As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism — a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious, or an irreligious, eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade.

In Deism our reason and our belief are happily united.

Change of ministers amounts to nothing. One goes out, another comes in, and still the same measures, vices, and extravagances are pursued. It signifies not who is minister. The defect lies in the system. The foundation and superstructure of the government is bad. Prop it as you please, it continually sinks and ever will.

When my country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir.

The Christian religion begins with a dream and ends with a murder.

We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice; but the vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable.

Nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice.