infinite wisdom and power, and if so, were not these two properties abundantly sufficient, -completely competent to effectuate every important purpose necessary to the honour of the divine government or useful to the human race? Why then all this temporizing with Pharaoh king of Egypt? Why did the Jewish god fuffer himself to be fo often defeated? Why should the hard-heartedness of the Egyptian king triumph over the omnipotence of Jehovah? If he had chosen 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 chose the Jews or any other people to be the seperate and diftinct objects of his attachment; his perfections demonftrate the contrary, and prove that all beings, sensitive and intelligent, are equally entitled to the protecting influence of his benignity and that they share 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 whose effefsential existence and our own, all comparifon 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 lost all the facredness of their influence, and serve only at prefent as matter of exalted amusement; but the divine character prefumed to be connected with the Jewish theology, renders it a system noxious to the principles of virtue, and hoftile to all the moral sympathies of man. The Jewish god is a monster, and ought to be held in abhorrence by all the friends to truth and human happiness.

COMMUNICATION

Of the Religion of Deism compared with the Christian Religion, and the fuperiority of the former over the

latter.

CONCLUDED FROM OUR LAST.

The Jews did not believe the first chapters of Genisis to be fact. Muimonides, one of the most learned and ce. lebrated 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, especially with refpect to the work of four days, it gives the most absurd and extravagant ideas of God.

But the church of Rome having set up its new religion which it called Christianity, 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 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 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 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 any thing that is faid to have happened there.

But the church of Rome could not erect the perfon call. ed Jesus into a Saviour of the World without making the allegories in the book of Genefis 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 is

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

The church of Rome having done this, it then brings forward Jesus the son of Mary as suffering death to redeem mankind from fin, 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 fee 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 play. thing, or a rattle, on purpose to make fun of him. Rea. fon is the forbidden tree of priest-craft, and may ferve to explain the allegory of the forbidden tree of knowledge, for we may reasonably suppose the allegory had fome 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 Jefus followed the fame method, yet nobody ever supposed 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 romantic in idea than the parable 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 with. out it. To have made Christ to die on account of an allegorical tree would have been too bare-faced a fable...

* The remark of Emperor Julien, on the story of the Tree of Knowledge is worth observing. "If," said he, "there ever had been, or could be, a Tree of Know"ledge, instead 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 Jesus in the New Tef. tament 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 Sun-. day morning, for we do not hear that he was sick. 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 should come back again in good health in about thirty-fix hours, would prefer such 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 fufferings 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 Jesus Christ is altoge. ther an invention of the church of Rome and not the doc. trine of the New Testament. What the writers of the New Teftament attempt to prove by the story of Jefus is, the resurrection of the same body from the grave, which was the belief of the Pharifees, in opposition 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 service of the Epifcopal church. The dogma of the redemption is the fable of priest-craft invented since the time the New Testament was compiled, and the agreeable delusion of it fuited 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.

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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 ferious thoughts, and it is at fuch 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, inconfiftency, improbability, and irrationality, to afford confolation to the thoughtful man. His reason 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 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 fon 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. impofed upon.

He may believe that Jesus 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 Testament, and if it had, where is the proof that the New Testament, in relating things nei. ther 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 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.