judge, and proclaimed to the world in its atrocious proceedings the weakness and instability of its nature.

What a glorious triumph would it have been for the cause of reason and humanity, if the admirable addresses to the justices of the King's Bench, had had half the efficacy of Paul' address to Felix-if the force of incontrovertible argument and the power of eloquence had made their lordships" tremble," and taught them to exclaim with Agrippa-almost thou persuadest us to be deisis.

But no! such a confession would have militated against their interests, they supported christianity for their own ends, and there they remain, living evidences of the venality of English justice.

But to return. When we consider the influence of early prejudices on the minds of men-prejudices originating in birth and education, and often materially strengthened by the recollection of early associations, it must be admitted, that those who have dared to think for themselves, and to treat christianity with the contempt it deserves, are entitled to great credit for following the dictates of reason and judgment, when opposed by those powerful preventives to moral improvement. But with this, their first gradation towards intellectual perfection, they should not be satisfied if they reject one religion and adopt another, if they substitute deism for christianity, they counteract the efficacy of their own exertions they forge fresh fetters, which at a future period may bind them as firmly as the first.

If religion is in itself a superstition, as must be evident to every reflecting mind, they should abjure it altogether, remembering, that in condemning christianity by the disbelief of the scriptures, they destroy at once the documentary evidence, if I may so term it, on which the existence of a Deity is founded; for what knowledge have we, I would ask, of God and his attributes, beyond what that history affords; what knowledge can we have thereof beyond the fallible conclusions of human speculation? They must admit all or reject all-there is no medium.

I am aware that this doctrine militates against long-established notions, and saps the foundation of belief in a future state-a belief so gratifying to man from its unison with his feelings and principles, that it would need. more than one inward struggle to remove it. But it has been shewn by a very able writer, that this theory also is the result of human speculation, and has no better claim to our attention.

"Till it can be proved that religion is beneficial, to man in society (and the sophistries of the casuist could not convince me that it is so), I would have every trace of it obliterated-and if he must have a Deity, let that deity be the organised principle of matter, visible in every part of the creation; other creeds are inconsistent with reason, which teaches us to admit only as realities, objects palpable and visible, and such as the mind of man can comprehend. If a belief in futurity has acted as a curb upon the unruly and iuordinate passion of man, let the doctrine of moral righteousness be substituted in its stead; and it will be the fault of education and example if that doctrine be not a more powerful incentive to virtue than the illusory dreams of a future existence.

"The eternal obligations of moral righteousness," says the intelligent and enlightened advocate of religious liberty, whom bigotted cruelty has lately immured in a county gaol, are so convincing to the understand ing, so controlling to the wisely-consulted interest of mankind, so congenial to the heart, that by these and these alone, in eternal segregation from all reference to any thing beyond this physical world, men might, I am sure, be made inconceivably virtuous and happy.

But of this they will not be convinced. There is a mental obliquity

generated by long-established custom, which, misleading their judgment, teaches them to give credence to the marvellous, and reject truth as the offspring of fiction. They take up the yoke which an ambitious hierarchy would never have dared to impose upon them, had it not seen the proneness to moral slavery which they were too eager to assume; the more wonderful the doctrine, the greater was the charm; the more degrading the system expounded, the closer did they hug it to their bosoms. The supernatural was sought after, reality lost sight of, and men frightened themselves into abject terror by the hideous phantoms which owed their existence to their disordered imaginations. They mistook in their wanderings from reason, the secret and powerful operations of nature, and invested with sovereign perfection, the being they themselves had created; or if indeed these fantasies were the creation of man's brain, before the dawn of intellect had dispersed the barbarous usages of the uncultivated savage, before the mind was organized and refined by experience and education; his descendants, in after ages, with an unpardonable weakness, adopted the erroneous conclusions of their unenlightened ancestors; they neglected to trace effects to causes, which would have solved mysteries otherwise unaccountable, and guided them through the labyrinth of error in which they were bewildered. In short, they considered superstition as essential to their happiness, and elected their more enlightened brethren to confirm them in their ignorance, and propagate their own fanciful theories.

Having made a Deity, the attributes with which they invested him were easily imagined. The same natural causes, which, from the misconstruction put upon them, suggested the existence of a supreme being, suggested also the titles of Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Omniscient, Incomprehensible, perfect, beneficent, eternal, infinite, and the moral institutions of society gave birth to other attributes, such as justice, impartiality and

mercy.

The attribute of Omnipotence originated most probably in the contemplation of the productive influence of nature in the birth,growth, maturity, and decline of the substances generated in her fertilebosom; in the mysterious and creating power which annually peopled the animal and vegetable kingdoms, strengthened with its nourishment those various productions, made them to yield their fruits, and so contrived the unvaried revolution of the seasons, that every living thing should feel their genial influence. And when the chilling cold of winter had apparently destroyed the fruits of the earth, so ordered the milder seasons to succeed it, that all was again and again reanimated.

And when man considered the wonderful formation of his own body, the perfect adaptation of all its parts, the physical and moral powers with which they were gifted, and the exercise of which depended entirely on his own volition, how great must have been his astonishment! how boundless his admiration!!

Would that he had confined himself to that admiration, that he had contented himself with the inward gratitude which such bounties inspired, and testified that gratitude in acts of loving kindness and liberality towards his fellow creatures. Alas! his limited imagination led him to ascribe those wonders to analmighty and ethereal power, of which he could not possibly have one distinct idea, he instituted forms of worship to propitiate that power, and lost himself in the wilderness of superstition.

And when the eastern nations, having attained to a great degree of intellectual perfection, had, amongst other acquirements, made considerable progress in astronomy, and, after deep and unwearied observation, had come to the conclusion that the sun in its annual and diurnal course, dis

pensed light and heat over the whole surface of the globe, as they retrograded in the scale of science and intelligence, the cause and the effect were both disregarded; or if any traces of them were left, they were only so faint, as merely to serve the purpose of those who wished to impose upon the stupidity of mankind, by adding them under the title of Omnipresence to scholastic subtilty of form without substance, which man had called divinity; and Omniscience was only a varied epithet, alike erroneously deduced from the same premises.

The Incomprehensibility ascribed to that divinity might have owed its origin to the secret and hidden springs of nature, whereby every thing in existence was reproduced and perpetuated by a series of mysterious workings which man could never fathom; the perfection would be the visible result of those natural operations, and the beneficence the conclusion at which he must of course have arrived, when he considered that every thing in nature worked together for his good; that it not only gave him food and raiment, but produced with the help of human skill, the abundant luxuries with which he has too often pampered his sensual appetite.

The eternity of their God was in all probability deduced from the system of the eternity of matter developed by a sect of ancient philosophers, which matter acted upon by a series of natural causes, in a manner which we cannot comprehend, produced the organized form of the world; and it is the more likely that it sprung from this theory, inasmuch as mankind being without any early records whereon to establish the creation of the world, and ignorant as they must ever remain of the causes which brought it and us into being, found a wide field open for conjecture. There was nothing else that could suggest this idea to them, and eager of course to ascribe all possible power and majesty to the God whom they had set up, they added this attribute to magnify his imaginary greatness. Having made him eternal, they also made him infinite, for supposing him to have existed before the beginning of the world, they naturally assumed that he was self-existent, and would exist for ever; the latter was a necessary consequence of the former hypothesis.

And when more extensive communion and society with his fellowcreatures had taught man to frame laws for the guidance and restraint of their impetuous desires, still fond of the too fascinating theory which he had established, he borrowed from his own institutions other attributes wherewith to invest his God. He called him just, because in the innocence of primitive society, before the powerful influence of self-interest in its most extended sense, had taught him to set all laws at defiance, the elected arbiters of his actions guided by a feeling of moral righteousness dealt out to every one the measure of pure, impartial, and incorruptible justice, and, reasoning from analogy, man was led to believe that if beings like himself were capable of just and honorable dealings, God must necessarily possess those principles in a more extended-in an unlimited degree; not considering that they were entirely the result of a right education and good example, and neither given by inspiration nor implanted in the human mind by nature, and forgetting that the misdeeds of his fellow-creatures-the cruelty and oppression of the rich-the misery of the poor, were daily calling for the exercise of that impartial and unlimited justice which he ascribed to God-a justice, however, which neither his prayers nor entreaties could ever cause him to dispense.

'Twas then that he introduced the consoling theory of a future state, in which he fancied full atonement would be made for all the cruelty and oppression he had suffered upon earth.

Such were the causes whence the attributes above enumerated were deduced, and finally, the elemental energies of nature speaking to man's

terrified imagination in the voice of thunder, appalling his senses with their vivid lightnings, taught him to conceive of that deity as a stern, unbending, and revengeful master.

At length, superstition came to stamp those erroneous deductions from mistaken premises with her omnipotent fiat, and thenceforth it became impiety to doubt the divine origin of religious mysteries. Reason gave way before her powerful opponent, and as the human intellect was by degrees weakened and debased, religion clothed with miracles and prophecies became more powerful and oppressive. Its ministers propagated the delusion, which the hearers of their doctrine too readily imbibed; and as by degrees the love of wealth and supremacy superseded every better feeling of their nature, they polluted that religion, which, at its birth, however erroneous, had been pure and spotless, and growing at last overbearing and cruel, they framed those hideous pictures of the mercy and beneficence of a deity which disgrace the earlier pages of their scripture history.

But a Newton and a Mirabaud have spoken with the voice of nature. A Voltaire and a Paine have destroyed the strong holds of superstition. Individually and conjointly they have been of incalculable benefit to the human race. In the impressive language of truth, they have convinced mankind of the absurdity of religion, they have called back reason to her seat, and left christianity at its expiring gasp.

Let us then no longer "disquiet ourselves in vain ;" let us cease to wander in the regions of fiction. The sun of reason and truth is gradu ally rising in our hemisphere, and dispersing with its increasing brightness the dark and dismal gloom of superstition and fanaticism. Soon will it dispel them with its overpowering rays, and shedding its genial influ ence over future ages, emancipate man from the mental slavery to which he has long yielded, but against which he is now daring to revolt. The virtues which education and refinement always generate, will, if not checked in their progress by the oppressive hand of legal despotism, make the earth a paradise, not fictitious but real; actuated by philanthropic benevolence towards each other, happiness with her train of attendant blessings will teach us to set a true value on the present life. The ener gies of our nature gradually expanding, will make us what we ought to be-the first beings in the vast scale of the creation, and rejecting the absurd speculations of dissatisfied bigots, who would tell us, that this world is one of trial and probation, to fit us for a better world beyond the skies; we shall" set our affection on things below, and not on things above;" and when the period of our dissolution draws nigh, indulging in the heaven of an approving conscience, we shall drop down into the grave beloved and regretted by our fellow-creatures.

JUVENIS.

Printed and Published by RICHARD CARLILE, 62, Fleet Street, where all Communications, post paid, or free of expense, are requested to be left.

No. 13. VOL. 1.] LONDON, Friday, March 28, 1828. [PRICE 6d.

PUBLIC SCHOOL AND LECTURING ESTABLISHMENT, 62, FLEET STREET.

!

A front room, on the first floor of this house, measuring 26 by 15 feet, is now prepared as a public school-room, and will be ready for use, in any arrangements that can be made with scholars, on every day in the week, and during any part of any day, from six in the morning until ten at night. It will also be let for any kind of lectures, at the rate of two pounds per lecture; and for private business, at the rate of one pound for each meeting, or as may be agreed.

The only arrangements made at present are for a Sunday-school, which will be open twice a-day, for two hours at each time, and the business of the school will begin precisely at eleven in the morning and at seven in the evening. The kind of teaching, that is to take place on the Sunday, will be that of mutual instruction. A competent person will introduce a subject, in a preliminary discourse, and then every scholar will be at liberty to make what observations he or she may please. The principle of the school will be an examination, and, as far as practicable, a removal of every superstition and prejudice that is found among mankind, being a pursuit that shall lead on to the most perfect moral mental freedom.

The first lesson, to be introduced by Mr. Carlile, on the Sunday morning of the 30th instant, will be, to show the scholars THE RIGHT ROAD TO THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN!

The second lesson, for the evening of the same day, will be also introduced by Mr. Carlile, and be a shewing of THE ERRORS OF MANKIND UPON THE SUBJECT OF DEITY,

Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62, Fleet Street.
2 c

No. 13, Vol. I.