Admitting that the Bible contains the only doctrine by which we can obtain salvation and everlasting life, which of the numberless professions that have sprung out of it are we to embrace? One sect tells us that there is no salvation out of the pale of their church. Another tells us, that unless we believe and practise their doctrines, we shall surely be damned. Let us believe, therefore, in whatever particular profession we may, we shall be damned according to the principles of the others.
How gracious and beneficent is the Christian system! so perfect and pure that it creates so many different, distinct, and opposite denominations of believers; all of them right, infallibly right, in their own opinions, and proving their doctrine by the clear, in-contestible authority of divine revelation!
Many, as an excuse for countenancing a doctrine which they confess may not be true, say, that if the Christian religion be false, it is still very hurtful to attempt to overturn it; as we have no better guide, and no other method to restrain the passions and regulate the conduct of mankind; as it is the most perfect and beneficial system that could be devised. To determine this, we must look at its effects.
That doctrine which has the greatest tendency to secure our present and future happiness is the best; it proves itself to be so. That the Christian system does not tend to make us happier, may easily be shewn, by tracing its natural operations on the human mind. By it we are led to believe, that we are all miserable and ruined wretches; corrupt and exceedingly wicked from our very birth; naturally sinful, and opposed to the will of God in all our actions, words, and thoughts; and so far from deserving the common blessings of life, that if justice had been done us, we should long since have been cast into endless punishment. Tribulation, distress, and sore trials, are the common lot of mankind, especially the good. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." This world, it tells us, is a wretched, tiresome, and accursed place; a mere sink of guilt and misery; and all its enjoyments vanity and vexation of spirit. Though by the bye, those who are called sincere and pious Christians seem to be as desirous of continuing in it, and tasting the good thing's it affords, as the most sensual and worldly-minded sinner. It likewise instils into its followers such a servile fear, and dread of the wrath of heaven, that they can neither lie down at night, nor rise in the morning, without first attempting, by intreaty, flattery, and fair promises, to appease the Divine anger, and persuade the Almighty to permit them to exist in peace. Every accident is a judgement, and a prelude to further punishment. Every misfortune that happens to their neighbours is a warning to them; and they are liable every moment to be cut off by an avenging God, and sent to Hell.
While on the one hand, they represent the Deity as their servant, to assist them on every occasion, averting every ill they bring upon themselves, and extricating them from every difficulty and distress they plunge themselves into; on the other he is supposed to be a fierce, revengeful tyrant, delighting in cruelty, punishing his creatures for the very sins which he causes them to commit; and creating numberless millions of immortal souls, that could never have offended him, for the express purpose of tormenting them to all eternity. Thus they are generally miserable through life, in meditating on death and its supposed consequences.
The authority of the Bible appears still more doubtful from the absurdities and contradictions it contains; contradictions which all the sophistical ingenuity of reverend divines, with their literal meaning of this text, and spiritual interpretation of that, can never explain or reconcile.
In the very first chapter of the whole volume, containing an account of the creation, we find an inexplicable difficulty. In Genesis i. 27, 28, we are told, that "God created man, male and female, blessed them, and said unto them&c". But in ii. 20, we find that "there was not an help meet for Adam:" therefore, ver. 18, "God said, it is not good that man should be alone." And, ver. 22, "he made a woman, and brought her unto the man."
The Almighty, according to many parts of the Bible, is a perfect, unchangeable being. In Isaiah, he is said to declare, that he is "not as a man, that he should repent." But in other places we read of his repenting very frequently. He repented that he had made man. Having determined to destroy the Israelites, and having slain seventy thousand of them, "he repented of the evil," and spared the rest. He told Hezekiah that "he should surely die, and not live," but immediately repented, and gave him fifteen years longer. Jonah prophesied, in his name, that in forty days Nineveh should be overthrown; but the people believing him (though he did not perform his promise) and forsaking their sins, he "repented of the evil that he said he would do unto them, and did it not."
In one place it says, "Our God is a consuming fire;" and in another, "God is love." He is said to be Jealous, revengeful, and angry with the wicked every day; and pleased again as often as they repent: possessing all the good and evil qualities of man, that unstable, wicked, miserable, and insignificant worm. Notwithstanding all this, he is perfectly just, wise, immutable, and can never repent.
The Christian system, I venture to affirm, has been the cause of more evil in the world, than any other that ever appeared in it. By inculcating a belief that the Deity was a terrible God, an inexorable judge, taking vengeance on all his enemies; its professors, wishing to conform as much as possible to the character and disposition of their God, have in all ages acted with the same spirit, and upon the same principles: