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fishes, and immediately ascended up through the air to somewhere called Heaven, which are not more plainly or positively asserted than the others, then they may boast of having cleared all out. That this will be the final result, no one who has watched the progress of events since the era of the reformation can doubt. The effect then, directly growing out of this principle of the reformation, has been to destroy many of the outworks of the christian citadel, the foundations of which will be torn up ere long. The infidel has therefore more cause to rejoice than the christian, in these results of the reformation, both past and in anticipation, and is under more obligations to Luther, its author.

It has done much for them, say you;
Can you point out one single princi-

We will now attend to the ladies. bettered their condition, and all that! ple in either testament of the Bible, that can possibly have the least tendency to enlarge the privileges, secure the rights, or add to the dignity of woman? On the other hand, whenever she is mentioned, is she not spoken of as the slave of man? It is obedience and subjection every where; obey and be in subjection to your husband, 'is the language. But the principle which the sex have most cause to execrate, is contained in these words: "And they twain shall become one flesh;" for it is embodied and adopted into our common law. Yes, one flesh. One what? One woman? No! but one man. She is merged, lost, annihilated in marriage. We learn from the Bible, that polygamy was frequent, and allowed among the Jews; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David and Solomon, had as many wives as they wished. I defy you to point out one single passage in the New Testament, that prohibits, or even discountenances it. Paul says that a bishop should have but one wife, and should rule her too; thereby indirectly admitting that some had more, which he attempts not to censure. On this point, consult the posthumus works of John Milton. The enlighted Romans and refined Grecians were not polygamysts. We never hear, or read of the wives of a Cæsar, or a Brutus, or a Cicero, or a Cato, as we do of an Abraham, an Isaac, a David, and a Solomon. According to the laws and institutions of the Romans in being, long before your Jesus was ever heard of, a Roman and his wife were not one man. It was not all subjection and obedience on the part of the woman among that people; the woman was not the slave of the husband; and those same laws are in force yet in the greater part of christendom; their influence is felt over the whole. In what state in the Union are the rights of women most effectually secured; where she feels conscious that by no possibility can she be made a slave, except for crime; where her property is secured to her and put beyond the control of her husband? I answer in Louisiana, where the Roman law, more ancient than the christian religion, is the law of the land. I wish the ladies to think of these things.

I have already alluded to the bitter feelings and heart burnings existing between the different sects or parties of religionists. These are evils greatly to be deplored, and I will not consent to reason with any one, who will refuse to charge them to the account of religion, or the book on which it is founded. Disputes arise respecting the meaning of certain passages of the Bible; each side of the question has its advocates; thus parties are formed, and bitter feelings engendered, friends estranged, and the ties of kindred severed. Yet all this is not to be charged to the Bible! It is enough for me to answer, that but for the Bible these disputes would not exist. You reply that you would dispute and quarrel about something else. By way of rejoinder, I tell you to go and kill a man and tell the judge before whom you may be arraigned for the act, that you must be excused, for the reason that if you had not killed this man, you would have murdered some other, and see how you will come out.

Though somewhat out of order, I will, in this place, state an argument, founded on the imperfection of human language against the Bible, as containing a revelation from God.

It is admitted by all of you, that you must of necessity conscientiously differ in opinion as to the meaning of words and sentences, spoken by God himself to the writers of your book, and recorded by them for your instruction. This, you say when you are in a charitable mood, and are preaching forbearance with each other's infirmities; and then you talk about • Procrustes' bedstead. I care not for your admission. You do differ, and I know you must differ in opinion. But you say we only differ about nonessentials. What! do you admit that God has talked to you about matters of no consequence? If the passage in dispute convey one meaning to A and another to B, one must put an erroneous construction upon it. To him, therefore, it cannot be a revelation. To cut the matter short: if God ever spoke to man, he spoke like a God in an intelligible language; one that would never die, not one word of which would ever change its meaning, which meaning would be definite and understood alike by every one of his creatures. So far from this being the case, you do not know, or pretend to know in what language God spoke to Adam, or any of the Patriarchs, or whether in the Egyptian or Hebrew to Moses, or in Hebrew or Greek to Mary. There is no language, and never was and never can be, to all of whose words, men speaking it, attach the same meaning. God, therefore, has never undertaken to communicate his will to man through the frail and imperfect medium of human language. To say that he has, is to say that he has undertaken what he has not accomplished; for, in the case supposed, his will has not been communicated to both A and B. The next question I propose to discuss is: Does your religion restrain

either way.

man from crime? In this discussion, I shall consider man and religion as I find them in our country; for I know no other; and I wish to bring the subjct home to the understandings of my American readers. On those of my countrymen who disbelieve, it can have no operation or influence There is another class, and by far the most numerous, who have, or say they have, the faith, and the persuasion, but who have never made the public confession. Does religion operate as a restraint upon these? They are told, and they are told truly, I mean that they are told what the book says, that they have no more interest in, or claim to the salvation spoken of, than the infidel; but that damnation will surely be their portion, unless they make the public confession, or, to use one of your technics, be converted. I know that you differ among yourselves, as to what conversion is, but you all agree that before conversion, there is no chance for salvation: and I am now considering the case of the unconverted believer,

The conclusion is, and it is rung in his ears daily, that let him do what he will, say what he will, and pray what he will, it will not alter the case so long as he is unconverted. He may feed the poor, clothe the naked, visit the widow and fatherless, do that which he hates to no one, and pray constantly; still hell yawns to receive him, because he is not converted. Can such preaching (and he is supposed to believe it,) tend to restrain him from crime, or incite him to virtue? To test this matter fairly, let us suppose a familiar case; that of a plain, simple-hearted, common-sense-man attending at some of our preaching houses, where he hears the preacher exhorting in language something like this. "Oh ye sinners, ye dear sinners, why will ye die? Be converted and turn to God, and become reconciled to his beloved son Jesus, and save your immortal souls. Who knows but you may die before that sun shall go down; and if you should die unconverted, you will be landed immediately in hell. Now, now is the time, come forward this instant-not a moment to be lost." Our man does not go forward, büt leaves the preacher unconverted and repairs to the court house. He is there called on as a witness, and the Bible is presented to him. He asks what it is for? The Judge surprised at the question, asks him, if he is acquainted with the nature of an oath, and, before receiving an answer, proceeds to give him the following charge. "By putting your hand upon. and kissing that book, you call God to witness, that you will tell the truth, and if you testify falsely, you will go to hell." Our man, in turn, puts to the judge the converse of this proposition, in these words: "Then I 'sposo if I swear truly, I will go to Heaven, our preachers all say; and one just now told me that I should go to hell anyhow, unless I shall be converted; and I'll believe him before I will you. He don't make the road as easy to

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Heaven as you do. If swearing the truth will take me to Heaven, I wonder why some prcacher han't told me where to find the text." The judge, if orthordox, must be somewhat stumped: and convinced, and so must you be, that it is a perversion of your religion, a total perversion, that operates, or that you can pretend, can operate to restrain this class from crime. Is it not plain and palpable, that it is a matter of perfect indifference to our witness, whether he speak truth or not, whether he refrains from murder, rape, robbery, adultery, or theft, or not, so far as Heaven and hell are concerned.

I will now take up the case of the last class-those who have made the public confession, or been converted. These attach themselves to some one of the congregations or churches of some sect, and thus each immediately becomes a partisan or sectarian. These sects being numerous in our country, there is, and I admit it freely, an esprit du corps, a pride of party, among the members of each, a fear of disgracing their sect, that operates as a check upon them. And I am willing to credit this check to the account of religion. All are persuaded that this conversion has blotted out or expunged all their past sins; and some are further persuaded, that none which they may thereafter commit will be laid to their charge. I submit it to your candor, whether there is any check upon these except the restraints of the law, and the pride of party.

Others of this class are persuaded, that they will commit sin after conversion; but that all their transgressions will be forgiven through sorrow and prayer. What do they mean by sin? They answer that sin is the transgression of any of the laws of Christ. His laws or injunctions found in the New Testament, they tell us, are their moral standard. I deny it. They say so—but it is false. They have made a standard for themselves, or adopted some other standard. All have not the same; but Christ's precepts are the foundation of none; and I will now proceed to show it. Christ said, "If a man smite you on the one cheek, turn to him the other; but you all say, if a man spit at you, or strike you on the cheek, knock him down, so your common law allows so you practise, and so you tell your children. Christ said, if a man sue you at the law, and take your cloak, give him your coat also; but you say, sue out a writ of error. Christ said, if a man compel you to go with him one mile, go with him two-you say, "bring an action for false imprisonment."

Perhaps I should have excepted the Quakers, for, by all the other sects, it is called Quaker-like, by way of derision, to comply with any of these requisitions. If you have taken such liberties with the positive and definite injunctions of your Lord and Master, how can you expect us to believe you, when you tell us that you have confidence in his threats and

promises, and are restrained by them? Am I not borne out, by what we witness daily, in the assertion, that all your preachings and exhortations are directed to faith?-to some indescribable feelings to be produced by some undefinable agent called the Holy Ghost; and to the performance of some insignificant ceremonies? Is it the object of your preaching to persuade men to that course of conduct calculated to make them better members of society-to inculcate moral instruction? Is the golden rule even repeated yearly in your temples, much less made the subject of a discourse?-ever, in short, taken as a text. Has not the taste of the people become so corrupted, that they cannot relish a lecture on this text? They are so thoroughly imbued with the doctrines of sovereign and free grace, operations of the holy spirit, regeneration, election, free will, the final perseverance of the saints, baptism, &c., that many do not know whether this great golden rule is in the Testament, or in Dilworth's Spelling Book. Let one of your ranters in his prayer allude to it, by calling upon his God to enable his auditors to lead lives of sobriety, honesty and fair dealing, and devotion flags; he will not be encouraged by any "God grants!" and "amens!" from his congregation.

The great mass of you christians would say, that a sermon enforcing such duties, was not religion. They have no notion that religion has any thing to do with the affairs of this world, or that any thing they can do here will take them to Heaven. What influence then can it have, to make these men love their neighbors as themselves?

I admit there are very few of you, who say that religion is to be lived, and not merely got and felt: still these will knock down, go to law with their brethren, and sue for false imprisonment; and are proud to be high priests in what, to them, should be a Pagan or infidel temple: I mean a court house. They, as well as all the rest of you, teach and are taught to despise the world, and to be perfectly indifferent to the opinions of men, but to esteem the approbation and smiles of their Jesus above all price. As long as they feel assured of these, they are, at least they are taught to be, regardless of the opinions of their fellow men. They represent their Jesus as placable; but man, we know, is inexorable. Let an individual once play the villian and he is ever after looked upon with distrust, and treated with contempt. Is it policy to teach men to be regardless of these frowns? Can such teaching make them better members of society? You destroy the influence that the contempt of society may have upon the citizen to restrain him from crime; and what do you give us in exchange? Why the temporary frowns of a fancied being in a fancied somewhere, whom you represent as the most placable being in the universe-to the initiated or converted. "But," say you, "we require, or rather our book requires re

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