The Miraculous Conception Part 2

To what miserable shifts is folly driven to support superst.i.tion; what miserable pretexts does roguery have recourse to, to propagate and uphold imposition! Not one word is there to warrant this pretended conference with Mary, which the learned Doctor has so circ.u.mstantially related. That Joseph was ignorant of the intercourse Mary had had with the angel, could not be concealed from the reader, who believed Matthew's relation, according to which Mary had said nothing to Joseph of the communication and commerce she had had with the angel, neither is there the least reason from that account to suppose that Matthew knew any thing of the decently told story of Elizabeth, or of Mary's going and remaining three months with her; but, according to Luke, she hurried off in her exultation of being with child, and there they communed together in a state of the highest enthusiasm. Elizabeth, being filled with the Holy Ghost, and the babe leaping for joy in her womb, spake out in a loud voice,--and Mary followed in the same manner, and in the same strain. But notwithstanding this, notwithstanding the exultation between the women, Joseph was not to be let into the secret; all the rapturous feelings of Mary were now subdued; she not only suppressed her joy which seemed unbounded, but she kept the whole matter a profound secret, even at a risk of being turned out of doors as a strumpet, and an angel is obliged to be sent from G.o.d to Joseph in a dream, to prevent the catastrophe; the deception is approved by G.o.d, who sends the "angel from heaven" to reconcile Joseph to his wife's perfidy.

According to Matthew, a certain man had a dream. According to Luke, an angel called privately on a young woman, who, in consequence of the visit, was with child. And this is all there is to establish the divinity of Jesus Christ.

It cannot be called evidence, for by whom it was given, whether by the man himself, or the woman herself, n.o.body knows; to whom it was given, if it was given, n.o.body knows; when it was given, n.o.body knows; where it was given, n.o.body knows; and the learned are even disputing to this very time about the language in which the stories were originally written, and by whom they were written. And yet not literally to believe either or both of these worse than "old wives' tales," is to subject a man to persecution; not to affect to believe that which, when stripped of the absurd reverence which has been cast round it, no man ever did or ever can believe, is to be imputed to him as a reproach of so horrible a nature, that, thousands, who treat it as it deserves in their own minds, dare not avow their disbelief; not to commit the immoral act of self-delusion and debas.e.m.e.nt is imputed as a crime, and men are shunned because they are moral.

The sanct.i.ty thrown around this sad nonsense; the cry of blasphemy which has been raised against any one who ventured to examine it, the horror felt by fanatics, which vented itself in persecutions the most diversified, deterred people from trusting to reason, and made them even forget that it was by reason alone they are ever able to choose one religion in preference to another. Every religious sect allows, that you may use your reason to distinguish between what they hold out to you, and what you yourself believe; you may, and you ought, they tell you, to exercise your reason so far as to give their doctrines the preference; and having thus exercised your reason, and having by its aid abandoned your former notions, and adopted theirs; having become "a child of grace," and turned to the right way, there shall be "more joy in heaven at your conversion than over ninety and nine just persons, who" having always belonged to the sect, "needed no conversion." All sects proclaim this joy, at the same moment, as each makes converts from the others; with all of them reason to choose your faith is the great the good, but having exercised it so far, there you must stop, reason must be instantly extinguished; on no account must you trust to such a "blind guide;" reason, which but just before was all but omnipotent, is now "fallible"--"_poor fallible reason_," all is now _"faith"_ examine any one of their dogmas, you are a "backslider;" doubt any one of their absurd relations, you are a "blasphemer;" and thus it is that ignorance and persecution brutalizes and degrades mankind. Had the stories of Joseph and Mary been preached to us from the sacred books of the Persians, how would every good Christian have been scandalized! "What,"

he would have exclaimed, "what horrid blasphemy! first to pretend that G.o.d himself (the Holy Ghost being G.o.d) had commerce with a woman, by which she became with child, and who all the time she was breeding lived with a man, lived with him, too, by command of 'an angel sent from G.o.d,' lived with him as his wife in such a way that no one seems to have suspected the child was not his own, and after the birth of G.o.d, (G.o.d the Son being G.o.d) in the ordinary way of all mankind, and still living with him, and having other children by him. 1 First G.o.d has her, then Joseph has her; These are abominable stories, indeed. Call out blasphemy at yourselves, ye fanatical persecutors of other men's opinions. Shame, pity, contempt, are the pa.s.sions those terrible tales excite for you, compa.s.sion for those who are so unfortunate as to become your victims."

1 Matt. chap. xiii. ver. 55, 56. "Is not this the son of the carpenter? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas, and are not all his sisters with us?"

Thanks, however, are due to the intelligence of the age which could endure this monstrous perversion of the human understanding no longer, which has abolished the Law that made it criminal to deny "that Jesus Christ is G.o.d," and left us at liberty freely to express our opinions on this absurd dogma. 1

1 By stat. 9 and 10 William 111. c. 32. "Any person or persons, having been educated in or having at any time made profession of the Christian religion within this realm, shall by writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking, deny any one or the persons in the Holy Trinity to be G.o.d, or shall; a.s.sert or maintain there are more G.o.ds than one,"

shall be liable to certain penalties.

By stat. 53 George III. c. 160. it is enacted, that the Act pa.s.sed in the 9 and 10 William III. "so far as the same relates to persons denying as therein-mentioned, respecting the Holy Trinity, be, and the same are hereby repealed."