Every person, of whatever religious denomination he may be, is a DEIST in the first
article of his Creed. Deism, from the Latin word Deus, God, is the belief of a God, and
this belief is the first article of every man's creed.
It is on this article, universally consented to by all mankind, that the Deist builds
his church, and here he rests. Whenever we step aside from this article, by mixing it with
articles of human invention, we wander into a labyrinth of uncertainty and fable, and
become exposed to every kind of imposition by pretenders to revelation.
The Persian shows the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster, the lawgiver of Persia, and calls it
the divine law; the Bramin shows the Shaster, revealed, he says, by God to Brama, and
given to him out of a cloud; the Jew shows what he calls the law of Moses, given, he says,
by God, on the Mount Sinai; the Christian shows a collection of books and epistles,
written by nobody knows who, and called the New Testament; and the Mahometan shows the
Koran, given, he says, by God to Mahomet: each of these calls itself revealed religion,
and the only true Word of God, and this the followers of each profess to believe from the
habit of education, and each believes the others are imposed upon.
But when the divine gift of reason begins to expand itself in the mind and calls man to
reflection, he then reads and contemplates God and His works, and not in the books
pretending to be revelation. The creation is the Bible of the true believer in God.
Everything in this vast volume inspires him with sublime ideas of the Creator. The little
and paltry, and often obscene, tales of the Bible sink into wretchedness when put in
comparison with this mighty work.
The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles to confirm his faith,
for what can be a greater miracle than the creation itself, and his own existence?
There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found in any
other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our
reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in
order to force himself to believe them.
But in Deism our reason and our belief become happily united. The wonderful structure
of the universe, and everything we behold in the system of the creation, prove to us, far
better than books can do, the existence of a God, and at the same time proclaim His
attributes.
It is by the exercise of our reason that we are enabled to contemplate God in His
works, and imitate Him in His ways. When we see His care and goodness extended over all
His creatures, it teaches us our duty toward each other, while it calls forth our
gratitude to Him. It is by forgetting God in His works, and running after the books of
pretended revelation, that man has wandered from the straight path of duty and happiness,
and become by turns the victim of doubt and the dupe of delusion.
Except in the first article in the Christian creed, that of believing in God, there is
not an article in it but fills the mind with doubt as to the truth of it, the instant man
begins to think. Now every article in a creed that is necessary to the happiness and
salvation of man, ought to be as evident to the reason and comprehension of man as the
first article is, for God has not given us reason for the purpose of confounding us, but
that we should use it for our own happiness and His glory.
The truth of the first article is proved by God Himself, and is universal; for the
creation is of itself demonstration of the existence of a Creator. But the second article,
that of God's begetting a son, is not proved in like manner, and stands on no other
authority than that of a tale.
Certain books in what is called the New Testament tell us that Joseph dreamed that the
angel told him so, (Matthew i, 20): "And behold the angel of the Lord appeared to
Joseph, in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy
wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost."
The evidence upon this article bears no comparison with the evidence upon the first
article, and therefore is not entitled to the same credit, and ought not to be made an
article in a creed, because the evidence of it is defective, and what evidence there is,
is doubtful and suspicious. We do not believe the first article on the authority of books,
whether called Bibles or Korans, nor yet on the visionary authority of dreams, but on the
authority of God's own visible works in the creation.
The nations who never heard of such books, nor of such people as Jews, Christians, or
Mahometans, believe the existence of a God as fully as we do, because it is self-evident.
The work of man's hands is a proof of the existence of man as fully as his personal
appearance would be.
When we see a watch, we have as positive evidence of the existence of a watchmaker, as
if we saw him; and in like manner the creation is evidence to our reason and our senses of
the existence of a Creator. But there is nothing in the works of God that is evidence that
He begat a son, nor anything in the system of creation that corroborates such an idea,
and, therefore, we are not authorized in believing it.
What truth there may be in the story that Mary, before she was married to Joseph, was
kept by one of the Roman soldiers, and was with child by him, I leave to be settled
between the Jews and Christians. The story however has probability on its side, for her
husband Joseph suspected and was jealous of her, and was going to put her away.
"Joseph, her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example,
was going to put her away, privately." (Matt. i, 19).
I have already said that "whenever we step aside from the first article (that of
believing in God), we wander into a labyrinth of uncertainty," and here is evidence
of the justness of the remark, for it is impossible for us to decide who was Jesus
Christ's father.
But presumption can assume anything, and therefore it makes Joseph's dream to be of
equal anthority with the existence of God, and to help it on calls it revelation. It is
impossible for the mind of man in its serious moments, however it may have been entangled
by education, or beset by priestcraft, not to stand still and doubt upon the truth of this
article and of its creed.
But this is not all. The second article of the Christian creed having brought the son
of Mary into the world (and this Mary, according to the chronological tables, was a girl
of only fifteen years of age when this son was born), the next article goes on to account
for his being begotten, which was, that when he grew a man he should be put to death, to
expiate, they say, the sin that Adam brought into the world by eating an apple or some
kind of forbidden fruit.
But though this is the creed of the Church of Rome, from whence the Protestants
borrowed it, it is a creed which that Church has manufactured of itself, for it is not
contained in nor derived from, the book called the New Testament.
The four books called the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which give, or
pretend to give, the birth, sayings, life, preaching, and death of Jesus Christ, make no
mention of what is called the fall of man; nor is the name of Adam to be found in any of
those books, which it certainly would be if the writers of them believed that Jesus was
begotten, born, and died for the purpose of redeeming mankind from the sin which Adam had
brought into the world. Jesus never speaks of Adam himself, of the garden of Eden, nor of
what is called the fall of man.
But the Church of Rome having set up its new religion, which it called Christianity,
invented the creed which it named the Apostles's Creed, in which it calls Jesus the only
son of God, conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary; things of which it
is impossible that man or woman can have any idea, and consequently no belief but in
words; and for which there is no authority but the idle story of Joseph's dream in the
first chapter of Matthew, which any designing imposter or foolish fanatic might make.
It then manufactured the allegories in the book of Genesis into fact, and the
allegorical tree of life and the tree of knowledge into real trees, contrary to the belief
of the first Christians, and for which there is not the least authority in any of the
books of the New Testament; for in none of them is there any mention made of such place as
the Garden of Eden, nor of anything that is said to have happened there.
But the Church of Rome could not erect the person called Jesus into a Savior of the
world without making the allegories in the book of Genesis into fact, though the New
Testament, as before observed, gives no authority for it. All at once the allegorical tree
of knowledge became, according to the Church, a real tree, the fruit of it real fruit, and
the eating of it sinful.
As priestcraft was always the enemy of knowledge, because priestcraft supports itself
by keeping people in delusion and ignorance, it was consistent with its policy to make the
acquisition of knowledge a real sin.
The Church of Rome having done this, it then brings forward Jesus the son of Mary as
suffering death to redeem mankind from sin, which Adam, it says, had brought into the
world by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. But as it is impossible for reason to
believe such a story, because it can see no reason for it, nor have any evidence of it,
the Church then tells us we must not regard our reason, but must believe, as it were, and
that through thick and thin, as if God had given man reason like a plaything, or a rattle,
on purpose to make fun of him.
Reason is the forbidden tree of priestcraft, and may serve to explain the allegory of
the forbidden tree of knowledge, for we may reasonably suppose the allegory had some
meaning and application at the time it was invented. It was the practice of the Eastern
nations to convey their meaning by allegory, and relate it in the manner of fact. Jesus
followed the same method, yet nobody ever supposed the allegory or parable of the rich man
and Lazarus, the Prodigal Son, the ten Virgins, etc., were facts.
Why then should the tree of knowledge, which is far more romantic in idea than the
parables in the New Testament are, be supposed to be a real tree? The answer to this is,
because the Church could not make its new-fangled system, which it called Christianity,
hold together without it. To have made Christ to die on account of an allegorical tree
would have been too barefaced a fable.
But the account, as it is given of Jesus in the New Testament, even visionary as it is,
does not support the creed of the Church that he died for the redemption of the world.
According to that account he was crucified and buried on the Friday, and rose again in
good health on the Sunday morning, for we do not hear that he was sick. This cannot be
called dying, and is rather making fun of death than suffering it.
There are thousands of men and women also, who if they could know they should come back
again in good health in about thirty-six hours, would prefer such kind of death for the
sake of the experiment, and to know what the other side of the grave was. Why then should
that which would be only a voyage of curious amusement to us, be magnified into merit and
suffering in him? If a God, he could not suffer death, for immortality cannot die, and as
a man his death could be no more than the death of any other person.
The belief of the redemption of Jesus Christ is altogether an invention of the Church
of Rome, not the doctrine of the New Testament. What the writers of the New Testament
attempted to prove by the story of Jesus is the resurrection of the same body from the
grave, which was the belief of the Pharisees, in opposition to the Sadducees (a sect of
Jews) who denied it.
Paul, who was brought up a Pharisee, labors hard at this for it was the creed of his
own Pharisaical Church: I Corinthians xv is full of supposed cases and assertions about
the resurrection of the same body, but there is not a word in it about redemption. This
chapter makes part of the funeral service of the Episcopal Church. The dogma of the
redemption is the fable of priestcraft invented since the time the New Testament was
compiled, and the agreeable delusion of it suited with the depravity of immoral livers.
When men are taught to ascribe all their crimes and vices to the temptations of the devil,
and to believe that Jesus, by his death, rubs all off, and pays their passage to heaven
gratis, they become as careless in morals as a spendthrift would be of money, were he told
that his father had engaged to pay off all his scores.
It is a doctrine not only dangerous to morals in this world, but to our happiness in
the next world, because it holds out such a cheap, easy, and lazy way of getting to
heaven, as has a tendency to induce men to hug the delusion of it to their own injury.
But there are times when men have serious thoughts, and it is at such times, when they
begin to think, that they begin to doubt the truth of the Christian religion; and well
they may, for it is too fanciful and too full of conjecture, inconsistency, improbability
and irrationality, to afford consolation to the thoughtful man. His reason revolts against
his creed. He sees that none of its articles are proved, or can be proved.
He may believe that such a person as is called Jesus (for Christ was not his name) was
born and grew to be a man, because it is no more than a natural and probable case. But who
is to prove he is the son of God, that he was begotten by the Holy Ghost? Of these things
there can be no proof; and that which admits not of proof, and is against the laws of
probability and the order of nature, which God Himself has established, is not an object
for belief. God has not given man reason to embarrass him, but to prevent his being
imposed upon.
He may believe that Jesus was crucified, because many others were crucified, but who is
to prove he was crucified for the sins of the world? This article has no evidence, not
even in the New Testament; and if it had, where is the proof that the New Testament, in
relating things neither probable nor provable, is to be believed as true?
When an article in a creed does not admit of proof nor of probability, the salvo is to
call it revelation; but this is only putting one difficulty in the place of another, for
it is as impossible to prove a thing to be revelation as it is to prove that Mary was
gotten with child by the Holy Ghost.
Here it is that the religion of Deism is superior to the Christian Religion. It is free
from all those invented and torturing articles that shock our reason or injure our
humanity, and with which the Christian religion abounds. Its creed is pure, and sublimely
simple. It believes in God, and there it rests.
It honors reason as the choicest gift of God to man, and the faculty by which he is
enabled to contemplate the power, wisdom and goodness of the Creator displayed in the
creation; and reposing itself on His protection, both here and hereafter, it avoids all
presumptuous beliefs, and rejects, as the fabulous inventions of men, all books pretending
to revelation.
-Thomas Paine
