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put to death to appease the pretended jealousy of the Supreme Creator of the Universe. This, and hundreds of other passages that might be cited from the Bible, form a striking contrast with that tolerant spirit of the Koran, in which it is said, "If God had pleased, he had surely made you one people; but he hath thought fit to give you different laws, that he might try you in that which he hath given you respectively. Therefore strive to excel each other in good works; unto God shall you all return, and then will he declare unto you that concerning which ye have differed.”—Koran, chap. 5.

I will here insert a concise history of occurrences under the gospel dispensation in Spain, as a sample of what has, and ever will take place, wherever ministers of religion bear sway in government. This I take from a statement, which has recently appeared, of the number of victims to that terrible engine of superstition, cruelty and death, the Inquisition; the bare recital of which chills the blood, and fills the mind with horrid images of suffering humanity under the most excrutiating tortures, which awful depravity, disguised in the robes of religion, could invent. The table is extracted from a Critical History of that dreadful tribunal, by J. A. Lorente, one of its late secretaries, and may therefore be considered as indisputably authentic. It exhibits a detailed list of the respective numbers who have suffered various kinds of punishment and persecution in the Peninsula alone, independent of those who have been its victims in other parts of the world, for a period of 356 years, viz. from 1452 to 1808, during which the Inquisition has existed, under the administration of 44 Inquisitors General. Within that term it appears that in Spain have been burnt 31,718, died in prison or escaped by flight and were burnt in effigy, 174,111, and suffered other punishments, such as whipping, imprisonment, &c. 287,522, making a grand total of 336,651. The greatest number of victims under any administration, was in that of Torquemada, the first Inquistor General, who presided from 1452 to 1499, a Long and bloody reign of 47 years, during which 8,800 victims were burnt, 6,400 died or escaped by flight, and 90,094 suffered various other punishments; being in the whole, 105,294, or 2,240 per annum !

The use of this horrid instrument of slaughter was abolished by the Cortes; but is about to be reinstated under the rule of the heaven-born Ferdinand. The consequences of which may be anticipated by the tenor of the following Decree, issued at Madrid, Oct. 13, 1823.

"In casting my eyes (says his Majesty) on the Most High who had 'deigned to deliver me from so many dangers, and to lead me back as it were by the hand among my faithful subjects, I experience a feeling of horror when I recollect all the sacrifices, all the crimes which the impious have dared to commit against the Sovereign Creator of the Universe.

"The Ministers of Religion have been persecuted and sacrificed-the venerable successor of St. Peter has been insulted-the temples of the Lord profaned and destroyed the Holy Gospel trodden under foot-lastly, the inestimable inheritance which Jesus Christ left us, the right of his Holy Supper, to assure us of his love, and of our eternal felicity, the sacred Hosts, have been trampled under foot. My soul cannot be at rest till united to my beloved subjects, we shall offer to God pious sacrifices that he may deign to purify by his grace the soil of Spain from so many stains. In order that objects of such importance should be attained, I have resolved that in all places in my dominion, the tribunals, the Juntas, and all public bodies, shall implore the clemency of the Almighty in favour of the nation, and that the Archbishops, Bishops and Capitular Vicars of vacant Sees, the Priors of Orders, and all those who exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction, shall prepare missions, which shall exert themselves to destroy erroneous, pernicious, and heretical doctrines, and shut up in the monasteries, of which the rules are the most rigid, those ecclesiastios, who have been the agents of an impious faction.

"Sealed by my Royal hand!"

A Royal hand bathed in blood; the witness of innumerable perjuries.-The pious sacrifices to be offered to God are human victims: the best blood of Spain-Riego, &c. Good heavens! is it possible that the enlightened reason of man will long submit to be imposed upon by the canting of such vile, infamous wretches as Ferdinand the Seventh ?

In the opinion of such blotches on the human character, the belief in mysteries and miracles, and the performance of the idle ceremonies ordained by the Church, are sufficient to atone for all sins, and that morals, in comparison, are of no value.

Christianity, as taught and practised by theologians and their adherents, is so ac curately described in a letter on superstition, addressed to the people of England, by the celebrated William Pitt, (afterwards Earl of Chatham, and Prime Minister of Great Britain,) that I am induced to give it entire. It was first printed in the London Journal in 1733.

LETTER OF WILLIAM PITT.

"Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father, is this: to visit the Fatherless and Widows in their afflictions, and to keep one's self unspotted from the World."

Gentlemen, whoever takes a view of the world, will find, that what the greatest part of mankind have agreed to call religion, has been only some outward exercise esteemed sufficient to work a reconciliation with God. It has moved them to build temples, flay victims, offer up sacrifices, to fast and feast, to petition and thank, to laugh and cry, to sing and sigh by turns; but it has not yet been found sufficient to induce them to break off an armour, to make restitution of ill-gotten wealth, or to bring the passions and appetites to a reasonable subjection. Differ as much as they may in opinion, concerning what they ought to believe, or after what manner they are to serve God, as they call it, yet they all agree in gratifying their appetites. The same passions reign eternally in all countries and in all ages, Jew and Mahometan, the Christian and the Pagan, the Tartar and the Indian, all kinds of men who differ in almost every thing else, universally agree with regard to their passions; if there be any difference among them it is this, that the more superstitious, the more vicious they always are, and the more they believe, the less they practise. This is a melancholy consideration to a good mind; it is a truth, and certainly above all things, worth our while to inquire into. We will, therefore, probe the wound, and search to the bottom; we will lay the axe to the root of the tree, and show you the true reason why men go on in sinning and repenting, and sinning again through the whole course of their lives; and the reason is, because they have been taught, most wickedly taught, that religion and virtue are two things absolutely distinct; that the deficiency of the one, might be supplied by the sufficiency of the other; and that what you want in virtue, you must make up in religion. But this religion, so dishonourable to God, and so pernicious to men, is worse than Atheism, for Atheism, though it takes away one great motive to support virtue in distress, yet it furnishes no man with arguments to be vicious; but superstition, or what the world means by religion is the greatest possible encouragement to vice, by setting up something as religion, which shall atone and commute for the want of virtue. This is establishing iniquity by a law, the highest law; by authority, the highest authority; that of God himself. We complain of the vices of the world, and of the wickedness of men, without searching into the true cause. It is not because they are wicked by nature, for that is both false and impious; but because to serve the purposes of their pretended soul savers, they have been carefully taught that they are wicked by nature, and cannot help continuing so. It would have been impossible for men to have been both religious and vicious, had religion been made to consist wherein alone it does consist; and had they been always taught that true religion is the practice of virtue in obedience to the will of God, who presides over all things, and will finally make every man happy who does his duty.

This single opinion in religion, that all things are so well made by the Deity, that virtue is its own reward, and that happiness will ever arise from acting according to the reason of things, or that God, ever wise and good, will provide some extraordinary happiness for those who suffer for virtue's sake, is enough to support a man under all difficulties, to keep him steady to his duty, and to enable him to stand as firm as a rock, amidst all the charms of applause, profit, and honour. But this religion of reason, which all men are capable of, has been neglected and condemned, and another set up, the natural consequences of which have puzzled men's understandings, and debauched their morals, more than all the lewd poets and atheistical philosophers, that ever infested the world; for instead of being taught that religion consists in action, or obedience to the eternal moral law of God, we have been most gravely and venerably told that it consists in the belief of certain opinions which we could form no idea of, or which were contrary to the clear perceptions of our minds, or which had no tendency to make us either wiser or better, or which is much worse, had a manifest tendency to make us wicked and immoral. And this belief, this impious belief, aris

ing from imposition on one side, and from want of examination on the other, has been called by the sacred name of religion, whereas real and genuine religion consists in knowledge and obedience. We know there is a God, and know his will, which is, that we should do all the good we can; and we are assured from his perfections, that we shall find our own good in so doing.

And what would we have more? are we, after such inquiry, and in an age full of liberty, children still? and cannot we be quiet unless we have holy romances, sacred fables, and traditionary tales to amuse us in an idle hour, and to give rest to our souls, when our follies and vices will not suffer us to rest?

You have been taught, indeed, that right belief, or orthodoxy, will, like charity, cover a multitude of sins; but be not deceived, belief of, or mere assent to the truth of propositions upon evidence is not a virtue, nor unbelief a vice; faith is not a voluntary act, does not depend upon the will; every man must believe or disbelieve, whether he will or not, according as the evidence appears to him. If, therefore, men, however dignified or distinguished, command us to believe, they are guilty of the highest folly and absurdity, because it is out of our power; but if they command us to believe, and annex rewards to belief, and severe penalties to unbelief, then they are most wicked and immoral, because they annex rewards and punishments to what is involuntary, and, therefore, neither rewardable nor punishable. It appears, then, very plainly unreasonable and unjust to command us to believe any doctrine, good or bad, wise or unwise; but, when men command us to believe opinions, which have no tendency to promote virtue, but which are allowed to commute or atone for the want of it, then they are arrived at the utmost pitch of impiety, then is their iniquity full ; then have they finished the misery, and completed the destruction of poor mortal man; by betraying the interest of virtue, they have undermined and sapped the foundation of all human happiness; and how treacherously and dreadfully have they betrayed it! A gift, well applied, the chattering of some unintelligible sounds called creeds; an unfeigned assent and consent to whatever the church enjoins, religious worship and consecrated feasts; repenting on a death-bed; pardons rightly sued out; and absolution authoritatively given, have done more towards making and continuing men vicious, than all the natural passions and infidelity put together; for infidelity can only take away the supernatural rewards of virtue; but these superstitious opinions and practices, have not only turned the scene, and made men lose sight of the natural rewards of it, but have induced them to think, that were there no hereafter, vice would be preferable to virtue, and that they increase in happiness as they increase in wickedness; and this they have been taught in several religious discourses and sermons, delivered by men whose authority was never doubted, particularly by a late Rev. prelate, I mean Bishop Atterbury, in his sermon on these words, "If in this life only be hope, then we are of all men the most miserable," where vice and faith ride most lovingly and triumphantly together. But these doctrines of the natural excellency of vice, the efficacy of a right belief, the dignity of atonements and propitiations, have beside depriving us of the native beauty and charms of honesty, and thus cruelly stabbing virtue to the heart, raised and diffused among men a certain unnatural passion, which we shall call a religious hatred; a hatred constant, deep-rooted, and immortal. All other passions rise and fall, die and revive again, but this of religious and pious hatred rises and grows every day stronger upon the mind as we grow more religious, because we hate for God's sake, and for the sake of those poor souls too, who have the misfortune not to believe as we do; and can we in so good a cause hate too much? the more thoroughly we hate, the better we are; and the more mischief we do to the bodies and states of these infidels and heretics, the more do we show our love to God. This is religious zeal, and this has been called divinity; but remember, the only true divinity is humanity.

W. PITT.

Against such a scheme of fraud and imposition, as faithfully delineated by Mr. Pitt, has Thomas Paine entered his protest; and those who make a trade of the delusion, as well as those who are duped by it, denounce him as an impious man! And he, in reply, might have exclaimed, in the language of Lequinto, before cited.

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I am an impious man, my dear reader; and I tell the truth to every man, which is perhaps still worse. Four years are scarcely elapsed, since the follies of the Sorbonne, and the furies of despotism, might have raised a storm, which would have burst upon my head; they would have smitten me like a destructive monster, an assassin of the human race, a perturbator, a traitor. Each of those colossal phantoms has dis

appeared before the eye of reason, and the august image of liberty; however, an infinite number of prejudices, personal interest, and hypocrisy, all of them no less the tyrants, and the enemies of knowledge, still dwell among us.

There still remains at the bottom of thy heart, at the bottom of thy own heart, the prejudices of thy infancy, the lessons of thy nurse, and the opinions of thy first instructors, which are the effects of that renunciation of thought which thou hast practised all the days of thy life, from the cradle upwards! In addition to this, it is the interest of every one to keep thee in total blindness. The rich and powerful man dreads lest thou shouldst open thy eyes, and perceive that his strength and grandeur proceed from thy ignorance and submission. The vain man, with equality in his heart, fears lest thou shouldst discover the absurdity of his pretensions to superiority; the hypocrite, who terms himself the representative of the divinity, and the messenger of heaven, trembles lest thou shouldst begin to reflect, for, from that moment his credit and his authority are at an end. He eats and drinks at his leisure; he sleeps without care; he walks about in order to procure an appetite; he enjoys the price of thy labours in peace; thou payest for his pleasures, his subsistence, and even for his sleep. But, wert thou to begin to reason, thou wouldst soon perceive thy error; thou wouldst touch the phantom, and it would instantly vanish; thou wouldst discover that he is an useless parasite, and that all his authority reposes on thy foolish credulity, thy weakness, thy chimerical fears, and the ridiculous hopes which he has taken care to inspire thee with, ever since thou camest into existence. Perhaps thy very wife is interested to deceive thee, on purpose to sanctify her connexions with the representative of the divinity, who renounces the holy laws of nature, because he spares himself, at one and the same time, the uneasiness and the duties of paternity!

These will excite thy passions, arm thy heart, and call up thy hatred against my lessons and my doctrine; for I am an impious being, who nether believe in saints nor in miracles; I am an impious being, who would drink wine in the midst of Turks at Constantinople, who would eat pork with the Jews, and the flesh of a tender lamb or a fat pullet among the Christians on a Friday, even within the palace of a Pope, or beneath the roof of the vatican. I am an impious man, for I firmly believe that three are more than one; that the whole is greater than one of its parts; that a body cannot exist in a thousand places at one and the same moment, and be entire in a thousand detached portions of itself.

I am an impious man, for I never believe on the word of another, whatever contradicts my own reason; and if a thousand doctors of the law should tell me, that they had seen a sparrow devour an ox in a quarter of an hour, or take the carcase in its bill, and carry it to its nest in order to feed its young, were they even to swear by their surplices, their stoles, or their square bonnets, they would still find me incredulous!

I am an impious man, for I do not believe that anointing the tips of the fingers with oil, wearing the ecclesiastical tonsure, or cutting the hair, that the being clothed in a black cassock, or a violet robe, and carrying a mitre on the head, and a cross in the hand, can render an ignorant fellow able to work miracles.

In short, my brother, I must be an impious man, since my conduct has no other regulator than my conscience; since I myself have no other principle, than the desire of public happiness, and no other divinity than virtue. Thou must necessarily hate me, for it is a great crime to think and to believe otherwise than thyself!

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But have I committed murder or carnage, theft, rapine, evil speaking, calumny? have I taught the art of deceiving men? have I insinuated a spirit of vengeance have I inculcated despotism on the part of the great, and slavery on that of the humble ?

No-on the contrary, I have pointed out the road to truth; I have proved to thee, that thy happiness consists in virtue; I have proved to thee, that thou hast hitherto been the dupe of those who fatten upon thy substance, and bathe themselves in thy sweat, and that all thy unhappiness arises from thy credulity, thy habitual hatred to reflection, and thy pusillanimity. Are these crimes? I am not guilty of any other. Whoever thou art, thy friendship is precious to me; whether thou be Christian, Mahomedan, Jew, Indian, Persian, Tartar, or Chinese, art thou not a man, and am not I thy brother? Tolerate, therefore, an impious man, who has never laboured but for the good of others, and who now labours for thine, at the very moment when thou wishest to persecute him."

As the character and habits of Thomas Paine have been grossly misrepresented by those who either knew little or nothing of him, or were utterly regardless of truth, I

shall here introduce an extract of a letter on that subject from Joel Barlow to James Cheetham, a notorious libeller of Mr. Paine. Mr. Barlow must have been well acquainted with Mr. Paine in France, as they were fellow-labourers in the great cause of human emancipation; and his sound principles, his moral and literary standing, are sufficient guarantees for the correctness of his statement of facts that came under his immediate observation. It is, however, apparent, that a part of his communication is founded on misinformation; which I shall endeavour to demonstrate.

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JOEL BARLOW TO JAMES CHEETHAM.

SIR,-I have received your letter, calling for information relative to the life of Thomas Paine. It appears to me, that this is not the moment to publish the life of that man in this country.* His own writings are his best life, and these are not read at present.

[After noticing the unfavourable impressions which fanatics and political enemies of Mr. P. had infused into the minds of a portion of the public towards him, Mr. Barlow proceeds.]

The writer of his life, who should dwell on these topics, to the exclusion of the great and estimable traits of his real character, might indeed, please the rabble of the age, who do not know him; the book might sell; but it would only tend to render the truth more obscure for the future biographer, than it was before.

But if the present writer would give us Thomas Paine complete, in all his character, as one of the most benevolent and disinterested of mankind, endowed with the clearest perception, an uncommon share of original genius, and the greatest breadth of thought; if this piece of biography should analyse his literary labors, and rank him, as he ought to be ranked, among the brightest and most undeviating luminaries of the age in which he has lived-yet with a mind assailable by flattery, and receiving through that weak side a tincture of vanity which he was too proud to conceal; with a mind, though strong enough to bear him up, and to rise elastic under the heaviest hand of oppression, yet unable to endure the contempt of his former friends and fellowlaborers, the rulers of the country that had received his first and greatest servicesa mind incapable of looking down with serene compassion, as it ought, on the rude scoffs of their imitators, a new generation that knows him not-if you are disposed and prepared to write his life thus entire, to fill up the picture to which these hasty strokes of outlines give but a rude sketch with great vacuities, your book may be a useful one.

The biographer of Thomas Paine, should not forget his mathematical acquirements, and his mechanical genius. His invention of the iron-bridge, which led him to Europe in the year 1787, has procured him a great reputation in that branch of science in France and England, in both which countries his bridge has been adopted in many instances, and is now much in use.

You ask whether he took an oath of allegiance to France. Doubtless the qualification to be a member of the convention, required an oath of fidelity to that country, but involved in it no abjuration of his fidelity to this. He was made a French citizen by the same decree with Washington, Hamilton, Priestley, and Sir James Mackintosh.

You ask what company he kept-he always frequented the best, both in England and France, till he became the object of calumny in certain American papers, (echoes of the English court papers,) for his adherence to what he thought the cause of liberty in France till he conceived himself neglected by his former friends in the United States. From that moment he gave himself very much to drink, and consequently to companions less worthy of his better days.

It is said he was always a peevish inmate this is possible. So was Laur nce Sterne, so was Torquato Tasso, so was J. J. Rousseau; but Thomas Paine, s a visiting acquaintance, and as a literary friend, the only points of view in whi h I knew him, was one of the most instructive men I have ever known. He had a surprising memory and brilliant fancy; his mind was a store house of facts and useful observations; he was full of lively anecdote, and ingenious, original pertinent remark, upon almost every subject.

He was always charitable to the poor beyond his means, a sure friend to all Americans in distress that he found in foreign countries. frequent occasions to exert his influence in protecting them during the

protector and And he had revolution in

* America.

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