the laity, how much greater cause had I to be astonished at the conduct of those men, who, calling themselves the appointed ministers of the Deity, and the disciples and followers of Jesus, whom they describe as teaching a doctrine of love and submission, even to the receiving a blow on the cheek without a murmur, and who, believing in a system of rewards and punishments to eternity, could boldly declare, that all who differ from them should be damned for ever! The more I examined the devout and select of each system, the more I became acquainted with the secret tenets of their faith, the deeper have I found the root of hatred sown; till, tired and disgusted with the search, my mind has recoiled, and I have asked myself, Are these the actions of man, who boasts himself the image of the Deity? Or is the idea true, that infernals can assume the form of men? Is hatred the result of that religion which pretends to teach love? Or is man degenerated from his ancestors, and in love with malice? I will turn (I exclaimed) from the people of the present day; I will search into the ancient page of history; I will ask of the monuments of the dead what was their belief, and how they acted. I have complied with my exclamation, and my mind has been racked with distraction by the search. Before the era of the Christians, I beheld the Pagan world destroying each other about the worship of an idol, the prophesy of an oracle, or the words of a Sybil. I see the followers of Moses, after destroying the inhabitants of a land who differed from them in worship, split into factions, and destroying each other from the same motives. On turning to the followers of Mahomet, I find the same faction, the same religious animosity prevail; till, having filled the world with carnage and blood for twelve hundred years, we now find them split into sectaries, each ready to destroy the other, because they differ as to certain tenets. On viewing the history of the Christian church, I find still greater cruelties and horrors present themselves, as if (to use a figurative expression of the Christians,) the infernals had ransacked hell for the tortures of the damned to inflict on the living. To paint the scenes of animosity, malice, carnage, bloodshed, and torture, which the followers of Christ have practised on each other, for the honour of Jesus, and the salvation of the Christian religion, from its commencement to the present day, would be a task which the age of man, if doubled, would fall far short of performing : suffice it to say, that few commotions have taken place, but what religion has either directly or indirectly been the cause. No sooner has a religious faction gained power, than its first action is to oppress or destroy those who differ from them, while the persecuted, in their turn, practise the same cruelties. Nor does their malice vent itself in the ordinary way; here every kind of torture which the imagination of man can devise is invented, to destroy or torment those whom they conceive their enemies, till it has settled in the regular and systematic plan of a hellish inquisition: where, for daring to doubt or call in question the doctrines of those authorized ministers of the church, you are dragged from your home, your wife, and children, and buried for ever from the light of day. But, you will exclaim, this is not the practice of this country; we have no Inquisition here. Refer, my friends, to your own history, and see if it does not present you with actions almost equal to them; trace B |