document in the language of Jesus and his pretended Jewish disciples. All the Gospels, all the Epistles, and all the Revelations, were written in the Greek language, and often in a barbarous Greek, a proof that they were the work of illiterate men.

This is something like substantive proof, both as to the name and language, that the Christian Religion did not originate in Judea, and that the subject is fabulous. It is easily seen how the Grecians might have taken the Jewish word for Messiah or Saviour, Jesus, the Jews being then scattered among them and dwelling in all the Grecian Cities, and have attached to it their own favourite word Christ. No Jew had ever done this.

Second as to time and dates.

We have undoubted historical narratives of the destruction of the Temple and city of Jerusalem by Titus, about the year 70 of that which is now the adopted Christian era.

From that time to the predominance of the Christian Religion under the Roman Emperors, we have no history of Jerusalem. Until the Christian Pilgrimages began, it contained no other inhabitants, than such as inhabit the ruins of other cities in Asia. Here was a very favourable opportunity for a Grecian Fabulist to lay the scenes of a fable at Jerusalem, a few years before its destruction; and this at a period of full thirty years after its destruction, when no one could effectually contradict him, and when, indeed untill the new superstition had begun to spread widely, no one thought it worthy of notice. Who thinks now of refuting the nonsense preached by the followers of Johanna Southcote? Yet a time may come, when these people may so spread themselves, as to make a refutation a matter of social or even of national consequence, Such was the case with the Christians; and, when they began to be numerous, Celsus, Porphyry and others effectually refuted their nonsense; but their ignorant numbers triumphed even over that refutation. Refutation makes no impression upon an ignorant, illiterate man. He does not understand it.

We not only have no account of Christianity within the period that Jerusalem existed as a city with its temple; but we have no account of it that can be dated by proofs within the first century of the eighteen which are now adopted. This again greatly strengthens the assertion of its being of Grecian origin.

Another fact is, that the earliest record of Christianity in existence is the letter by Pliny to Trajan. And this fur

ther corroborates the Grecian origin; for Pliny had to travel into the Grecian cities of Asia Minor, into Bithynia, to find this sect of Christians, of whom he before knew nothing by his own confession, a proof, that there were none then at Rome; and this ten or twelve years into the second century. There were then no books among these Christians, and all the information that Pliny could get of them, was that they were a few slaves, who assembled by night or early in the morning to sing, pray and hold love-feasts.

Josephus and Philo could not have been ignorant of such a sect, if it had existed and was known within the first century. Their works had no mention of such a sect, though they mentioned every sect that was known among the Jews, or that had any thing of Jewish origin. Philo must have been born about the time that Jesus Christ is said to have been born, and Josephus some twenty or thirty years later; so that, between them, they must have filled out that centu-, ry and have been its competent historians. Were the contents of the Gospels true, they could not as historians, have been silent on such occurrences. It is evident, that they had no knowledge of the matters there fabulously related.

There is another fact worthy of notice, that no Christian writer, until we come to Eusebius in the fourth century, has narrated the destruction of Jerusalem. Had Christianity existed within that period, what a fine topic it would have been for Christian eloquence and for the truths of its tenets. But it is clear, that to the first Christians, the old Jerusalem was, what the New Jerusalem has been to their insane successors a spiritual city. They knew nothing of it as a habitable place, though, doubtless, they heard it often mentioned by the Jews among them: and, finally, it became a place of Christian pilgrimage, where excited fancy soon found a cross, a sépulchre and even a manger, that corresponded with those mentioned in the Gospels. In the Old Testament, we read nothing of a place called Golgotha, or mount Calvary, or of the pool of Siloam, in or about Jerusalem and it is altogether probable, that the names of these places were of Christian invention; though Christian piety soon found the places that resembled the descriptions, as might be found in or about any town that ever existed.

So far, I have said nothing about the the miracles, having rested upon historical facts; but it may be safely adopted, as a criterion of historical truth, that it will admit of nothing miraculous, such as giving life to a dead and rotting carcase, feeding thousands to satiety with the quantity of

food that one or two hungry men would eat, walking upon water, checking a tempest by a word, fasting forty days and flying in the air without mechanism. Wherever we

find any thing of this kind, we may rest assured, that it is fable. Nothing of the kind ever happened. There are no spiritual powers in existence qualified to perform any such miracles. Design is a power confined to animals; and though there are material phenomena which we cannot comprehend, all experience teaches us, that they are but material. Spiritualities are the inventions of ignorance, the personification of powers, on which ignorance, might rest and save itself the labour of investigation, or moderate its fears by prayer and offerings.

The close similarity between the fable of Jesus and that of Prometheus is another proof, that the former contains no literal truth; but that it is an allegorical truth, which has at all times pervaded mankind, more particularly where any thing like literature has existed among them. The association of the word Logos with the name of Jesus Christ is a proof of this, and another proof, that Christianity is a Gre- ́ cian origin. Prometheus and Logos or Jesus Christ was the spiritual principal of reason crucified by the power of pre-existing error. The Materialists form the Prometheus, the Logos, the Jesus Christ of this country, at this time. They are persecuted by those who have given a literal interpretation to the same allegory; but who have surrounded that interpretation, or have found it surrounded, with much power and profit. The change, the relinquishment of this power and profit, the holders dread, and persecute with a hope of holding it. They must yield, after all their perseentions: and they will persecute to their own disadvantage, as well as to that of the persecuted.

If this be not evidence, that no such person as Jesus Christ lived or died within the province of Judea, at the time fabled, I know not what would be a sufficient detection of the errors of history. I may be referred to Tacitus, as a proof that there were Christians at Rome in the reign of Nero. I acknowledge the difficulty; but I cannot make it weigh against greater difficulties on the other side. I cousider the time at which Tacitus first wrote that passage. I find, according to Gibbon, that it was between the years 120 and 130. At this time, I can suppose the sect of Christians increasing in Rome. The wars in Judea had also brought a number of Jews to Rome, as captives, or as speculators fleeing from a desolated country. These Jews and

the first Christians passed alike in Rome under the common name of Galileans. Tacitus, writing of an affair that occurred in his infancy, and of which he could have had no accurate knowledge, public records being then very rare, might have identified the Christians with the Galileans who were persecuted by Nero: and still those Galileans might have been purely Jews. If there were Christians in Rome, during the reign of Nero, why should Trajan, who studiously deviated from the public conduct of Nero and Domitian, persecute the Christians which he found in the Grecian Provinces, and not persecute those which existed in Rome? The persecution and martyrdom of Ignatius, sent from antioch to Rome by Trajan to be destroyed by beasts, is an account scarcely to be doubted; though we have no authentic record of it, like the letter of Pliny to Trajan. Pliny admits, that Trajan had done something of the kind during the Dacian war, in passing through Bythinia, and this justifies the belief, that the martyrdom of Ignatius is authentic. But here we have the whole affair of Christianity confined to the Grecian provinces; and I care not so much about the year, or the century, in which it began, as for the proof, that the story of Jesus Christ is a fable, and that no facts of the kind narrated happened in Judea. What I want is to shew the present bad foundation of Christianity, including your order of Masonic Knights Templars; and, if I could induce all to consider and to rest upon the fact, that matter and not spirit is the sum of the things about us and of which we are a part, I would be the last to trouble myself and readers about the history of the Christian or any other idolatry.

Origen, the most intelligent Christian writer which we have in the third century, and who was about the first critical Christian, treats nearly the whole of the Old Testament as allegorical, and very much of the New: Indeed, he was very much of such a Christian as I now declare myself to be.

In 1819, some anonymous correspondent wanted me to adopt and espouse the Christianity of Origen, but being ignorant of what it meant, I rejected or neglected the proposition. I have now no objection to the general character of the Christianity of Origen, always excepting his taste in depriving himself of virility to subdue the most powerful of his passions.

If no such person as Jesus Christ lived or died at Jerusalem, your allegorical war against the infidels, my Royal Duke, is like the rest of allegorical masonry, a mischievous error and a burlesque: and the very memory of what the blood-thirsty christian fools did against the Saracens and

Turks and Moors, for several centuries, had better be discouraged than encouraged. To imitate them, or to play at Knights Templars in a chamber is a game almost too low for children. And for such nonsense to be espoused by men, who in other respects, claim a peculiar respect from a people, such as a Royal Family does, is enough to set up a general hooting against them, by every sensible man, woman and child in the country.

I must now proceed to describe such degrees of Masonry as I have remaining, and, after this, I shall scarcely fill another number of "The Republican" with similar nonsense. The degrees which remain are called Rosicrucian degrees; but the first appears to me to have been a Roman Catholic degree. Constantine was assuredly the founder of Christianity, as a part and parcel of the law of Rome or of any other country; but his interference is far from being creditable to the Christians. He was a treacherous, ignorant, foppish and generally detestable character. As for the sign of the cross being shewn to him in the clouds, it is a Christian legend or trick, or if ever he declared any thing of the kind, it was the better to make the Christians subservient to his ambitious purpose of being sole master of the Roman Empire. If the cross had been once shewn in the sky, as it is called, why was it not kept there, as a standing proof of the good foundation of Christianity? I proceed to

A DESCRIPTION OF THE DEGREE OF RED CROSS OF ROME AND CONSTANTINE.

THE Grand Master of this degree is called Constantine; his deputy Eusebius. There are also a Senior General, a Junior General, a Grand Standard bearer, and a Janetor or Tyler. We have seen that the forms of opening and closing in all the degree are alike, the object being to ascertain that the members are not overlooked: that none but members of the degree are present. In this degree, there is difference only in the names of the officers, and the opening proceeds thus:

Constantine. Sir Knights Companions, assist me to open the conclave of Sir Knights Companions of the Red Cross of Rome and Constantine. (All the knights rise, draw their swords, and stand in due order.)

C. Sir Knight Eusebius, what is the first duty of the Companions of this order?

E. To see the conclave is properly cemented and that the Janetor is at his post, duly armed and clothed.

C. Sir Knight, Junior General, see that duty done. This is done with two reports, in the usual form: and the same inter