man being is, to endeavour to increase the amount of good, of virtue, morality, humanity, honesty and truth; and to lessen the amount of the countervailing principles that produce evil and pain.

I can assure "A Lover of Truth," for my own part, that I have "an invincible fear" of nothing but of wrong doing; and that, the moment he or any other person can shew me, that I have done wrong, I will be found a most sincere penitent: as a Christian if Christianity can be shewn to be founded in truth, or as any other sect or denomination of religionists with which morality and truth shall be shewn most to abouud.

The discussions of the ancient Grecian Philosophers were not unlike those of the modern materialists and immaterialists: and to shew the great superiority which the sciences of astronomy and chemistry have afforded the modern materialists, in unfolding a knowledge of the planetary motions and the wonderful powers, properties and changes of fluid upon solid, and solid upon fluid matter, I will transcribe an extract from an early number of the Quarterly Review.

"OPINIONS OF THE GREEKS RELATING TO DEITY.

"What is God? asked the first philosophers -He is the most ancient of all things; for he is without beginning, said Thales. He is air, said Anaximenes.-He is a pure mind, said Anaxagoras. He is air and mind, said Archelaus.He is mind in a spherical form, said Democritus. He is a monod, and the principle of good, said Pythagoras. He is an eternal circular fire, said Heraclitus.-He is the infinite and immoveable principle in a spherical form, said Parmenides. He is one and every thing, said Melissus and Zenothe only eternal and infinite.-These were subjects in which the profoundest mind might have discovered the most ample exercise for itself: but to the Greek a vacuity was still left; necessity, fate and fortune, or accident filled it up.

"The universe furnished another set of disputations. What is, has ever been, and the world is eternal, said one party. The world is not eternal, but matter is eternal, argued another party.-Was this matter susceptible of forms of one or of many?-Was it water, or air, or fire?-Was it an assemblage of atoms, or an infinite number of incorruptible elements?-Had this matter subsisted without movement in chaos, or had it an irregular movement?-Did the world appear by intelligence communicating its action to it; or did

God ordain it, by penetrating it with a part of his essence? Did these atoms move in the void, and was the universe the result of their fortuitous union?-Are there but two elements in nature, earth and fire, and by these are all things formed and produced?-or are there four elements, whose parts are united by love and separated by hatred? Causes and essences; bodies, forms, and colours; production and dissolution; the great phenomena of visible nature; the magnitude of figures, eclipses, and phases of the two heavenly luminaries; the nature and division of the sky; the magnitude and situation of the earth; the sea with its ebbs and flows; the causes of thunder, lightning, winds, and earthquakes:all these furnished disquisitions, which were pursued with an eagerness of research and intenseness of application peculiar to the Greeks.-Man, a compound of matter and mind, having relations to the universe by the former, and to the eternal being by the latter, presented phenomena and contradictions, as puzzling to the old philosophers, as the universe of which he was the abridgment. While all allowed him a soul and an intelligence, all differed widely in their definition of this soul or intelligence. It is always in motion, and it moves by itself, said one party; it is a number in motion; it is the barmony of the four elements; it is air, it is water, it is fire, it is blood; it is a fiery mixture of things, perceptible by the intellect, which have globes, shapes, and the force of fire; it is a flame which emanates from the sun; it is an assemblage of fiery and spherical atoms, like those subtle particles of matter which are seen agitated in the rays of the sun.

"Such were a few of the speculations which science had devised for employing the thoughts of active minded men in Greece."

These early philosophers had a distinct idea of the two principles, which are common to and affect the animal sensations; and they saw, that they were necessarily primary subjects for investigation; but, though they were men of strong minds, they discussed and doubted in the dark :-Galileo had not then been persecuted by the Christian Church, for unfolding, with his telescope, a knowledge of the planetary motious; nor had a Priestly, when beginning to unfold the wonderful properties of fluid and of solid matter, fled his country, after having his house and his invaluable laboratory destroyed by an infuriated Christian mob.

I am, Sir, your obedient Servant,

RICHARD CARLILE. Private Postscript. Should you have scruples to insert this

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letter, you will oblige me much by putting it under cover for Mr. Goldsmith of Hambledon; but should you not scruple, I shall esteem it a favour to receive an early paper, and will endeavour to repay the compliment. I have studiously endeavoured to avoid giving an offensive word, which are but too common in those discussions; and I have as studiously sought not to introduce any thing superfluous, or that was not called for: therefore abridgment would affect the spirit of the whole.

THE MORALITY OF ATHEISM CONTRASTED WITH
RELIGIOUS MORALITY.

AFTER the expression of so much seeming anxiety for the morals of the human race, should Atheism ever become prevalent; by some well-meaning, although weak-minded individuals, it may not be amiss to shew that there is no ground for this fearful apprehension. Why should the Atheist be immoral more than the Religionist? It is his interest to be moral, as much as it is that of any other man. He has every inducement to be a moral man, without any of the frantic and enthusiastic incentives of religion, to hurry him into immorality. The Atheist is opposed to delusion, to error, to falsehood, only because they are fatal to the interests, fatal to the happiness of society, and at war with the welfare of mankind. Atheist has a code, by which he conforms himself, founded upon The facts, built upon experience; guided by reason. the Garden of Nature, converting only the wholesome and delicious He walks through fruits to his use: experience teaches him to refuse, to cast aside the noxious and poisonous plants. To receive nourishment, to feel pleasure, and to communicate these to others, is the moving principle of the moral Atheist. Thus he becomes serviceable to his fellow creatures, his whole life is taken up, in making those around him happy; that he may enjoy happiness himself; that his acquaintance may feel interested in his welfare, may smile upon his prosperity, may share in his felicity. He fears no revenging and implacable phantom of superstition; he worships no unknown powers; he seeks for no laws out of the world which he inhabits; he asks not for a rule of action from the arch Priest, from the insane devotee, or, the morose bigots, his whole conduct is squared; not by any fanciful theory; not by any chimerical system; but by the duties of morality; these, unlike the various contradictory chimeras of the religionist remain the same; founded upon truth they are eternal.

Morality is but another word for virtue, virtue partakes of the happiness it creates; it is a "substantial good." Religion is founded upon error, and the ignorance of man. Error is injurious

to the community and of course, a pestilential evil, poisoning every thing within its deadly influence.

The history of religion is nothing more or less than a recital of the most barbarous deeds, the most horrid persecutions, the most inhuman carnage! There is no system of religion but tends to shackle the faculties of man, to cramp his noble energies, to deaden his thirst for Knowledge. In order to reconcile the absurdities, which naturally arise out of inconceivable mysteries, which abound in every incomprehensible system, man's imagination is tickled with fanciful illusions, his mind is fettered with a chain of destructive chimeras whose links are formed out of error and closed by delusion on the anvil of prejudice. In this state of bondage his mind remains in the keeping of his priests, whose existence depends upon his being considered the agent of an avenging deity.

The person who has the hardihood to break through the trammels of mental error, who has the courage to proclaim the falsehood of these delusive and petrifying systems, who has the honesty to lay bare the glaring impositions of the priest, is exposed to all the horrid, rancorous, and inhuman treatment, that can be inflicted by a bewildered, by a maddened, by a fanatical multitude. Insanity pourtrays to them an ALMIGHTY DEITY, pleased with THEIR SERVICES, urging the destruction of every thing that fits not with their own blind and cruel passions, which lead them to believe that every blow, struck at the heart of naked truth, and that the destroying, the mangling, the murdering, of every human being, who cannot subscribe to their evil, base, and absurd dogmas; is the most PLEASING DEVOTION they can offer to an INCENSED DEITY.

Such is the morality of Religion! It is an engine employed by tyrants to sanctify the most destructive and baneful wars! It renders holy the massacre of thousands, the plundering of millions, and after putting down the rising spirit of freedom, after conveying devastation into a country where regeneration and moral legislation is in its infancy, it immolates thousands pon the blood-stained altars of its idol; and the spiritual conscience-keeping monsters, will offer up a thanksgiving, will perform a mass, will sing a requiem to the departed shades, of those who have been SACRIFICED by the hypocrisy, the cruelty, and the deception, of THESE DESTROYERS OF THE HUMAN

RACE.

Manchester, July 7, 1823.

ARISTIPPUS.

OF THE RELIGION OF DEISM COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, AND THE SUPERIORITY OF THE FORMER OVER THE LATTER.

EVERY person of whatever religious denomination he may be is a Deist in the first article of his creed. Deism from the Latin word Deus, God, is the belief of a God, and this belief is the first article of every man's creed.

It is on this article, universally consented to by all mankind, that the Deist builds his church and here he rests. Whenever we step aside from this article, by mixing it with articles of human invention, we wander into a labyrinth of uncertainty and fable, and become exposed to every kind of imposition by pretenders to revelation. The Persian shews the Zendavista of Zoroaster the law-giver of Persia, and calls it the divine law; the Bremin shews the shaster, revealed, he says, by God to Bruma, and given to him out of a cloud; the Jew shews what he calls the law of Moses, given, he says, by God on the Mount Sinai; the Christian shews a collection of books and epistles written by nobody knows who, and called the New Testament, and the Mahometan shews the Koran, given, he says, by God to Mahomet; each of these calls itself revealed religion, and the only true word of God, and this the followers of each profess to believe from the habit of education, and each believes the others are imposed upon..

But when the divine gift of reason begins to expand itself in the mind and calls man to reflection, he then reads and contemplates God in his works, and not in books pretending to revelation. The creation is the Bible of a true believer in God. Every thing in this vast volume inspires him with sublime ideas of the Creator. The little and pal-. try, and often obscene tales of the Bible sink into wretchedness when put in comparison with this mighty work. The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles to confirm his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than the creation itself and his own existence.

There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found in any other system of religion All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all,