ot the power; but no
sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently powerful to
employ the sword than they did so, and the stake and faggot too; and
Mahomet could not do it sooner. By the same spirit that Peter cut off
the ear of the high priest's servant (if the story be true) he would
cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he been able. Besides
this, Christianity grounds itself originally upon the [Hebrew] Bible,
and the Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that in the
worst use of it--not to terrify, but to extirpate. The Jews made
no converts: they butchered all. The Bible is the sire of the [New]
Testament, and both are called the word of God. The Christians read
both books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing
called Christianity is made up of both. It is then false to say that
Christianity was not established by the sword.

The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the only
reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists than
Christians. They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and they
call the scriptures a dead letter. [This is an interesting and correct
testimony as to the beliefs of the earlier Quakers, one of whom was
Paine's father.--Editor.] Had they called them by a worse name, they had
been nearer the truth.

It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the
Creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial miseries,
and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among mankind,
to expel all ideas of a revealed religion as a dangerous heresy, and an
impious fraud. What is it that we have learned from this pretended thing
called revealed religion? Nothing that is useful to man, and every
thing that is dishonourable to his Maker. What is it the Bible teaches
us?--repine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches
us?--to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman
engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called
faith.

As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly
scattered in those books, they make no part of this pretended thing,
revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and the
bonds by which society is held together, and without which it cannot
exist; and are nearly the same in all religions, and in all societies.
The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and where it
attempts to excee