infinite wisdom and power, and if so, were not these two properties abundantly fufficient,-completely competent to effectuate every important purpofe neceffary to the ho nour of the divine government or ufeful, to the human race? Why then all this temporizing with Pharaoh king of Egypt? Why did the Jewish god fuffer himfelf to be fo often defeated? Why fhould the hard-heartedness of the Egyptian king triumph over the omnipotence of Jehovah? If he had chofen the Jews as his peculiar people, as the favorites of his divine affections, it is fair to prefume that he would protect them upon all occafions and encircle them with the efficacious plenitude of all his attributes. The fact, however is, that he never chofe the Jews or any other people to be the feperate and diftinct objects of his attachment; his perfections demonftrate the contrary, and prove that all beings, fenfi tive and intelligent, are equally entitled to the protecting influence of his benignity and that they fhare in the full flowing bounties of his benevolence. The partialities and the imperfections of man have induced him to form very erroneous conceptions of divine power; he forgets in contemplating his own deficiencies-in comparing the motives and refults of his own conduct, that there exists in nature a power extremely different and distinct, a being of infinite and incomprehenfible energies concerning whofe effeffential exiftence and our own, all comparison partakes only of contempt and degradation. The true Theifm of nature has been more injured by the Jewish theology than by any other confideration whatever. The mythological tales of the Greeks and the Romans-the rencounters of their Gods with earthly beings have loft all the facredness of their influence, and ferve only at prefent as matter of exalted amufement; but the divine character prefumed to be connected with the Jewish theology, renders it a fyftem noxious to the principles of virtue, and hoftile to all the moral fympathies of man. Jewish god is a monster, and ought to be held in abhorTence by all the friends to truth and human happiness.

The

COMMUNICATION

Of the Religion of Deifm compared with the Chriftiani Religion, and the fuperiority of the former over the

latter.

CONCLUDED FROM OUR LAST

The Jews did not believe the firft chapters of Genifis to be fact. Muimonides, one of the most learned and celebrated of the Jewish authors who lived in the eleventh century, fays, in his book MORE NEBACHIM. We ought not to understand nor take according to the letter that which is written in the book of the creation, (the book of Genefis.) Taken, says he, according to the letter, efpecially with refpect to the work of four days, it gives the moft abfurd and extravagant ideas of God.

But the church of Rome having fet up its new religion which it called Chriftianity, and invented 'the creed which it named the apostles creed, in which it calls Jefus the only son of God, conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary, things of which it is impofsible that man or woman can have any idea, and confequently no belief but in words, and for which there is no authority but the idle ftory of Jofeph's dream in the first chapter of Matthew, which any defigning impoftor or foolish fanatic... might make, it then manufactured the allegories in the book of Genefis into fact, and the allegorical tree of life and tree of knowledge into real trees, contrary to the belief of the first christians, and for which there is not the leaft authority in any of the books of the New Teftament, for. in none of them is there any mention made of such plaee as the Garden of Eden, nor of any thing that is faid to have happened there.

But the church of Rome could not erect the perfon called Jefus into a Saviour of the World without making the allegories in the book of Genefis into fact, though the New Teftament, as before obferved, gives no authority for it. All at once the allegorical tree of knowledge became, according to the church, a real tree, the fruit of is.

real fruit, and the eating of it finful. As prieft-craft was always the enemy of knowledge, because prieft craft fupports itself by keeping people in delufion, and ignorance, it was confiftent with its policy to make the acquifition of knowledge a real fin.

The church of Rome having done this, it then brings forward Jefus the fon of Mary as fuffering death to redeem mankind from fin, which Adam, it fays, had brought into the world by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. But as it is impofsible for reason to believe fuch a ftory because it can fee no reason for it, nor have any evidence. of it, the church then tells us we must not regard our reason, but muft believe, as it were, and that through thick and thin, as if God had given man reafon like a play. thing, or a rattle, on purpose to make fun of him. Rea fon is the forbidden tree of prieft-craft, and may ferve to explain the allegory of the forbidden tree of knowledge, for we may reasonably fuppofe the allegory had fome meaning and application at the time it was invented. It was the practice of the eaflern nations to convey their meaning by allegory, and relate it in the manner of fact Jefus followed the fame method, yet nobody ever fuppofed the allegory or parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, the Prodigal Son, the Ten Virgins, &c, were facts. Why then should the tree of knowledge, which is far more ro mantic in idea than the parable in the New Testament are, be fuppofed to be a real tree. The anfwer to this is, because the church could not make its new fangled fyftem, which it called Chriftianity, hold together with out it. To have made Chrift to die on account of an al legorical tree would have been too bare-faced a fable.

* The remark of Emperor Julien, on the ftory of the Tree of Knowledge is worth obferving. "If," faid he, "there ever had been, or could be, a Tree of Know"ledge, inftead of God forbidding man to eat thereof, it "would be that of which he would order him to eat the "most."

But the account, as it is given of Jefus in the New Tef tament even vifionary as it is, does not fupport 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 rofe again in good health on the Sun-. day morning, for we do not hear that he was fick. This cannot be called dying, and is rather making fun of death than fuffering it. There are thousands of men and wo, men also, who, if they could know they fhould come back again in good health in about thirty-fix hours, would prefer fuch kind of death for the fake of the experiment, and to know what the other fide of the grave was. Why then should that which would be only a voyage of curi ous amusement to us be magnified into merit and fuffer. ings in him? If a God he could not fuffer death, for im mortality 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 Jefus Chrift is altoge ther an invention of the church of Rome and not the doc. trine of the New Tellament. What the writers of the New Teftament attempt to prove by the ftory of Jefus is, the resurrection of the same body from the grave, which was the belief of the Pharifees, in oppofition to the Sad. ducees (a fect of Jews) who denied it. Paul, who was brought up a Pharifee, labours hard at this point for it, was the creed of his own Pharifaical church. The XV chap, 1 of Corinthians is full of fuppofed cafes and affer. tions about the resurrection of the fame body, but there is not a word in it about redemption. This chapter makes part of the funeral fervice of the Epifcopal church. The dogma of the redemption is the fable of priest-craft invented fince the time the New Teftament was compiled, and the agreeable delufion of it fuited with the depravity of immoral livers. When men are taught to afcribe all their crimes and vices to the temptations of the Devil, and to believe that Jefus, by his death, rubs all off and pays their paffage to heaven gratis, they become as carelefs in morals as a fpendthrift 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 fuch a cheap, easy, and lazy way of getting to heaven as has a tendency to induce men to hug the delufion of it to their own injury.

But there are times when men have ferious thoughts, and it is at fuch times when they begin to think, that they begin to doubt the truth of the Chriflian Religion, and well they may, for it is too fanciful and too full of conjecture, inconfiftency, improbability, and irrationality, to afford confolation to the thoughtful man. His reafon revolts against his creed. He fees that none of its articles are proved, or can be proved. He may believe that fuch a perfon as is called Jefus (for Christ was not his name) was born and grew to be a man, because it is no more than a natural and probable cafe. But who is to prove he is the fon of God, that he was begotten by the Holy Ghoft? Of thefe 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. impofed upon.

He may believe that Jefus was crucified, because many others were crucified, but who is to prove he was crucifi ed for the sins of the world? This article has no evidence not even in the New Teftament,; and if it had, where is the proof that the New Teftament, in relating things neither probable nor proveable, is to be believed as true? When an article in a creed does not admit of proof nor of probability the falvo is to call it revelation; But this is only putting one difficulty in the place of another, for it is as impofsible to prove a thing to be revelation as it is to prove that Mary was gotten with child by the Holy Ghoft.

Here it is that the religion of Deifm is fuperior to the Christian religion. It is free from all thofe invented and torturing articles that shock our reason or injure our humanity, and with which the Chriftian religion abounds.