duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavour-
ing to make our fellow-creatures happy.

But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other
things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this
work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for
not believing them.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish
church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the
Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church
that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish,
Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human
inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and mo-
nopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who
believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief
as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of
man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does
not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in
professing to believe what he does not believe.

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may
so express it, that mental lying has produced in society.
When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the
chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief
to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for
the commission of every other crime. He takes up the
trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify
himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we
conceive anything more destructive to morality than this?

Soon after I had published the pamphlet COMMON SENSE,
in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolu-
tion in the system of government would be followed by a
revolution in the system of religion. The adulterous con-
nection of church and state, wherever it had taken place,
whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually
prohibited, by pains and penalties, every discussion upon
established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that
until the system of government should be changed, those

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