The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine

[_Maksutov]

As the object of the church, as is the case in all national
establishments of churches, was power and revenue, and terror the
means it used, it is consistent to suppose that the most miraculous
and wonderful of the writings they had collected stood the best chance
of being voted. And as to the authenticity of the books, the vote
stands in the place of it, for it can be traced no higher.

Disputes, however, ran high among the people then calling
themselves Christians; not only as to points of doctrine, but as to
the authenticity of the books. In the contest between the persons
called St. Augustine and Fauste, about the year 400, the latter
says: "The books called the Evangelists have been composed long
after the times of the apostles by some obscure men, who, fearing
that the world would not give credit to their relation of matters of
which they could not be informed, have published them under the
names of the apostles, and which are so full of sottishness and
discordant relations, that there is neither agreement nor connection
between them."

And in another place, addressing himself to the advocates of those
books, as being the word of God, he says, "It is thus that your
predecessors have inserted in the scriptures of our Lord many
things, which, though they carry his name agrees not with his
doctrines. This is not surprising, since that we have often proved
that these things have not been written by himself, nor by his
apostles, but that for the greater part they are founded upon tales,
upon vague reports, and put together by I know not what, half-Jews,
but with little agreement between them, and which they have
nevertheless published under the names of the apostles of our Lord,
and have thus attributed to them their own errors and their lies."*

*I have these two extracts from Boulanger's Life of Paul,
written in French. Boulanger has quoted them from the writings of
Augustine against Fauste, to which he refers.

The reader will see by these extracts, that the authenticity of
the books of the New Testament was denied, and the books treated as
tales, forgeries, and lies, at the time they were voted to be the word
of God.* But the interest of the church, with the assistance of the
fagot, bore down the opposition, and at last suppressed all
investigation. Miracles followed upon miracles, if we will believe
them, and men were taught to say they believed whether they
believed or not. But (by way of throwing in a thought) the French
Revolution has excommunicated the church from the power of working
miracles; she has not been able, with the assistance of all her saints,
to work one miracle since the revolution began; and as she never
stood in greater need than now, we may, without the aid of divination,
conclude that all her former miracles were tricks and lies.

[_Maksutov]

*Boulanger, in his Life of Paul, has collected from the
ecclesiastical histories, and from the writings of fathers, as they
are called, several matters which show the opinions that prevailed
among the different sects of Christians at the time the Testament,
as we now see it, was voted to be the word of God. The following
extracts are from the second chapter of that work.

"The Marcionists, (a Christian sect,) assumed that the evangelists
were filled with falsities. The Manicheans, who formed a very
numerous sect at the commencement of Christianity, rejected as false
all the New Testament, and showed other writings quite different that
they gave for authentic. The Cerinthians, like the Marcionists, admitted
not the Acts of the Apostles. The Encratites, and the Severians,
adopted neither the Acts nor the Epistles of Paul. Chrysostom, in a
homily which he made upon the Acts of the Apostles, says that in his
time, about the year 400, many people knew nothing either of the
author or of the book. St. Irene, who lived before that time,
reports that the Valentinians, like several other sects of Christians,
accused the scriptures of being filled with imperfections, errors, and
contradictions. The Ebionites, or Nazarines, who were the first
Christians, rejected all the Epistles of Paul and regarded him as an
impostor. They report, among other things, that he was originally a
pagan, that he came to Jerusalem, where he lived some time; and that
having a mind to marry the daughter of the high priest, he caused
himself to be circumcised: but that not being able to obtain her, he
quarreled with the Jews and wrote against circumcision, and against
the observance of the sabbath, and against all the legal ordinances.

When we consider the lapse of more than three hundred years
intervening between the time that Christ is said to have lived and the
time the New Testament was formed into a book, we must see, even
without the assistance of historical evidence, the exceeding
uncertainty there is of its authenticity. The authenticity of the book
of Homer, so far as regards the authorship, is much better established
than that of the New Testament, though Homer is a thousand years
the most ancient. It is only an exceedingly good poet that could have
written the book of Homer, and therefore few men only could have
attempted it; and a man capable of doing it would not have thrown
away his own fame by giving it to another. In like manner, there were
but few that could have composed Euclid's Elements, because none
but an exceedingly good geometrician could have been the author of
that work.

But with respect to the books of the New Testament, particularly
such parts as tell us of the resurrection and ascension of Christ, any
person who could tell a story of an apparition, or of a man's
walking could have made such books; for the story is most wretchedly
told. The chance, therefore, of forgery in the Testament, is
millions to one greater than in the case of Homer or Euclid. Of the
numerous priests or parsons of the present day, bishops and all, every
one of them can make a sermon, or translate a scrap of Latin,
especially if it had been translated a thousand times before; but is
there any among them that can write poetry like Homer, or science
like Euclid? The sum total of a person's learning, with very few
exceptions, is a b ab, and hic haec, hoc; and their knowledge of
science is three times one is three; and this is more than
sufficient to have enabled them, had they lived at the time, to have
written all the books of the New Testament.

[_Maksutov]

As the opportunities of forgeries were greater, so also was the
inducement. A man could gain no advantage by writing under the
name of Homer or Euclid; if he could write equal to them, it would be
better that he wrote under his own name; if inferior, he could not
succeed. Pride would prevent the former, and impossibility the latter.
But with respect to such books as compose the New Testament, all the
inducements were on the side of forgery. The best imagined history
that could have been made, at the distance of two or three hundred
years after the time, could not have passed for an original under
the name of the real writer; the only chance of success lay in
forgery, for the church wanted pretence for its new doctrine, and
truth and talents were out of the question.

But as is not uncommon (as before observed) to relate stories of
persons walking after they are dead, and of ghosts and apparitions
of such as have fallen by some violent or extraordinary means; and
as the people of that day were in the habit of believing such
things, and of the appearance of angels, and also of devils, and of
their getting into people's insides and shaking them like a fit of
an ague, and of their being cast out again as if by an emetic- (Mary
Magdalene, the book of Mark tells us, has brought up, or been
brought to bed of seven devils)- it was nothing extraordinary that
some story of this kind should get abroad of the person called Jesus
Christ, and become afterward the foundation of the four books
ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each writer told the tale as
he heard it, or thereabouts, and gave to his book the name of the
saint or the apostle whom tradition had given as the eye-witness. It is
only upon this ground that the contradiction in those books can be
accounted for; and if this be not the case, they are downright
impositions, lies and forgeries, without even the apology of
credulity.

That they have been written by a sort of half Jews, as the
foregoing quotations mention, is discernable enough. The frequent
references made to that chief assassin and impostor, Moses, and to
the men called prophets, establish this point; and, on the other band,
the church has complemented the fraud by admitting the Bible and the
Testament to reply to each other. Between the Christian Jew and the
Christian Gentile, the thing called a prophecy and the thing
prophesied, the type and the thing typified, the sign and the thing
signified, have been industriously rummaged up and fitted together,
like old locks and pick-lock keys. The story foolishly enough told
of Eve and the serpent, and naturally enough as to the enmity
between men and serpents (for the serpent always bites about the
heel, because it cannot reach higher; and the man always knocks the
serpent about the head, as the most effectual way to prevent its
biting*) this foolish story, I say, has been made into a prophecy, a
type, and a promise to begin with; and the lying imposition of
Isaiah to Ahaz, That a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, as a sign
that Ahaz should conquer, when the event was that he was defeated
(as already noticed in the observations on the book of Isaiah), has
been perverted and made to serve as a winder up.

*It shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel. Genesis,
chap. iii, verse 15.

[_Maksutov]

Jonah and the whale are also made into a sign or a type. Jonah
is Jesus, and the whale is the grave; for it is said (and they have
made Christ to say it of himself), Matt. chap. xii, ver. 40, "For as
Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall
the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the
earth." But it happens, awkwardly enough, that Christ, according to
their own account, was but one day and two nights in the grave;
about 36 hours, instead of 72; that is, the Friday night, the
Saturday, and the Saturday night; for they say he was up on the
Sunday morning by sunrise, or before. But as this fits quite as well as
the bite and the kick in Genesis, or the virgin and her son in Isaiah,
it will pass in the lump of orthodox things. Thus much for the
historical part of the Testament and its evidences.

Epistles of Paul.- The epistles ascribed to Paul, being fourteen
in number, almost fill up the remaining part of the Testament.
Whether those epistles were written by the person to whom they are
ascribed is a matter of no great importance, since the writer, whoever
he was, attempts to prove his doctrine by argument. He does not
pretend to have been witness to any of the scenes told of the
resurrection and the ascension, and he declares that he had not
believed them.

The story of his being struck to the ground as he was journeying
to Damascus has nothing in it miraculous or extraordinary; he
escaped with life, and that is more than many others have done, who
have been struck with lightning; and that he should lose his sight for
three days, and be unable to eat or drink during that time, is nothing
more than is common in such conditions. His companions that were
with him appear not to have suffered in the same manner, for they
were well enough to lead him the remainder of the journey; neither
did they pretend to have seen any vision.

[_Maksutov]

The character of the person called Paul, according to the accounts
given of him, has in it a great deal of violence and fanaticism; he
had persecuted with as much heat as he preached afterward; the
stroke he had received had changed his thinking, without altering
his constitution; and either as a Jew or a Christian, he was the
same zealot. Such men are never good moral evidences of any
doctrine they preach. They are always in extremes, as well of actions
as of belief.

The doctrine he sets out to prove by argument is the
resurrection of the same body, and he advances this as an evidence
of immortality. But so much will men differ in their manner of
thinking, and in the conclusions they draw from the same premises,
that this doctrine of the resurrection of the same body, so far from
being an evidence of immortality, appears to me to furnish an
evidence against it; for if I have already died in this body, and am
raised again in the same body in which I have lived, it is a
presumptive evidence that I shall die again. That resurrection no more
secures me against the repetition of dying, than an ague-fit, when
passed, secures me against another. To believe, therefore, in
immortality, I must have a more elevated idea than is contained in the
gloomy doctrine of the resurrection.

Besides, as a matter of choice, as well as of hope, I had rather
have a better body and a more convenient form than the present.
Every animal in the creation excels us in something. The winged
insects, without mentioning doves or eagles, can pass over more
space and with greater ease in a few minutes than man can in an
hour. The glide of the smallest fish, in proportion to its bulk,
exceeds us in motion almost beyond comparison, and without
weariness. Even the sluggish snail can ascend from the bottom of a
dungeon, where a man, by the want of that ability, would perish; and
a spider can launch itself from the top, as a playful amusement. The
personal powers of man are so limited, and his heavy frame so little
constructed to extensive enjoyment, that there is nothing to induce us
to wish the opinion of Paul to be true. It is too little for the
magnitude of the scene- too mean for the sublimity of the subject.

But all other arguments apart, the consciousness of existence is
the only conceivable idea we can have of another life, and the
continuance of that consciousness is immortality. The consciousness of
existence, or the knowing that we exist, is not necessarily confined
to the same form, nor to the same matter, even in this life.

[_Maksutov]

We have not in all cases the same form, nor in any case the same
matter that composed our bodies twenty or thirty years ago; and yet
we are conscious of being the same persons. Even legs and arms,
which make up almost half the human frame, are not necessary to the
consciousness of existence. These may be lost or taken away, and the
full consciousness of existence remain; and were their place
supplied by wings, or other appendages, we cannot conceive that it
would alter our consciousness of existence. In short, we know not
how much, or rather how little, of our composition it is, and how
exquisitely fine that little is, that creates in us this consciousness
of existence; and all beyond that is like the pulp of a peach,
distinct and separate from the vegetative speck in the kernel.

Who can say by what exceedingly fine action of fine matter it is
that a thought is produced in what we call the mind? and yet that
thought when produced, as I now produce the thought I am writing, is
capable of becoming immortal, and is the only production of man that
has that capacity.

Statues of brass or marble will perish; and statues made in
imitation of them are not the same statues, nor the same
workmanship, any more than the copy of a picture is the same
picture. But print and reprint a thought a thousand times over, and
that with materials of any kind- carve it in wood or engrave it on
stone, the thought is eternally and identically the same thought in
every case. It has a capacity of unimpaired existence, unaffected by
change of matter, and is essentially distinct and of a nature
different from every thing else that we know or can conceive. If,
then, the thing produced has in itself a capacity of being immortal,
it is more than a token that the power that produced it, which is
the self-same thing as consciousness of existence, can be immortal
also; and that as independently of the matter it was first connected
with, as the thought is of the printing or writing it first appeared
in. The one idea is not more difficult to believe than the other,
and we can see that one is true.

That the consciousness of existence is not dependent on the same
form or the same matter is demonstrated to our senses in the works
of the creation, as far as our senses are capable of receiving that
demonstration. A very numerous part of the animal creation preaches
to us, far better that Paul, the belief of a life hereafter. Their little
life resembles an earth and a heaven- a present and a future state,
and comprises, if it may be so expressed, immortality in miniature.

[_Maksutov]

The most beautiful parts of the creation to our eye are the winged
insects, and they are not so originally. They acquire that form and
that inimitable brilliancy by progressive changes. The slow and
creeping caterpillar-worm of to-day passes in a few days to a torpid
figure and a state resembling death; and in the next change comes
forth in all the miniature magnificence of life, a splendid butterfly.
No resemblance of the former creature remains; everything is
changed; all his powers are new, and life is to him another thing.
We cannot conceive that the consciousness of existence is not the
same in this state of the animal as before; why then must I believe
that the resurrection of the same body is necessary to continue to me
the consciousness of existence hereafter?

In the former part of the Age of Reason I have called the creation
the only true and real word of God; and this instance, or this text,
in the book of creation, not only shows to us that this thing may be
so, but that it is so; and that the belief of a future state is a
rational belief, founded upon facts visible in the creation; for it is
not more difficult to believe that we shall exist hereafter in a
better state and form than at present, than that a worm should
become a butterfly, and quit the dunghill for the atmosphere, if we
did not know it as a fact.

As to the doubtful jargon ascribed to Paul in the 15th chapter
of I. Corinthians, which makes part of the burial service of some
Christian sectaries, it is as destitute of meaning as the tolling of a
bell at a funeral; it explains nothing to the understanding- it
illustrates nothing to the imagination, but leaves the reader to
find any meaning if he can. "All flesh (says he) is not the same
flesh. There is one flesh of men; another of beast; another of fishes;
and another of birds." And what then?- nothing. A cook could have
said as much. "There are also (says he) bodies celestial, and bodies
terrestrial; the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the
terrestrial is another." And what then?- nothing. And what is the
difference? nothing that he has told. "There is (says he) one glory of
the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the
stars." And what then?- nothing; except that he says that one star
differeth from another star in glory, instead of distance; and he
might as well have told us that the moon did not shine so bright as
the sun. All this is nothing better than the jargon of a conjuror, who
picks up phrases he does not understand, to confound the credulous
people who have come to have their fortunes told. Priests and
conjurors are of the same trade.

[_Maksutov]

Sometimes Paul affects to be a naturalist and to prove his
system of resurrection from the principles of vegetation. "Thou
fool, (says he), that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it
die." To which one might reply in his own language and say, "Thou
fool, Paul, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die
not; for the grain that dies in the ground never does, nor can
vegetate. It is only the living grains that produce the next crop."
But the metaphor, in any point of view, is no simile. It is
succession, and not resurrection.

The progress of an animal from one state of being to another, as
from a worm to a butterfly, applies to the case; but this of a grain
does not, and shows Paul to have been what he says of others, a fool.

Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul were written by him
or not, is a matter of indifference; they are either argumentative
or dogmatical; and as the argument is defective and the dogmatical
part is merely presumptive, it signifies not who wrote them. And the
same may be said for the remaining parts of the Testament. It is not
upon the epistles, but upon what is called the Gospel, contained in
the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and upon
the pretended prophecies, that the theory of the church calling itself
the Christian Church is founded. The epistles are dependent upon
those, and must follow their fate; for if the story of Jesus Christ be
fabulous, all reasoning founded upon it as a supposed truth must
fall with it.

We know from history that one of the principal leaders of this
church, Athanasius, lived at the time the New Testament was
formed;* and we know also, from the absurd jargon he left us under
the name of a creed, the character of the men who formed the New
Testament; and we know also from the same history that the
authenticity of the books of which it is composed was denied at the
time. It was upon the vote of such as Athanasius, that the Testament
was decreed to be the word of God; and nothing can present to us a
more strange idea than that of decreeing the word of God by vote.
Those who rest their faith upon such authority put man in the place of
God, and have no foundation for future happiness; credulity, however,
is not a crime, but it becomes criminal by resisting conviction. It is
strangling in the womb of the conscience the efforts it makes to
ascertain truth. We should never force belief upon ourselves in
anything.

*Athanasius died, according to the Church chronology, in the
year 371.

I here close the subject of the Old Testament and the New. The
evidence I have produced to prove them forgeries is extracted from
the books themselves, and acts, like a two-edged sword, either way. If
the evidence be denied, the authenticity of the scriptures is denied
with it; for it is scripture evidence; and if the evidence be
admitted, the authenticity of the books is disproved. The
contradictory impossibilities contained in the Old Testament and the
New, put them in the case of a man who swears for and against.
Either evidence convicts him of perjury, and equally destroys
reputation.

Should the Bible and the New Testament hereafter fall, it is not I
that have been the occasion. I have done no more than extracted the
evidence from the confused mass of matter with which it is mixed,
and arranged that evidence in a point of light to be clearly seen
and easily comprehended; and, having done this, I leave the reader
to judge for himself, as I have judged for myself.

[_Maksutov]

CHAPTER III

Conclusion

In the former part of “The Age of Reason” I have spoken of the
three frauds, mystery, miracle, and prophecy; and as I have seen
nothing in any of the answers to that work that in the least affects
what I have there said upon those subjects, I shall not encumber this
Second Part with additions that are not necessary.

I have spoken also in the same work upon what is called
revelation, and have shown the absurd misapplication of that term to
the books of the Old Testament and the New; for certainly revelation
is out of the question in reciting anything of which man has been
the actor or the witness. That which a man has done or seen, needs
no revelation to tell him he had done it or seen it, for he knows it
already; nor to enable him to tell it or to write it. It is
ignorance or imposition to apply the term revelation in such cases:
yet the Bible and Testament are classed under this fraudulent
description of being all revelation.

Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between God and
man, can only be applied to something which God reveals of his will to
man; but though the power of the Almighty to make such a
communication is necessarily admitted, because to that power all
things are possible, yet the thing so revealed (if anything ever was
revealed, and which, bye the bye, it is impossible to prove), is
revelation to the person only to whom it is made. His account of it to
another person is not revelation; and whoever puts faith in that
account, puts it in the man from whom the account comes; and that
man may have been deceived, or may have dreamed it, or he may be
an impostor and may lie. There is no possible criterion whereby to
judge of the truth of what he tells, for even the morality of it would be
no proof of revelation. In all such cases the proper answer would be,
"When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be a revelation;
but it is not, and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be
revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of
a man as the word of God, and put man in the place of God." This is
the manner in which I have spoken of revelation in the former part
of the Age of Reason; and which, while it reverentially admits
revelation as a possible thing, because, as before said, to the
Almighty all things are possible, it prevents the imposition of one
man upon another, and precludes the wicked use of pretended
revelation.

But though, speaking for myself, I thus admit the possibility of
revelation, I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did
communicate anything to man, by any mode of speech, in any
language, or by any kind of vision, or appearance, or by any means
which our senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than by the
universal display of himself in the works of the creation, and by that
repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and the disposition to
do good ones.

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the
greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their
origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has
been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the
Divinity, the most destructive to morality and the peace and happiness
of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist. It is
better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a
thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the
doctrine of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one
such impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible
prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and
have credit among us.

[_Maksutov]

Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of
men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled, and the
bloody persecutions and tortures unto death, and religious wars,
that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes- whence
rose they but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and
this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man? The lies of the
Bible have been the cause of the one, and the lies of the Testament of
the other.

Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by
the sword; but of what period of time do they speak? It was
impossible that twelve men could begin with the sword; they had not
the power; but no sooner were the professors of Christianity
sufficiently powerful to employ the sword, than they did so, and the
stake and fagot, too; and Mahomet could not do it sooner. By the
same spirit that Peter cut off the ear of the high priest's servant (if the
story be true), he would have cut off his head, and the head of his
master, had he been able. Besides this, Christianity grounds itself
originally upon the Bible, and the Bible was established altogether by
the sword, and that in the worst use of it- not to terrify, but to
extirpate. The Jews made no converts; they butchered all. The Bible is
the sire of the Testament, and both are called the word of God. The
Christians read both books; the ministers preach from both books;
and this thing called Christianity is made up of both. It is then
false to say that Christianity was not established by the sword.

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. 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 revealed religion, as a dangerous
heresy and an impious fraud. What is that we have learned from this
pretended thing called revealed religion? Nothing that is useful to
man, and everything that is dishonorable to his maker. What is it
the Bible teaches us?- rapine, 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 these 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 Gentiles as the Jews,
than it is in the Testament. It is there said, Proverbs xxv, ver.
21, "If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be
thirsty, give him water to drink;"* but when it is said, as in the
Testament, "If a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the
other also;" it is assassinating the dignity of forbearance, and
sinking man into a spaniel.

*According to what is called Christ's sermon on the mount, in
the book of Matthew, where, among some other 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 learned it. Those
men, whom Jewish and Christian idolaters have abusively called
heathens, 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 government? has never been exceeded by any
one 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.

Loving 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 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 as, 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 whenever 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.