CHAPTER XIII. Origin of moral Evil, and the means of its ultimate extirpa tion from the earth..... CHAPTER XIV. Infidel Philosophy... CHAPTER XV. Page. .101 .110 Inquiry-Are the Evils incident to human life the result of the operation of the Laws of Nature, or are they special Judgments from God?...... Christian Devil... CHAPTER XVI. CHAPTER XVII. CHAPTER XVIII. Death, or the Disorganization of intelligent Beings.... ...115 .127 .126 Propositions, that the want of Universality in the Christian That moral Principles are not founded upon theological Ideas, .153 Matter and Power-Origin of Motion-Liberty and Necessity 181 CHAPTER XXV. Commencement of the nineteenth Century-Christianity -Deism-Reason-Science-Virtue-Happiness.......192 CHAPTER XXVI. Philosophical Immortality ..201 GOD OF THE JEWS; OR, Jehovah Unveiled: BEING THE CHARACTER OF THE JEWISH DEITY DELINEATED. WITH STRICTURES ON THE LIVES OF HEBREW SAINTS; AND Remarks on the Theocracy. TO WHICH IS PREFIXED, A LETTER TO THE BISHOP OF LLANDAFF. BY A TRADESMAN. "If he be a God, let him plead for himself, because one hath cast down his altar." JUDGES Vi. 31. "Wise men are not profane when they deny the Gods of the common people, but they are profane when they think the Gods are such as the common people believe in." SAYING OF EPICURUS. London: PRINTED & PUBLISHED BY R. CARLILE, 55, FLEET STREET. PREFACE. SUPERSTITION is one of the greatest evils that can afflict society; it instigates to the commission of every crime, and the practice of every vice. It paralizes the efforts and genius of a people, makes them slaves to tyrants, and dupes to the craft and fraud of impostors. It is a mortal enemy to truth, to science, and the enlargement of the human faculties. The best remedies for this dreadful malady are the cultivation of science and philosophy, discarding of prejudice and believing on trust, and a firm determination to examine for ourselves, and receive the truth in simplicity. It was these considerations that induced the author to examine the subject contained in the following work, the result of which he now takes the liberty of laying before the public. For his own information he ventured to examine writings which are said to be the oracles of truth, the fountain of wisdom, and an infallible rule of faith and manners. It is in them, say the priesthood, that a God of " holiness, truth, justice, goodness," is announced to mankind; it is in them that an infinitely wise, good, and omnipotent being is exhibited to our view; and it is in them that we see displayed all those attributes and perfections of Deity that are the object of our imitation. Morality, the author considers "a science that has for its object the promotion of human happiness." It 1 Why is a holy and chosen race less fortunate than im pious generations? Deluded man! where is the contradiction at which you take offence? Where the inconsistency in which you suppose the justice of God to be involved? Take the balance of blessings and calamities, of causes and effects, and tell me, when those infidels observed the laws of the earth and the heavens, when they regulated their intelligent labours by the order of the seasons, and the course of the stars, ought God to have troubled the equilibrium of the world to defeat their prudence? When they culti vated with care and toil the face of the country -around you, ought he to have turned aside the rain to have withheld the fertilizing dews, and caused thorns to spring up? "When to render this parched and barren soil productive, their industry constructed aqueducts, dug canals, and brought the distant waters across the deserts; ought he to have blighted the harvests which art had created; to have desolated a country that had been peopled in peace; to have demolished the towns which labour had caused to flourish; in fine, to have deranged and confounded the order established by the wisdom of man? And what is this infidelity, which founded empires by prudence, defended them by courage, and strengthened them by justice; which raised magnificent cities, formed vast ports, drained pestilential marshes, covered the seas with ships, the earth with inhabitants, and, like the creative spirit, diffused life and motion through the world? If such is impiety, what is true belief? The correct and unprejudiced observer of nature, the genuine moralist, will necessarily accede to the truth of the above remarks, and in all his reasonings he will analyze facts, and attribute events to the real causes which have produced them; he will be under the necessity of rejecting those senseless opinions 'See Volney's Ruins, page 23, et seq. |