A Legacy to the Friends of Free Discussion: Principal Historical Facts and Personages of the Books Known as The Old and New Testament; With Remarks on the Morality of NatureOffen, Benjamin
Religion
A Legacy to the Friends of Free Discussion: Principal Historical Facts and Personages of the Books Known as The Old and New Testament; With Remarks on the Morality of Nature
Offen, Benjamin
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Do men and women need the Bible to learn the duty incumbent on them
toward their offspring? Must we read the pretended word of God in order
to discover that the husband ought to be kind and in every way faithful
to his wife, (making allowance for her weakness, either of body or
mind,) and perform every duty connected with her permanent happiness?
Man requires no Divine aid, beyond the exercise of his reason, to inform
him that, in order to be happy in this life, he must be _just,
peaceable, sober, and temperate in all things; chaste, a lover of truth,
kind, and humane_ to all beings who possess life. Let every human being,
then, turn to the laws of his own organization, namely, to his love of
happiness, and aversion to pain. These laws will give him unerring
instruction as to the duties which he has to perform, and also as to
what evils he is to avoid.
This is indeed a Divine revelation, which will never deceive or lead
astray. Man carries it within himself. It differs from all pretended
Divine revelation. It is suitable at all times, and in all places. It
requires no priest to explain it. It changes not with times and
circumstances. These laws of our nature (the love of happiness and
aversion to pain) are a never-failing revelation, to which we can always
refer with entire confidence, as a true revelation of God or nature.
Away, then, with the childish question, “If you take away the Bible,
what will you give us in its stead”? The short and final answer to which
is, study the laws of your organization, and direct your reason to their
interpretation, and let the priest read his Bible, and exclaim against
unbelief. The reader will now understand the views the Infidels have of
moral rectitude; and if the principles are faithfully carried out in our
journey through life, the end of all will be peace. These moral
principles were enforced (for upwards of eight years) in Tammany Hall.
They are now spreading far and wide, and instead of producing evil in
society, they are calculated to ensure “_peace on earth and good-will
towards men._”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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