equired a
much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even
this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves.
It is only reported by others that they said so. It is hearsay upon
hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such evidence.

It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given
to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born when the
heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and
that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story.
Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology
were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new
thing at that time to believe a man to have been celestially begotten;
the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar
opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with
hundreds; the story therefore had nothing in it either new, wonderful,
or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among
the people called Gentiles, or mythologists, and it was those people
only that believed it. The Jews, who had kept strictly to the belief of
one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology,
never credited the story.

It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian
Church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct
incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed
founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then
followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which
was about twenty or thirty thousand. The statue of Mary succeeded the
statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes changed into the
canonization of saints. The Mythologists had gods for everything; the
Christian Mythologists had saints for everything. The church became as
crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome
was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the
idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes
of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to
abolish the amphibious fraud.

CHAPTER III - CONCERNING THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST, AND HIS HISTORY.

NOTHING that is here said can apply, even with the most distant
disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and
an amiab