It is computed that about 30,000 miserable victims were tortured and burnt for this supposed offence; yet, if this blood be compared with the quantity shed by the still surviving sister, it would appear but as a drop in the ocean. But the same sun of science, in exact ratio as it is now dispelling the mists of ignorance and superstition which the mother, theology, has raised, is hastening the remaining twin's downfall. Witchcraft was one of the thousand dismal evils arising from the belief in preternatural existences, but quite conducive to the views in trade of all church mystagogues, who never failed to sanction and abet the horrid executions of the poor defenceless culprits. The priests drew their justifying precedent from that book in which the vindication of every crime may be found: in Exod. xxii., 18, the inhuman order is given, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Here we have a point-blank justification of all those atrocious immolations which disgraced humanity for so many centuries, and laid the foundation of detestable laws, in the countries of America. At Salem, where so many murders were committed for the fanciful crime of witchcraft, the accusations originated in the house of a priest were chiefly carried on by priests, who blew the terrible flame of fanaticism against the helpless accused, whose lives were acknowledged to be moral and blameless. Nineteen of these innocent victims were executed,* one was pressed to death because he would not plead to the indictment, and eight more were condemned. This hideous business ended by a declaration of the priests that, in the whole the devil got just nothing; but God got praises, Christ got subjects, the holy spirit got temples, the church got addition, and the souls of men got everlasting benefits! With similar views, and in such a laudable spirit, John Wesley exclaimed, "While I live I will bear the most public testimony I can to the reality of witchcraft." At a torturing and burning which took place at Irvine in 1613, in the affair of Margaret Barclay and others, there were present the Earl of Eglinton, the ministers of Ayr, Kilmarnock, Dairy, and Irvine, when three innocent people were sacrificed.** these wretched
* It is said that several of these victims were persuaded by
the priests to believe, and even to confess that they had
been guilty of this imaginary crime. This affords a
melancholy proof that, in a state of ignorance, the
credulity of man is absolutely boundless.
** See Scott's "Demonology," and Murphy's "Essay."
What! Were not these holy ministers prompted by their superior learning and humanity, to endeavor to save people? Quite the contrary, they appear to have been there rather to countenance and approve, if not to enjoy, the shocking spectacle. Such as these were the heavenly teachers, who, for more than a thousand years, asserted, preached, and practised, that the rack was the fittest engine of conviction, and the stake the most effectual cure for unbelief.* As conservators and upholders of every invention in the delusive machinery of supernaturalism, upon which their trade wholly depends, anything in the shape of human interference in favor of the victims, or any compunctious feelings for the barbarities which these men of peace and love sanctioned, were altogether out of the question on such occasions. No animal has ever been more cruel and remorseless than priests of all religions have been, in supporting those delusions which support them, whenever they had the power.*** The Jew books being now nullified as authorities for the existence of witchcraft, what sustains their validity in all other matters?
* What terrific outrages does superstitious ignorance
perpetrate. Thousands have been burnt for witchcraft.
Millions have been murdered for being what bad government
and Christianity have made them. And hundreds of millions
are threatened with eternal tortures for having beliefs
which it is impossible for them not to have.
** Belief or disbelief (being the work of the judgment, and
not of the will) is involuntary; and there is neither merit
nor demerit in either. You believe only that which seems to
you to be true, and, in spite of your hypocrisy, I defy you
to believe more. What does the Atheist less? And that which
appears to you to be a lie, you necessarily reject, and what
does the Atheist more.
*** Superstition is to be feared only when the authority of
iniquitous laws rallies round her standard, for then her
cruel and sanguinary nature is gratified.
Such has been Jewish and Christian immorality and wickedness, in punishing the guiltless for the fanciful crime of witchcraft; and in other respects we may find in these books innumerable instances of sanctioned cruelty and injustice, both in example and precept:—take the following malevolent sentiment, said to have been uttered by the all-ruling power of the universe; "let his children be fatherless; let them be vagabonds continually, and beg; let them also seek their bread out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the stranger spoil his labor, let there be none to extend mercy to him, neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children; let his posterity be cut off," etc., etc. Again, in Exod. xxiii., 3.
"Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his own cause." These are specimens of Bible morality! He alone is the blasphemer who attributes such vicious and malevolent orders to the supreme power.
The Christian, in their presumptuous and unwarrantable assertions, assume that the science of ethics is comparatively of modern date, and that the personage called Jesus Christ was the first who taught that pure morality and virtue constituted the summum bonum of human happiness; and that all morality owes its existence to their gospels; and that all ethical goodness to be found out of Christendom, is entirely attributable to their Scriptures. But nothing can be farther from the truth than this evangelical detraction, with its inexorable disregard to facts. Fortunately for the calumniated cause of Paganism, we have data, chronological and historical, to show that the science of ethics was not only perfectly known to the ancients, but that the few really good things which are to be found in the New Testament, were borrowed from what is called "the divine philosophy of the ancients;" or the moral maxims of Pythagoras, Thales, Solon, Bias, Pittacus, Chilo, Cleobulus, Periander, and many others, who lived full 500 years before the Christian era. This is so demonstrably true, that the sayings of these men are in some instances copied into the New Testament almost word for word; but for the maxims of that book which are either bad or questionable (and these are not a few), there is no authority to be found in the ancients cited.
The compilers of the above book have also drawn literally from the moral maxims of Confucius,* who, according to some writers, has been held in great esteem in China for about 4,000 years, but all agree that he lived at least 550 before our era.
* As names in eastern languages are expressive of some
attribute or quality adherent to the possessor; so Confucius
signifies a speaker of wisdom.
His 24th moral is the most precious standard maxim in ethics: "Do to another what you would he should do to you, and do not unto another what you would should not be done unto you." To impress this indelibly upon the mind, as the concentrated essence of morality, he adds, "thou needest this law alone, it is the foundation and principle of all the rest." In his 53rd moral, he says, "Acknowledge thy benefits by return of other benefits, but never revenge injuries." This is a noble maxim when compared with that abject and slavish one of the "new will of God," which enjoins the holding up of the cheek to receive a second blow. The disciples of Confucius are yet numerous, though many thousands of years have elapsed since he lived. He instructed as well by example as by his precepts; and it would be well if his morals were taught in all the schools of Christendom, instead of dogmas and creeds which are unintelligible, inasmuch as they relate to things which have no proven existence, The German writer Boll, very justly observes that, "if Christianity be got rid of, which seems likely, men must labor not to let such absurd ideas get into the new religion of morals, which will be established on the ruins of superstition." He was alluding to the eternal tortures of those priestly indispensables called souls, and other unsightly dogmas.