Logan Mitchell

“ Are we told that the fires of the inquisition, with all its accompanying abominations, have been swept away by the reformation; and that the spirit of our religion is changed from that of the raging wolf, to the mildness of the lamb? We positively deny that its spirit is either changed or capable of change: the light of science, and a partial exercise of reason is at present keeping it in check; but it anxiously awaits and looks forward to the return of that congenial element—the intellectual darkness and ignorance which prevailed in the eleventh century. ”

“ LECTURE SIXTH. EFFECTS OF THE CHRISTIAN SUPERSTITION (Continued) Let those weak minds that live in doubt and fear, To juggling priests—fair Nature's foes, repair; These soul-savers,—truth's blackest enemies, I ne'er consult, and heartily despise. Its foul leagues with tyranny, persecutions, cruelty; society poisoned by its all-pervading influence; what is good in gospel morals borrowed from the ancients; its usurpation of one-seventh of man's time, and one-tenth of the proceeds of his industry; other evils which it occasions generally. ”

“ Can we then imagine any lengths to which a hireling clergy would not go in their routine of deception to secure for life riches, honors, ease and luxury? The knowledge of this truth alone ought to be sufficient to rouse men from their sottish lethargy, for it requires nothing but inquiry to make it appear that error and falsehood reduced to a system forms the groundwork of that overwhelming scheme of delusion which procures the above blessings for all priesthoods, who are hired and prostituted to defend deceptions which enrich them and impoverish industry. ”

“ It is the essence of this pretended science of theology, particularly that of triune-Christianity, to oppose, and in everything to combat the light of Nature and reason—to degrade and crush the human mind in youth, as the best security against its future expansion; and hence it is that, poor deluded man, in his abject and ludicrous terrors, has been rendered the most bewildered, piteous, and contemptible of all animals,** wishing to live for ever after death, yet afraid to die! ”

“ The history of all religions, we repeat, is but a catalogue of follies, knavery, cruelty, and crime; the whole forming a continued libel upon mankind, and proving their ignorance and unbounded credulity; the tyrant, confederate with the priest, assists him to impose upon you his creed, on the strength of which he demands your faith, on the strength of which he "demands your money"—not at the point of the bayonet, in the first instance, but if you refuse to deliver, he calls in the aid of his political partner, whom he has ever taught you "to obey in all things;" ”

“ From this usurpation is formed the almost insurmountable barrier against human liberty, "the imperium in imperio," or the visionary empire of supernaturalism within, and either confederate with, or independent of, the secular empire. All belief in anything supernatural is a pitiable and deplorable hallucination of mind, everything pretending to be such being the offspring of sheer imposture; and until the age of reason and science shall have succeeded those ages of delusion and ignorance through which the world has hitherto rolled, the paramount power upon its surface will be priestcraft. ”

“ Thus from India came the murder of the Innocents; from all quarters of the heathen world came the Trinity, the crucifixion of Christ, the Lord Sol, and Iao, born at the winter solstice, and triumphing over the powers of hell, or cold and darkness, and rising into light or glory, as the Regenerator and Savior, at the vernal equinox: from the Egyptian—perhaps the Eleusinian mysteries, came the worship of the virgin and child; and from all the countries of the east, the miraculous conception. ”

“ All discoveries in theology—every appearance in Nature, unite in exposing the absurdity of what is called the Mosaic account of time and creation. So exceeding slow is the resistless innovating progress of the sea, in changing the face of the globe, that millions of years must elapse before a total alternation of land and water takes place on its surface; but as the quantity of water can never immerse the whole, a certain portion of the surface must ever be land, in succession.* This alternate succession of land and water is sure as fate, though imperceptible in the ephemeral life of man. ”

“ And if you are not utterly lost in ignorance and prejudice, you will see the effects of corrupt governments striving to force favored superstitions upon the dupes of other religions. No intellectual blindness but that which will not see, could prevent your seeing palpably, that all religion, except that of Nature, is the accursed thing which occasions and perpetuates the deadly feuds between man and man; and creates those insane animosities which embitter and poison all the natural sweets of this fair world. ”

“ When the man of free reflection meditates on a boundless universe, governed in the most consummate order and harmony, nothing appears to him so shocking as the impious comparison of the incomprehensible Being, the creator and ruler of millions of worlds, with the impotent, puerile, and inconsistent deity of the Jews—the contrast is, beyond all expression, revolting and abhorrent. ”

“ Having sadly experienced for more than half a century the obstinate and angry nature of superstition, we are prepared to expect anything but your approbation when we repeat to you, that your faith has no other basis than traditional fables, legends, and allegories—that your attempt to prove their literal truth by prodigies and violations of Nature's laws, is far more inadmissible than the fables themselves ”

“ In denying any first cause, or creation of matter, I suppose you must allow that man cannot be a spontaneous production of the earth, and therefore the admission of his origin is unavoidable.
LUCIAN.—It is in vain that we see the human species propagated exactly as are all the mammalia classes:—theology prevents a correct view of everything; and it is its business to trample upon analogy and experience, and to feed man with fables about his first production. You ask, how came man into existence? ”

“ Paine, that "prejudice is the spider that spins its web on the mind." This entangling web is so interwoven into the tender and plastic mind of youth by systematized deception, that even the strongest intellect can hardly extricate itself during life; and this spell holds equally good with Jew, Christian, Mahommedan, or in any other of all the heaven-derived superstitions that have afflicted the human race. These are the universal plagues—the fatal barriers which stand perpetually between man and the harmonious union which he would ever maintain with nature. ”

“ All such tyrants as Constantine saw in these books examples of the most unqualified despotism; and knew that, through the medium of carefully fostered ignorance, man is an animal that can be made to believe and bear anything, however absurd and tyrannical. Conquerors and devastators of countries found in them justifying precedents for all their enormities, and the rivers of blood which ambition and Christian fanaticism have shed in every part of the world. The Crusades, where millions upon millions of fanatics perished, are never-dying witnesses of this. ”

“ Thus, from ignorance or interest, or both together, the allegories and metaphors of speech which we find in the Bible, are monstrously inculcated and palmed upon simplicity as matters of fact and history. Whilst committing these outrages upon the highest branches of science, the theologians have absurdly attempted to blend the eternal religion of Nature* with the evanescent revelations which man has, in successive ages, invented to be the greatest curse of his brother. ”

“ Against such an overwhelming antagonist, abetted by the government and riches of the country, all in deep array to frustrate his intellectual improvement, the laboring man has nothing to oppose but self-cultivation alone, which will lead him to the knowledge that it is better to think for himself than to be cheated; and that all the miseries he suffers are in reality rooted in unearthly chimeras—nonentities which, in all ages and religions, have been invented for similar purposes of deception and slavery. ”

“ Such diabolical mockeries of humanity may be authorised by modern godism, but they were not approved by that of antiquity.
In a state of society so vitiated by falsehood and crime (created by an abandonment of Nature) as to be almost wholly made up of moral evil, is it at all wonderful that a vast portion of mankind should pursue the most criminal courses to obtain a bare and wretched existence? ”

“ Under such abject and debasing circumstances have the intellectual powers of the bulk of mankind been crushed and smothered throughout Europe by the juggle of church and state collusion, until about the middle of last century, when a ray of mental light burst forth from a constellation of exalted minds, headed by that most enlightened of philosophers, Voltaire, who shook to its very foundation the whole fabric of Christian priestcraft. ”

“ LUCIAN.—Robbery and murder are strange ways of showing mercy. It is by the hideous and pernicious dogmas you mention, that pretended supernatural revelations have poisoned the pure stream of morality; they utterly confound every idea or perception we can have of the natural principles of right and wrong; and have sanctioned or justified the foulest enormities throughout Christendom. The principles of truth, justice, and morality, are ever the same, and immutable from whatever source they emanate. ”

“ Here is a child born, said to be begotten by two supernatural fathers—these fathers are two infinite beings, equal and co-existent from all eternity; and yet this son, begotten by them upon a woman, is as old as either of them! And although thus produced, and to all appearance a child of humanity, he instantly becomes the eternal son of the father, making the third infinite! ”

“ Thus has the peace of countries been incessantly disturbed and outraged, for nearly two thousand years, by this strange fabrication of artificial theology; thus has it been perpetually in exercise as an instrument in the persecution of great and good men, and raised up the most inextinguishable flames of hatred, wars, and devastations amongst nations. Such will ever be its effects, particularly where it is iniquitously upheld as a device to strangle mental liberty, through the hopes and fears of ignorance ”

“ When the education of mankind shall be so salutary as to teach them what they are in reality, the reform necessarily springing from it would quickly dissipate ignorance, conquer superstition and its priests; and, in place of pretending to look beyond Nature, whose surface alone man is hardly capable of perceiving, he would, through the evidence of his senses, follow that unerring power as the only polestar of his happiness. For the great majority of human beings thus to reform themselves, "they have but to will it;" ”

“ MOD.—The pride of man will for ever prevent your convincing him that he is not the most favored creature of the Supreme Being, who has fitted him out with a soul, and given him such other qualities of mind and body, as show indisputably his vast superiority over the brute creation, to whom souls have been refused. Your appeal to the miseries of his life, which are greater than those of any other animal, or even the frightful number of chances recorded by his priests against him, on the score of damnation, will not shake his belief in these preternatural distinctions in his favor. ”

“ In charging the shocking barbarities of the Bible upon the Jewish deity, the fanatic devoutly accuses him of crimes and acts of wicked injustice that are hardly ever committed, even by the worst of men, such as visiting the offences of the fathers upon the children, and requiring the sacrifice of the innocent to expiate the crimes of the guilty. To what a state of mental degradation, O man, have thy priests and thy superstition reduced thee! ”

“ It would be a perversion of terms to speak of more than one infinite Being: whether then is it most rational to suppose it to be that which we know to exist, or that which we do not know** to exist? So far is it from being difficult to suppose the eternity of matter, it is hardly possible to imagine anything but its eternity. Previous to what you call its creation by your immaterial artificer, was he a vacuum living in a vacuum?*** As the Christian's definition of his deity confounds all language, it is its own best refutation. ”

“ While reason is brought Every hour to be laid on credulity's shrine, Till the truth-seeking spirit submission is taught, And the dreams of a dotard seem doctrines divine!" ** When the humane and enlightened Cortes of Spain would have abolished the Inquisition, the priests told the populace that it would be an infringement of their liberties; and the priests were bettered!' So true is the Spanish proverb, that "Man is an ass that kicks those? who take off his panniers." ”

“ LUCIAN.—No conceivable power over the mind can exceed that refined delusion which causes millions of human beings voluntarily to throw themselves under the wheels of the Juggernaut car, to be crushed to death on earth, in order to attain some one of those heavens which their villainous priests have invented. ”

“ None of the phænomena of Nature prove, but all disclaim a first cause. Causes and effects have ever moved in an eternal circle; and that which is an effect at one time becomes a cause at another, and vice versa. Theology has taught man to reject that which is easy and rational, and blinded him to the thousand-fold difficulty of supposing a time when neither time* nor matter existed, contrasted with the simple truth that matter is self-existent. This is a proposition too plain and reasonable to answer the deceptive ends of the traders in that pseudo science. ”

“ Reason is the real forbidden tree of priestcraft.
From a mass of ill-strung fables, derived from such a variety of sources—a chaos of revolting prodigies, mixed up with a few probable facts, such as the expulsion or flight from Egyptian slavery, the murders and devastations in Southern Syria, etc., we cannot, in the bounds of a lecture, notice more than a few of the most prominent miracles, all of which had Pagan prototypes. ”

“ LUCIAN.—That the sea, by its restless, mighty, and irresistible workings and creations, is the parent of all land, is a fact so demonstrable, from the proofs it has everywhere left behind it, that it is undisputed except by theology; and though it may require many millions of years completely to alternate the surface of our globe, or to make those portions of it sea, which had been land, and vice versa; yet that process and routine, though almost inconceivably slow, is nevertheless sure in endless succession. Man has no doubt migrated from land to land in the way you state ”