§ 20.
The most ignorant alone of the Hebrews followed Moses—such also were they who ran after Jesus Christ; and their name being legion, and as they mutually supported each other, it is not to be wondered at if this new system of error was widely circulated. The teaching of these novelties was not without danger to those who undertook the task, but the enthusiasm which they excited extinguished every fear. Thus, the disciples of Christ, miserable as they were in his train, and even dying of hunger—(as we learn from the necessity under which they were, together with their leader, of plucking the ears of corn in the fields to sustain their lives)—these disciples never despaired till they saw their master in the hands of his executioners, and totally incapable of gifting them with that wealth, and power, and grandeur, which he had led them to expect.
After his death, his disciples being frustrated in their fondest hopes, made a virtue of necessity. Banished as they were from every place, and persecuted by the Jews, who were eager to treat them as they had treated their master, they wandered into the neighboring countries; in which, on the evidence of some women, they set forth the resurrection of Christ, his divinity, and the other fables wherewith the gospels are filled.
It was their want of success among the Jewish people which led to the resolution of seeking their fortune among the Gentiles; but as a little more knowledge than they possessed was necessary for the accomplishment of their design—the Gentiles being philosophically trained, and consequently too much the friends of truth and reason to be duped by trifles—the sectaries of Jesus gained over to their cause a young man[24] of ardent temperament and active habits, somewhat better instructed than the illiterate fishermen of Galilee, and more capable of drawing audiences to listen to his talk. He being warned from heaven (miraculously of course), leagued himself with them, and drew over some partizans by the threat of “fabled hell,” (a plagiarism from the ancient poets), and by the hope of the joys of paradise, into which blessed abode he was impudent enough to assert that he had at one time been introduced.
These disciples then, by strength of delusion and lying, procured for their master the honor of passing for a god—an honor at which, in his life-time, Jesus could never have arrived. His destiny was no better than that of Homer, nor even so good; inasmuch as seven cities which had despised and starved the latter in his lifetime, struggled and fought with each other, in order to ascertain to which was due the merit of having given him birth.