tured
and fabricated for that purpose. Why are we to give this church credit,
when she tells us that those books are genuine in every part, any more
than we give her credit for everything else she has told us; or for the
miracles she says she has performed? That she could fabricate writings
is certain, because she could write; and the composition of the writings
in question, is of that kind that anybody might do it; and that she did
fabricate them is not more inconsistent with probability, than that she
should tell us, as she has done, that she could and did work miracles.

Since, then, no external evidence can, at this long distance of time,
be produced to prove whether the church fabricated the doctrine called
redemption or not, (for such evidence, whether for or against, would be
subject to the same suspicion of being fabricated,) the case can only be
referred to the internal evidence which the thing carries of itself; and
this affords a very strong presumption of its being a fabrication. For
the internal evidence is, that the theory or doctrine of redemption
has for its basis an idea of pecuniary justice, and not that of moral
justice.

If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me
in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for
me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is
changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if
the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to
destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is
then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.

This single reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is
founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which
another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again
with the system of second redemptions, obtained through the means of
money given to the church for pardons, the probability is that the same
persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories;
and that, in truth, there is no such thing as redemption; that it is
fabulous; and that man stands in the same relative condition with his
Maker he ever did stand, since man existed; and that it is his greatest
consolation to think so.

Let him believe this, and he will live more consistently and morally,
than by any other system. It is by his being taught to contemplate
himself as an out-law, as