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bible, written before that time, nor could it be, for Adam and Eve are names taken from the cosmogany of the Persians. Henry Lord, in his book, written from Surat, and dedicated, as I have already said, to the Arch Bishop of Canterbury, says that in the Persian cosmogany the name of the first man was Adamoh, and of the woman Hevah.* From hence comes the Adam and Eve of the book of Genesis. In the cosmogany of India, of which I shall speak in a future number, the name of the first man was Pourous, and of the woman Parcoutee. We want a knowledge of the Sanscrit language of India to understand the meaning of the names, and I mentioned it in this place, only to show that it is from the cosmogany of Persia rather than that of India that the cosmogany in Genesis has been fabricated by the Jews, who returned from captivity by the liberality of Cyrus, king of Persia. There is, however, reason to conclude, on the authority of Sir William Jones, who resided several years in India, that these names were very expressive in the language to which they belonged, for in speaking of this language he says (see the Asiatic researches) "The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of wonderful structure; it is more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either."

These hints, which are intended to be continued, will serve to show that a society for inquiring into the ancient state of the world, and the state of ancient history, so far as history is connected with systems of religion ancient and modern, may become a useful and instructive institution. There is good reason to believe we have been in great error, with respect to the antiquity of the Bible, as well as imposed upon by its contents. Truth ought to be the object of every man; for without truth there can be no real happiness to a thoughtful mind, or any assurance of happiness hereafter. It is the duty of man to obtain all the knowledge he can, and then make the best use of it.

T. P.

TO MR. MOORE, OF NEW YORK,

COMMONLY CALLED

BISHOP MOORE.

I HAVE read in the newspapers your account of the visit you made to the unfortunate General Hamilton, and of administering

* In an English edition of the Bible, in 1583, the first woman is called Hevah.

EDITOR OF THE PROSPECT.

to him a ceremony of your church, which you call the Holy Com

munion.

I regret the fate of General Hamilton, and I so far hope with you that it will be a warning to thoughtless man not to sport away the life that God has given him; but with respect to other parts of your letter I think it very reprehensible, and betrays great ignorance of what true religion is. But you are a priest, you get your living by it, and it is not your worldly interest to undeceive yourself.

After giving an account of your administering to the deceased what you call the Holy Communion, you add, " By reflecting on this melancholy event, let the humble believer be encouraged ever to hold fast that precious faith which is the only source of true consolation in the last extremity of nature. Let the infidel be persuaded to abandon his opposition to the Gospel."

To show you, sir, that your promise of consolation from scripture has no foundation to stand upon, I will cite to you one of the greatest falsehoods upon record, and which was given, as the record says, for the purpose, and as a promise of consolation.

In the epistle called "the First Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians," (chap. 4) the writer consoles the Thessalonians as to the case of their friends who were already dead. He does this by informing them, and he does it he says, by the word of the Lord, (a most notorious falsehood) that the general resurrection of the dead, and the ascension of the living, will be in his and their days; that their friends will then come to life again; that the dead in Christ will rise first." Then wE, (says he, v. 17) which are alive, and remain, shall be caught up together with THEM in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord-wherefore comfort one another with these words."

Delusion and falsehood cannot be carried higher than they are in this passage. You, sir, are but a novice in the art. The words admit of no equivocation. The whole passage is in the first person and the present tense, "We which are alive." Had the writer meant a future time, and a distant generation, it must have been in the third person and the future tense, They who shall then be alive." I am thus particular for the purpose of nailing you down to the text, that you may not ramble from it, nor put other constructions upon the words than they will bear, which priests are very apt to do.

Now, sir, it is impossible for serious man, to given the divine gift of reason, and who employs reverence and adore the God that gave it, it is, I for such a man to put confidence in a book that fable and falsehood, as the New Testament does. is but a sample of what I could give you.

whom God has that reason to say, impossible abounds with This passage

You call on those whom you style "infidels," (and they in return might call you an idolator, a worshipper of false gods, a preacher of false doctrine) "to abandon their opposition to the Gospel." Prove, sir, the Gospel to be true, and the opposition will cease of itself; but until you do this, (which we know you cannot do) you have no right to expect they will notice your call. If by infidels you mean Deists, (and you must be exceedingly ignorant of the origin of the word Deist, and know but little of Deus, to put that construction upon it,) you will find yourself over-matched if you begin to engage in a controversy with them. Priests may dispute with priests, and sectaries with sectaries, about the meaning of what they agree to call scripture, and end as they began; but when you engage with a Deist you must keep to fact. Now, sir, you cannot prove a single article of your religion to be true, and we tell you so publicly. Do it, if you can. The Deistical article, the belief of a God, with which your creed begins, has been borrowed by your church from the ancient Deists, and even this article you dishonour by putting a dream-begotten phantom,* which you call his son, over his head, and treating God as if he was superannuated. Deism is the only profession of religion that admits of worshipping and reverencing God in purity, and the only one on which the thoughtful mind can repose with undisturbed tranquillity. God is almost forgotten in the Christian religion. Every thing, even the creation, is ascribed to the son of Mary.

In religion, as in every thing else, perfection consists in simplicity. The Christian religion of Gods within Gods, like wheels within wheels, is like a complicated machine, that never goes right, and every projector in the art of Christianity is trying to mend it. It is its defects that have caused such a number and variety of tinkers to be hammering at it, and still it goes wrong. In the visible world no time-keeper can go equally true with the sun ; and in like manner, no complicated religion can be equally true with the pure and unmixed religion of Deism.

Had you not offensively glanced at a description of men whoin you call by a false name, you would not have been troubled nor honoured with this address; neither has the writer of it any desire or intention to enter into controversy with you. He thinks the temporal establishment of your church politically unjust and offensively unfair; but with respect to religion itself, distinct from temporal establishments, he is happy in the enjoyment of his own, and he leaves you to make the best you can of yours.

A MEMBER OF THE DEISTICAL CHURCH.

*The first chapter of Matthew, relates that Joseph, the betrothed husband of Mary, dreamed that an angel told him that his intended bride was with child by the Holy Ghost. It is not every husband, whether carpenter or priest, that can be so easily satisfied, for lo! it was a dream. Whether Mary was in a dream when this was done, we are not told. It is, however, a comical story. There is no woman living can understand it,

TO JOHN MASON,

One of the Ministers of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, of NewYork, with Remarks on his account of the visit he made to the late General Hamilton.

"Come now, let us REASON together, saith the Lord." This is one of the passages you quoted from your bible, in your conversation with General Hamilton, as given in your letter, signed with your name, and published in the Commercial Advertiser, and other New-York papers, and I re-quote the passage to show that your Text and your Religion contradict each other.

It is impossible to reason upon things not comprehensible by reason; and therefore, if you keep to your text, which priests seldom do, (for they are generally either above it, or below it, or forget it,) you must admit a religion to which reason can apply, and this, certainly, is not the Christian religion.

There is not an article in the Christian religion that is cognizable by reason. The Deistical article of your religion, the belief of a God, is no more a Christian article than it is a Mahometan article. It is an universal article, common to all religions, and which is held in greater purity by Turks than by Christians; but the Deistical church is the only one which holds it in real purity; because that church acknowledges no co-partnership with God. It believes in him solely, and knows nothing of Sons, married Virgins, nor Ghosts. It holds all these things to be the fables of priest-craft.

Why then do you talk of reason, or refer to it, since your religion has nothing to do with reason, nor reason with that. You tell people, as you told Hamilton, that they must have faith! Faith in what? You ought to know that before the mind can have faith in any thing, it must either know it as a fact, or see cause to believe it on the probability of that kind of evidence that is cognizable by reason: but your religion is not within either of these cases; for, in the first place, you cannot prove it to be fact; and in the second place, you cannot support it by reason, not only because it is not cognizable by reason, but because it is contrary to reason. What reason can there be in supposing, or believing, that God put himself to death, to satisfy himself, and be revenged on the Devil on account of Adam ; for tell the story which way you will it comes to this at last.

As you can make no appeal to reason in support of an unreasonable religion, you then (and others of your profession) bring yourselves off by telling people, they must not believe in reason, but in revelation. This is the artifice of habit without reflection. It is putting words in the place of things; for do you not see, that when you tell people to believe in revelation, you must first prove

that what you call revelation, is revelation; and as you cannot do this, you put the word which is easily spoken, in the place of the thing you cannot prove. You have no more evidence that your Gospel is revelation, than the Turks have that their Koran is revelation, and the only difference between them and you is, that they preach their delusion and you preach yours.

In your conversation with General Hamilton, you say to him, "The simple truths of the Gospel, which require no abstruse investigation, but faith in the veracity of God, who cannot lie, are best suited to your present condition."

If those matters you call simple truths," are what you call them, and require no abstruse investigation, they would be so obvious that reason would easily comprehend them; yet the doctrine you preach at other times is, that the mysteries of the Gospel are beyond the reach of reason. If your first position be true, that they are simple truths, priests are unnecessary, for we do not want preachers to tell us the sun shines; and if your second be true, the case, as to effect, is the same, for it is waste of money to pay a man to explain unexplainable things, and loss of time to listen to him. That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests cannot, or that the bible does Did not Paul lie when he told the Thessalonians that the general resurrection of the dead would be in his life-time, and that he should go up alive along with them into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. 1 Thes. chap. 4, v. 17.

not.

You spoke of what you call, the precious blood of Christ." This savage style of language belongs to the priests of the Christian religion. The professors of this religion say they are shoeked at the accounts of human sacrifices of which they read in the histories of some countries. Do they not see that their own religion is founded on a human sacrifice, the blood of man, of which their priests talk like so many butchers. It is no wonder the Christian religion has been so bloody in its effects, for it began in blood, and many thousands of human sacrifices have since been offered on the altar of the Christian religion.

It is necessary to the character of a religion, as being true, and immutable as God himself is, that the evidence of it be equally the same through all periods of time and circumstance. This is not the case with the Christian religion, nor with that of the Jews that preceeded it, (for there was a time, and that within the knowledge of history, when these religions did not exist) nor is it the case with any religion we know of but the religion of Deism. In this the evidences are eternal and universal.-"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handy work,— Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge."* But all other religions are made to arise from some lo

*This Pslam (19) which is a Deistical Pslam, is so much in the manner of some parts of the book of Job, (which is not a book of the Jews, and does not belong to the

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