But if, in consequence of such measures as you propose, you put it out of the power of the Directory to make a good peace, and to accept of terms you would afterwards reprobate, it is yourselves that must bear the censure.

You conclude your report by the following address to your colleagues :

"Let us hasten, representatives of the people! to affix to these tutelary laws the seal of our unanimous approbation. All our fellow-citizens will learn to cherish political liberty from the enjoyment of religious liberty: you will have broken the most powerful arm of your enemies; you will have surrounded this assembly with the most impregnant rampart-confidence, and the people's love. O my colleagues! how desirable is that popularity which is the offspring of good laws! What a consolation it will be to us hereafter, when returned to our own firesides, to hear from the mouths of our fellow-citizens, these simple expressions-Blessings reward you, men of peace! you have restored to us our temples-our ministers-the liberty of adoring the God of our fathers: you have recalled harmony to our familiesmorality to our hearts you have made us adore the legislature and respect all its laws !"

Is it possible, citizen representative, that you can be serious in this address ? Were the lives of the priests under the ancient regime such as to justify any thing you say of them? Were not all France convinced of their immorality? Were they not considered as the patrons of debauchery and domestic infidelity, and not as the patrons of morals ? What was their pretended celibacy but perpetual adultery? What was their blasphemous pretensions to forgive sins, but an encouragement to the commission of them, and a love for their own? Do you want to lead again into France all the vices of which they have been the patrons, and to overspread the republic with English pensioners! It is cheaper to corrupt than to conquer; and the English government, unable to conquer, will stoop to corrupt. Arrogance and meanness, though in appearance opposite, are vices of the same heart.

Instead of concluding in the manner you have done, you ought rather to have said,

"O! my colleagues! we are arrived at a glorious period—a period that promises more than we could have expected, and all that we could have wished. Let us hasten to take into consideration the honours and rewards due to our brave defenders. Let us hasten to give encouragement to agriculture and manufactures, that commerce may reinstate itself, and our people have employment. Let us review the condition of the suffering poor, and wipe from our country the reproach of forgetting them. Let us devise means to establish schools of instruction, that we may banish the ignorance that the ancient regime

of kings and priests had spread among the people.-Let us propagate morality, unfettered by superstition-Let us cultivate justice and benevolence, that the God of our fathers may bless us. The helpless infant and the aged poor cry to us to remember them-Let not wretchedness be seen in our streets-Let France exhibit to the world the glorious example of expelling ignorance and misery together.

"Let these, my virtuous colleagues! be the subject of our care, that, when we return among our fellow-citizens, they may say, Worthy representatives! you have done well. You have done justice and honour to our brave defenders. You have encouraged agriculture-cherished our decayed manufactures—given new life to commerce, and employment to our people. You have removed from our country the reproach of forgetting the poor-You have caused the cry of the orphan to cease-You have wiped the tear from the eye of the suffering mother-You have given comfort to the aged and infirm-You have penetrated into the gloomy recesses of wretchedness, and have banished it. Welcome among us, ye brave and virtuous representatives! and may your example be followed by your successors!" THOMAS PAINE.

Paris, 1797

1

AN

EXAMINATION

OF THE

PASSAGES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT,

QUOTED FROM THE OLD

AND CALLED

PROPHECIES CONCERNING JESUS CHRIST

TO WHICH IS PREFIXED,

AN ESSAY ON DREAM.

ALSO,

AN APPENDIX,

CONTAINING THE

CONTRADICTORY DOCTRINES BETWEEN MATTHEW AND MARK;

AND MY

PRIVATE THOUGHTS ON A FUTURE STATE.

PREFACE.

TO THE MINISTERS AND PREACHERS OF ALL DENOMINATIONS OF RELIGION.

It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error. But nature has not given to every one a talent for the purpose; and among those to whom such a talent is given, there is often a want of disposition or of courage to do it.

The world, or more properly speaking, that small part of it called Christendom, or the Christian World, has been amused for more than a thousand years with accounts of Prophecies in the Old Testament, about the coming of the person called Jesus Christ, and thousands of sermons have been preached, and volumes written, to make man believe it.

In the following treatise I have examined all the passages in the New Testament, quoted from the Old, and called prophecies concerning Jesus Christ, and I find no such thing as a prophecy of any such person, and I deny there are any. The passages all relate to circumstances the Jewish nation was in at the time they were written or spoken, and not to any thing that was or was not to happen in the world several hundred years afterwards; and I have shown what the circumstances were, to which the passages apply or refer. I have given chapter and verse for every thing I have said, and have not gone out of the books of the Old and New Testament for evidence that the passages are not prophecies of the person called Jesus Christ.

The prejudice of unfounded belief, often degenerates into the prejudice of custom, and becomes, at last, rank hypocrisy.When men, from custom or fashion, or any worldly motive, profess or pretend to believe what they do not believe, nor can give any reason for believing, they unship the helm of their morality; and being no longer honest to their own minds, they feel no moral difficulty in being unjust to others. It is from the influence of this vice, hypocrisy, that we see so many Church and Meeting-going professors and pretenders to religion, so full of trick and deceit in their dealings, and so loose in the performance of their engagements, that they are not to be trusted farther than the laws of the country will bind them. Morality has no hold on their minds, no restraint on their actions.