11. Who ever knew a Roman Catholic to become a Protestant, or a Protestant a Catholic, by repentance? And yet orthodox Christians will cite the belief and testimony of a dying man as an evidence of the truth of their doctrines.
12. How can an act of repentance do any thing toward proving what is right and what is wrong in any case, when one person repents for doing what another repents for not doing? We have such cases recorded in history.
We have known a Campbellite to leave his dying testimony in favor of water baptism, and a Quaker to leave his dying testimony against it. Does one case prove it to be wrong, and the other right? If not, why do Christians cite such cases? What do they prove?
For a further illustration of this subject, see "The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors."
DEATH-BED REPENTANCE.
If there is any class of people who need to repent for misspent time, and for leading false and foolish lives, it is the colporteurs who travel over the country distributing pious tracts, containing doleful accounts of death-bed repentance, which, whether right or wrong, prove nothing.
Such cases of repentance as are reported do not appertain to the moral conduct, but to the religious belief, of the sinner. It is the abandonment and condemnation of his past creeds, and not of his past conduct, which makes the tract so valuable. Such a case contains no moral instruction whatever.
If his early education was Mahomedan, his repentance will establish that religion again in his mind; but, if Mormonism was the religion of his childhood, he would again have full faith in that religion. What nonsense!
Who ever knew repentance to divorce or emancipate a man from all or any of the religious errors of his past life, and plant in his soul a better and more rational religion, or lead him to advocate any religion only that in which he had been educated?
Such repentance is worth nothing, and absolutely foolish. Let us assume that the numerous cases of death-bed repentance published in religious tracts are all true; and what would it prove? Why, simply this: that the converts had all been educated to believe in Christianity, and had gone back to that religion. Had Budhism or Mahomedanism been their early religion, they would have returned to that. It is merely old errors and old truths revived and re-established in the mind. But many facts afterwards gathered by honest investigation, appertaining to some of these cases, show that they have either been manufactured or greatly exaggerated. As for example, the case of Thomas Paine is proved to be without foundation. His close was calm and peaceful. Many times has it been declared, in the pulpit and elsewhere, that "Tom Paine repented, and died a miserable death." And yet we have the testimony of those Christian professors who were present with him almost constantly during his last illness, that he never manifested the least compunction of conscience, or the least disposition to condemn any thing he had said or written in opposition to Christianity or the Bible. Take, for example, the testimony of Willet Hicks, a reliable Quaker preacher. On being interrogated by a neighbor of the author of this work as to the truth of the statement that he repented, he replied, "I was with Paine every day during the latter part of his sickness, and can affirm that he did not express any regret for having written 'The Age of Reason,' as has been reported, nor for any thing he had said or written in opposition to the Bible, nor ask forgiveness of God. He died as easy as any one I ever saw die; and I have seen a great many die." And yet this Mr. Hicks was in hopes he would repent. Other similar testimony might be adduced; but this is sufficient. The story of Ethan Allen's daughter calling upon her father during her last illness, and asking him if he would recommend her to die in his religious belief, and his feeling so conscience-smitten by the question, that he exclaimed, "No: die in the belief of your mother!" (who was a Christian) has gone the rounds of the Christian pulpits. And yet we have the statement of his nephew, Col. Hitchcock, that he had no daughter to die during his lifetime.