Thus did kings, conquerors, and corrupt rulers of nations see the justifying precedents to be drawn from these books for all their enormities; and as for the fathers or heads of the Christian sect, and other religious impostors, they could be at no loss to find in them just whatever suited their respective schemes of deception. The learned amongst the early fathers saw and acknowledged the astro-allegories about Adam, Eve, the serpent, Garden of Eden, and fall of man; but their successors, about the beginning of the 4th century, when they decided upon getting up a new will and testament for Jehovah, in order to make their system hold together, thought it necessary to cause his departure from the usual practice of testators—that he should not be allowed to revoke the old Jewish will, which for good reasons, was to be retained in full force. Without this document their most essential dogmas would have had no foundation; and as it "would have been too bare-faced a fable to make Jesus die on account of an allegorical tree," the forbidden one of Genesis must be converted into a real tree; for then it would, together with its accompaniments, furnish mystical pegs upon which to hang the indispensable dogmas of original sin and redemption.
* In Hosea xiii., 16, we have a declaration "That their
infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with
child shall be ripped up"!!! This and the Midianitish
slaughter and extermination, together with that of the
Amalekites, will perhaps stand for ever unmatched in the
history of human cruelties.
These appear to have been the ruling motives of those who gradually manufactured the Christian scheme (for it was done by piecemeal, by a number of hands, and in different centuries) and in adopting the Old Testament it was necessary, by this affiliation, to connect its list of fabulous prodigies with the new code,* or fresh series of miracles which had been invented for, and are recorded in, the new will of the Jewish deity:—**
"Ay, and sound ones too,
Seen, heard, attested, every thing—but true"
In forcing this connexion still closer, the fabricators had no difficulty in finding that, in their series of wonders, the principal violations of Nature's laws had been foretold in the Jewish prophets.*** This was a clincher which served to confirm the supernatural texture of their religion, quite as well as the cloud-conveyed Shastras did that of Brahma, the laws of Moses from the cloud-capped Sinai, or any other of the numerous human laws which have originated beyond the clouds, and been palmed upon ignorance by impostors. Clouds, shadows, phantoms, ghosts, etc., have ever been the favorite machinery of priests. According to the notoriously false prediction of St. Paul, Jesus, on his second coming, was to be cloud-delivered; and this advent, it was positively asserted, would take place during his own (Paul's) lifetime.
* Matthew pretends that Jeremiah foretold that Christ should
be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver. Where is this to be
found in Jeremiah?
** When the latent astronomical sense of these two
testaments is made manifest, a necessary connexion between
them is perceived; owing to their common foundation in Solar
adoration, and that of the other physical powers of Nature.
*** These prophets were in reality nothing but strolling
soothsayers, fortune-tellers, psalmists or palmists; and
being mob orators by education and profession, with a
capability of reading and writing, they were fitted to
deceive the ignorant in many ways. Dodwell, De Jure
Laicorum, asserts that they prepared themselves to prophecy
by drinking wine. They were also jugglers, musicians,
etc., etc.
But our church mystagogues will very easily reconcile this unfortunate failure with "gospel truth." As the Old Testament compilers had made up their collection chiefly of any traditionary or legendary shreds they could gather,* so did their successors, the Christians, in their new miscellany. The Therapeutæ, or Egyptian monks, had supplied a large portion, as is confessed even by Eusebius himself (see Lecture Second), but by a luckless anachronism, the spurious writings that were selected to form the new will of god, were not (according to the best authorities) finally voted to be such until the Council of Laodicea;** so that the present document had no existence till three hundred and sixty-eight years after the death of the testator, for it is quite orthodox to say that Jesus was "God the Testator."
* The Pharisees of the second temple chose the books they
liked best among a multitude of forgeries. The Talmud
relates that this synagogue were about to reject by far the
best books of the Bible—viz., Proverbs, Job and
Ecclesiastes; not owing to their not being Jewish, but Pagan
writings, but because they were contradictory to the law of
god. It was not only the opinion of Ebenezra, but even of
Jerome himself, that Job is not a Hebrew book.
** The deadly animosity and quarrelling for which the
Council of Nice was so famous, would prevent anything like
decision; and, therefore, it is much more probable that the
finishing hand in voting what should form the New
Testament, was put at Laodicea, and not at Nice, especially
as we know that the book of Revelation was rejected at
Council of Laodicea; but again admitted long afterwards.
From the discordant and immoral tendency of the greater portion of the old will of the Jewish god, there could arise but little hope that his new one would benefit the human race; so according to the spirit of its own terrible denunciation (Matt, x., 34, 35, 36), we find that its votaries, the religious fanatics both of early and modern times, have not yielded in the slightest degree but been fully equal in holy cruelty to the Jews, who were utterly inaccessible to every feeling of pity or humanity. These two superhuman Testaments now form a book, which, from its ill-deserved conventional pre-eminence, and the hydra-priesthoods which it quarters upon industry, is the chief scourge of modern Europe. The contemptible ignorance, credulity, and fraud which support its tyrannous authority as a supernatural revelation; the futile attempt to enforce a belief in its literal meaning as indispensable to the happiness of mankind; and the universal degradation and misery which it perpetuates, by the inbred hostility which all its priesthoods have ever evinced towards every improvement that would enlighten and elevate the human mind, have done more to disgust and misanthropize all ingenuous and rational minds, and to inspire them with a settled aversion for the ways of man and his institutions, than all the other moral and physical evils now experienced in Christendom. While these master curses are maintained in their pestiferous sway, it will be impossible for their victim, man, to taste of happiness through the attainment of civil liberty to any beneficial extent, or to approach truth and virtue by philosophical researches in the path of Nature; for there is no arriving at these but by the utter extermination of all the fraudulent and idolatrous religions pretending to supernatural revelation.
END OF LECTURE FIRST. [ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]