
Excerpt:
IT has been my intention, for several years
past, to publish my thoughts upon religion; I am well aware of
the difficulties that attend the subject, and from that
consideration, had reserved it to a more advanced period of
life. I intended it to be the last offering I should make to my
fellow-citizens of all nations, and that at a time when the
purity of the motive that induced me to it could not admit of a
question, even by those who might disapprove the work.
The circumstance that has now taken place in
France, of the total abolition of the whole national order of
priesthood, and of everything appertaining to compulsive systems
of religion, and compulsive articles of faith, has not only
precipitated my intention, but rendered a work of this kind
exceedingly necessary, lest, in the general wreck of
superstition, of false systems of government, and false
theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the
theology that is true.
As several of my colleagues, and others of my
fellow-citizens of France, have given me the example of making
their voluntary and individual profession of faith, I also will
make mine; and I do this with all that sincerity and frankness
with which the mind of man communicates with itself.
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope
for happiness beyond this life.
I believe in the equality of man, and I believe
that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy,
and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
But, lest it should be supposed that I
believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the
progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and
my reasons for not believing them.
I do not believe in the creed professed by
the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by
the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church
that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches,
whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other
than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and
monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn
those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their
belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness
of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does
not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in
professing to believe what he does not believe.
It is impossible to calculate the moral
mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced
in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the
chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to
things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the
commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a
priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify himself
for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive
anything more destructive to morality than this?
Soon after I had published the pamphlet
COMMON SENSE, in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a
revolution in the system of government would be followed by a
revolution in the system of religion. The adulterous connection
of church and state, wherever it had taken place, whether
Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited, by
pains and penalties, every discussion upon established creeds,
and upon first principles of religion, that until the system of
government should be changed, those subjects could not be
brought fairly and openly before the world; but that whenever
this should be done, a revolution in the system of religion
would follow. Human inventions and priest-craft would be
detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed, and
unadulterated belief of one God, and no more. |