9. Have we any demonstrable evidence that the property of motion was not co-existent with matter? 10. Have we any demonstrable evidence that the perty of motion is animated and intelligent? pro 11. Is there any wisdom in rational beings putting themselves to inconvenience upon account of speculative opinions, founded on theories, for the truth of which, there is not one particle of demonstrable evidence? 10 10 William Jones, do. Peter Barker A Tailor, who wishes to button the mouth of every Judge, We acknowledge the receipt of one pound from Mr. Drakard, as the subscription of some friends in Billingborough, for Mr. Perry in Newgate It may be proper to state to our subscribing friends, that Mrs. Perry is left in a delicate state of health, with two infant children and no income, but such as she can obtain through her husband; and that Mrs. Jefferies, the wife of Mr. Jefferies in Newgate, is in a still more painful condition, expecting a daily increase to an infant family. It would be well, if a few friends would employ Mr. Jefferies as a shoemaker, as his confinement is no impediment to his business, if he can find work to do in Newgate. Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 84, Fleet Street.-All Correspon dences for "The Republican" to be left at the place of publication. No. 19, VOL. 10.] LONDON, Friday, Nov. 12, 1824. [PRICE 6d. TO THE CHRISTIAN JUDGE BAILEY. LETTER XXIII. CHRISTIAN ATHEIST, Dorchester Goal, October 23, 1824, sixth year of my imprisonment and of your disgrace. I WILL not leave you a God to pray to: with me, you shall be an Atheist! "All flesh is grass, and the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth-surely the people is grass." This is one of the Atheistical truths of the Bible. Man has no more of spirituality or immortality than a blade of grass. He exists but to become food for blades of grass or some other variety of matter. The Vicar's Cow, which I have often seen grazing in Ashburton Church Yard was a chemical apparatus for converting the dead human bodies into milk, cream, cheese, beef, leather, &c. Thus, the Vicar not only lives upon us whilst living; but, through the medium of his cow or horse, claims the exclusive right of devouring the last morsel that remains of us after we are dead! He is the God that spiritualizes our bodies, and conducts us to resurrection and immortality, through the agency of his horse and cow! Our passage to heaven seems to be through a whirlwind created by an explosion of hydrogen, either from the body of the horse, the cow, or the Vicar! Our rotting bodies interred come up as grass; if we are buried in a Church Yard, the Vicar's horse and cow eat the grass; the Vicar drinks the milk, and eats the cream and the cheese of the cow; so that our road to heaven is quite clear, and I presume, that the portion of the virtuous is to pass through the bodies of the cow and the Vicar, and the portion of the wicked to pass through the body of the horse! The transmigration of Pythagoras was not an idle * Is this the purgatory of the Roman Catholics, where the Priest can Printed and Published by R. Carlile, 84, Fleet Street. theory; though ignorant followers have in some measure corrupted it, until with the aid of Plato, that horrid system called Christianity was produced. In a note on the words: "All flesh is grass," you say: "The object perhaps here is to contrast the vanity and imbecility of every thing temporal of man and all worldly pursuits, with the stability and certainty of what is spiritual." The modesty of your perhaps forbids contradiction; but you must be taught, that there is no stability in nature: all matter is in motion, and the more it be spiritualized or gasified, the more rapid and varied its motions become. You are wrong at all points, Bailey, except the one of having a good salary for the bad administration of bad law. In a note, at page 174, we are told, that "Christianity does not sanction retaliation; on the contrary, it inculcates forgiveness of injuries as an essential duty, and treats the right to avenge as the peculiar privilege of God." This sort of Christianity has not existence, nor had it ever, beyond a few eccentric and senseless fanatics. Look at your own government! A fanatic of the name of George Hale has printed some religious tracts, showing the soldiers that Christianity forbids them to war, to fight, or to return evil for evil. What is the consequence? He is treated as a blasphemer of a Christian Government, for enforcing the abstracted precepts of what he calls Christianity! In Dorchester and in other Gaols are individuals under long imprisonments for having published that the Christianity in practice is false and inju rious to the interests of mankind: in Maidstone Gaol George Hale has been confined a month and liberated without indictment! for publishing an extract from the preceptive part of Christianity! In this view of the case the Vicar of Cerne ought to be my fellow prisoner; for he has been distributing George Hale's tracts about Cerne; one of which was sent to me about six or seven months ago. So, Christian Atheist, you see that Christianity is a very variable thing, in the minds of different men; and were not the very sound vicious to my senses, I could make it appear plain, that I have acted upon every moral precept, that Christianity has taught, and that, for this reason only, have I been so robbed, and and so imprisoned, and so ill used in prison, by you and others of your Christian stamp. Your God, and your Christianity are blasphemeable with yourselves, when they accommodate our surviving friends, or us, if we pay by legacies, with a speedy passage through? oppose your private interests, as robbers of a heavily taxed and enslaved people. On the same page we have another note on a branch of the same subject, which is both interesting and applicable, between you and me for a word of comment. You tell us, that which the whole experience of mankind contradicts; that "to follow good, is the surest way to avoid persecution; but even if the good are persecuted, they have this for their comfort, their persecutors are not of God,' and have not God's sanction." Now, I take upon me to say, that really bad men were never persecuted, and that persecution has only existed with, and can only apply to, men comparitively better than their persecutors. Bad men, like you, have consciences which they can shape to please all the powers that rule over them, and thus are always free from persecution. They are the upright, the brave, the virtuous, and the conscientious, only who bring down the persecutions of the illdisposed in power upon their heads. In your own phrase, then, I ask, are the persecutions, or that share of my persecutions, which I have received from your hands "of and under the sanction of your God?" Oh! how delighted I feel that mine enemy has written a book! I have tried and sighed in vain to find something written and printed and published in the way of doctrine, by that other enemy of mine, that arch hypocrite, that smiling, smooth-faced, soft-tongued villain, as Shakespeare would have painted such a character*, the Archdeacon of Dorset-Doctor England. The "gates of hell," that were not to prevail against this absurd and fabulous system called Christianity, you tell us, were, "the councils and powers of darkness;" it being " usual to keep armouries and hold councils over the gates of cities." This is but a shuffle of the original meaning. The writer of Matthew's Gospel believed in the fable of Hell, and that it had gates as an entrance, as heaven has a door. The true meaning of the figure was, and still is, that all the powers of hell should not prevail against the Church of Christ. The alleged powers of hell, we have found out to be a fiction and powerless; but not so with the printing press, not so with science: it is as clear as the noon day sun in an unclouded atmosphere, that Christianity cannot be longer maintained against even the published knowledge of this age. The sensible and the honest throughout Europe scout the system, * The Psalmist has it, Psalm lv. ver. 22, Prayer Book edition: "The words of his mouth were softer than butter, having war in his heart: his words were smoother than oil, and yet they be very swords." as an insult to their understanding. If it cannot be maintained against every opponent, it cannot be maintained by facts and arguments against any: and if it could have been so maintained, the Christians in power would have so far felt it, as to scorn the use of any weapons, but those facts and arguments, against their opponents. What is now the case? Against opposition, no attempt is made to support it by arguments and an exhibition of facts; but every where we, the Anti-Christians, suffer persecution in persons and property, because we have the facts and arguments on our side; and they, the Christians, on theirs, the brute force of numbers, established system, and government. So that there is, evidently, here, something more powerful than the "gates of hell," or the "councils and powers of darkness,” in parliament assembled over those gates. In consequence of the next subject being a very long one, and best suited by a separate letter, I must break off here and make this a very short one. It is to be a critique on the "Sermon on the Mount," which you eulogize most bombastically and most unworthy. I had worked a large portion of it into this letter; but I see, that it has importance enough to constitute a single and separate letter, and so I have rearranged to break here and to begin anew. I began this letter, by calling you a Christian Atheist, and, as many will suppose a contradiction to exist in the term, Í will explain it away. When Christianity came into existence, there existed a worship of a multitude of Gods, or personifications of all those influences, to which mankind then felt themselves subject. In the elegance of the temples and statutes dedicated to, and descriptive of, those personified influences, and in many of the forms and ceremonies of worship, we find much to admire. There was alike a richness of character, and a richness of thought, though erroneous, which commands our admiration; and which has commanded the admiration of all Christians, who had the sensibility to admire any thing of a superior cast. With a few exceptions, the whole of this mass of worship was, to obtain present pleasures and to expel present pains: mankind had not then been ridiculously spiritualized with a notion of a future life of immortality. When Christianity came, or after it had gained a footing, it acknowledged no God but that most contemptible of all the Gods-Jehovah, the God of the Jews. After a time, it deified its professed founder, and with him, that influence, which, in a general term, we may stile mental influence, or |