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office of these watchers, or Charlies of the night, being to see the Most High home to bed in decent time, and to call him up in the morning. And there, on the celestial sphere, will you see these two watchers, stars of the second and the third magnitudes, the Gamma and Delta, the one on the hand and the other on the dart of the Sagitary, which happens to be the sign of the public-house in which the Most High, when he gets into a low way, spends his long winter evenings. In his "Father's house are many mansions;" but if you want to know where Jesus Christ is at this moment, "you'll find him drinking at the Sagitary."

If, then, it was a just conclusion of Cicero, that the Grecian Apollo was no real personage, but a personification of the Sun, "because the attributes ascribed to that Apollo did so wonderfully agree thereto," can it be a less just conclusion that the barbarism JEs, the Latin termination of whose name, in Us (making JESUS, retained in the Greek IHZOTE, betrays its LatinoGræco, barbarous, monkish, Latin origin), is but another version

of the same fiction?

That actions and speeches, and reasonings and situations, and character and circumstance, should be ascribed to the barbarian fiction, and many of these perhaps drawn from real life; and that the names of the four seasons, twelve months, and so on, should be disguised by the substitution of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, James, Thomas, and so on, will no more conceal the allegorical conceit from a shrewd observance, than the speeches and reasonings of Phoebus, in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, in which the attendant evangelists and disciples retain their proper names; where

"The God sits high, exalted on a throne

Of blazing gems, with purple garments on:
The Hours in order ranged on either hand,

And Days, and Months, and Years, and Ages stand;
Here Spring appears, with flow'ry chaplets bound;
Here Summer, in her wheaten garland crown'd;
Here Autumn the rich trodden grapes besmear;
And hoary Winter shivers in the rear."

Thus every circumstance and every iota of the Gospel story resolves into an astrological solution, and admits of no other possible solution. An astronomer may be a hypocrite, and he may be a liar, but he cannot be a Christian.

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Printed and Published by RICHARD CARLILE, 62, Fleet Street, where all Communications, post paid, or free of expence, ure requested to be left.

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The Lion.

No. 25. VOL. 4.] LONDON, Friday, Dec. 18, 1829. [PRICE 6d.

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON, FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY, &c.

MY LORD DUKE,-I began the year with writing letters to your Grace about the Catholic question, and other matters, and having no particular subject in hand, I feel inclined again to intrude myself upon your name, for I will not say attention, because that will be a point of pleasure with yourself; and I know myself so well, as to know that I am not a very agreeable subject to any person in office in this country. My publications will be a source of great mental disorder, until religion be rooted out. The subject must be painful to a statesman; but it cannot be set aside, nor treated with contempt: it must be met, weighed, and submitted to. I commanded the attention of the cabinet in the years 1817, 18, and 19; and I shall command it more portentously yet. To avoid every thing in the shape of impertinent intrusion, I shall leave this letter to find its way to you in the ordinary course of publication. Statesmen should not be bothered, nor bantered, when they carry themselves so well before the country, as you, by universal consent, have done.

You did well to settle that which was called the Catholic Question, in the last session of Parliament; it was bravely and wisely done. The clamour is as strong as ever for the doing of something more; and what will you do next? You have not another such a tub to throw to the whale of discontent; no other change, in the way of amendment, can you make, that shall not touch the taxes. To allow the Unitarians or Dissenters generally to marry, is an affair about which the country cares not a straw. It had better not be done, until some great change takes place in the state of religion and the marriage-laws, until we return to contracts before a magistrate. Let the church hold this rite, while the church stands. To repeal the malt tax, of beer tax with it, will be doing no good at all; for beer is rather Printed and published by R. Carlile, 69, Fleet Street." No. 25. Vol. 4. 3D

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one of the evils than one of the necessaries of life. Good can only be done on this ground by breaking up the licensing system, as to wines, spirits, and ale, with the removal of the taxes on those articles; and then a nuisance, and source of human depravity, would be destroyed. A blow would be struck at that which has become the besetting sin of this country-drunkenness, and neglect of home. The licensing system has created a sort of general home, which greatly induces the neglect of families and the individual homes.

I know not what you can do with such a Parliament as you have to deal with. You disturb a nest of hornets if you touch the Funds, the Church, or the Corn Laws. No one will object to your taking off any of the taxes that form the ordinary sources of revenue, if you can proceed without that revenue. You ap pear to me to be in the predicament in which you can originate nothing for the welfare of the country; and, perhaps, your wisdom will be found in neutrality between the conflicting interests of its parties, and in assisting each to pull down the other. Any currency project, or any alteration of the quality of the currency, is little, and will avail nothing in the general evil. An entire removal of the Corn Laws would be a great relief; but can you do it with such a House of Lords or landlords? Will they vote away this their enormous sinecure? What patriotism calls for, we know; but they have none. It would be flagitious in the extreme, to begin with reducing the interest of the funds.

The Church you cannot touch without taking me by the hand. I shall go on to trumpet it into the ears of the people throughout the country, that this Church and the Christian religion generally is founded upon a romance. I challenge discussion on this topic, and can no where find the priest that will say nay to me before an audience. I offer a reward for the finding of such a priest. Since I last publicly addressed you, I have, with a friend, been a parson or priest-hunting, through a large district of the country, but not one could we start from his cover. We every where scented them, but we had no dogs with us powerful enough to turn them out. Some of them would gnash their teeth at us, but not one of them would try his power in a conflict. We beat through the fine cover at Cambridge, and were threatened with a conspiracy and circumvention of the wolves; but battle was not given, though our challenge was long and loudly made. My Lord Duke, we want your countenance and help to bring on the desired discussions. Say the word, and we will lay the Church at your feet, with all its wealth.

You have been in the East Indies-you must know something of the character of the natives, and their books, and their religion. My Lord Duke, in the book called the Bible, consisting of both Old and New Testaments, there is not a story connected with the name of God, but may be traced back to or found in the

books of the Hindoos. We have no authoritative antiquity for any part of the Bible, or the Jews, beyond the Alexandrian Library, or exceeding the period of about two thousand years. While the stories of the Bible are found in existence, with most evident proofs as to two thousand year's priority, in the books of the Hindoos. I will not contend for a romantic period of time; but I will engage to double, in extent of time, any chronology that can be established for the Jew-books in the priority of those of Hindostan.

There we have the story of the creation, from a chaos which our present chemical knowledge of the properties of matter stamps a romance and an impossibility. There we have the first man Adam, and the first woman Eve, under a variation of names. There we have the Paradise, or the Garden of Eden, the supernatural fruits, the serpent, the seduction, the fall, the expulsion, and the guarding of the garden by angels. There we have the stories of Cain, and Abel, and Seth; and all the presumed antediluvians, the giants, the sons of God with the daughters of men, the alleged wickedness, and the general deluge, with the preservation of Noah and his three sons: all the characters the same, under a variation of names. There we have an account of the peopling of the earth, and the same erroneous notion, as in the Jew Books, of the earth being a motionless plane, and admitting of a universal deluge; and there we may see, that the A-bram of the Jews is but a pastoral and low description of the Bram-a of the Hindoos, the father of the nation. There you have the story of the chosen people, the land flowing with milk and honey, which has ever been a burlesque as to Judea: the institutes of Menu, superior to and perhaps the original of the Mosaic code; the former applying to a known country, and a resident and polished people; the latter to an unknown country, and a barbarous. non-resident people. The Jews can put in no historical claim to a footing in Judea before the time of Alexander the Great. Even the foul story of Lot and the Sodomites is told over in relation to Brama. You will find no other difference than was likely to arise by a traditionary transfer of the story from one time, language, and people to another. Of the New Testament, or the Christian religion, there is the entire story of Christ, corresponding not only with the canonical but with the apocryphal books, in the person of Crishna, under various names. There is the suffering and the triumphant Saviour; the Saviour who has been, and the Saviour that is to come. As far as there are known records, the story of the incarnation of Deity, and its periodical successions, most certainly began in India. All religion, then, is Indian fable. The Indians allow that their fables have originated in a romantic worship of the sun. Such is the foundation of all religion. The whole of the Pagan mythology of Egypt, Phoenicia, Greece, and Rome, may be so unravelled as to be

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traced into the original sun-worship. Man has known no God but the sun he can know no other. I see, by an advertisement, that some author has been attempting to show the identity of the Druidical, and almost all other religions, with that of the Hebrews. He might have stopped short of the mark; but there is a certain identity in all religions, and the Hebrew is one of the latest. There is but one God in religion, and that has been and is the Sun.

Can the Church stand against such a showing of its foundation? Based upon nothing but the materials of romance and Indian allegory, and thus shown in publications within the reach of all persons, can impudence itself go on to cry it up as some hing useful to the nation? Is there no change on the subject? Was the Church ever before as now assailed? Did there ever before stand up, in the face of the country, a man to challenge every priest of the Church to a discussion of its merits? No. This is a new thing. The Christian religion has been assailed by writ ings that have been printed in this country; but they were not openly and regularly published. I have made the thing as naked as the unclouded sun at noon-day. A professing Christian, the Bishop of London himself, must feel a sense of littleness in passing by, or thinking of my shop. They do all feel it. This is a new thing in the land. The Christian, in relation to other religions, never stood on the 'vantage ground on which I have placed infidelity. I have been but eleven years in working the thing thus far. I do not say alone I did it; but, alone, I began it. I have now a splendid ally; a man splendid for his genius and his eloquence; a man from your schools; a man no where second as to the means of forming a judgment of the Christian religion; a man not to be evaded or shuffled off as not being a scholar; a man in the prime of life, mature in judgment, rich in thought, and sound in reasoning.-I mean the Rev. Robert Taylor. I see other clergymen ready to join us the moment we can offer them subsistence, as infidel teachers. This is true, my Lord Duke; and I will tell you who they are, if you will, in confidence, ask me. The highest state of mind in this country is infidel. The lowest is Christian, and in and about the Church. It is really become a serious and proper question to inquire, "Who is on the side of the Lord ?" To which I add, "Who hath believed our report (the infidel report), and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed," that he can stand before us in discussion?

All political projects and reforms are paltry and nothing, when. placed by the side of this of mine-this of separating the religion, from the law of the country, and applying to state purposes the property which it hath accumulated. I am not for doing the thing by piecemeal. I am not for a more equal distribution of its property. I am not for curtailing the income of

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