LUCIAN.--The capricious and cruel character of this theological creation, as set forth in the Jew books, is generally so demoralising as to be altogether unworthy of imitation in human conduct, The cruelty ascribed to it, is the shield behind which priestcraft has sheltered itself in all its bloody persecutions. In other respects the various menial, or bad offices and functions which it is made to perform, are truly ludicrous when said to be executed by the all-ruling power; such as, a god-midwife (a), a nightly assassin (b), a butcher (c), a barber (d) a slave-dealer (e), a murderer (f), a fool (g), a deceiver (h), a promise breaker (i),* a deluder (j ), a tailor (k), a shoemaker (l). Such was the deity who the Jewish priests impiously and blasphemously called the Supreme Power of the universe, though guised by them in the form and likeness, having all the appendages and members physical, of the human body; and possessing many, if not all the worst passions incident to human nature. And such is the deity adopted by Christianity, after undergoing such modifications, and receiving into partnership such colleagues as suited the interests of his priests. These things, in a mental point of view, have degraded man below the more rational animals of the field. * The Jewish god never gave his chosen people anything better than promises.--Vide Acts vii., 5; and Heb. xi., 39. In the reign of Ahab, a lying angel, or spirit, offers his services as a deceiver, which services were very acceptable to the "Lord." Here we have a lying angel, and the supreme being endeavoring to deceive by prompting to a falsehood. The belief of such impious absurdities shows that the unbounded credulity of man is the safety of the priest. MOD.--You have evinced a strong partiality for what you call the pretty and lively mythology of the Gentiles, consisting of the numerous fabled gods and goddesses of antiquity, which, you say, the lower orders of the people were taught to consider as so many real personages, though, in the esoteric doctrines of the initiated, they were merely so many emblems of the "host of heaven," the elements and seasons. LUCIAN.--Precisely so; and such is the origin of the Christian scheme also, springing as it does out of the Egyptian and Zoroastrian systems; for as the epithet Christ physically signifies the sun, so, in like manner, has it been made to represent a fabled personage; whilst the true revelation of this prosopopoeia (the figure by which things are made persons) is now suppressed or lost through priestcraft, or its foster-child, ignorance.