Again, “Upon you (says Jesus to the Jews) shall come all the righteous blood that has been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the righteous, to the blood of Zechariah,” &c.  Now, herein is a marvellous thing! how could a man really sent from God, assert to the Jews, that of them should be required the blood of Abel, and of all the righteous slain upon the earth?  Did the Jews kill Abel? or did their fathers kill him?  No! he was slain by Cain, whose posterity all perished in the deluge; how then could God require of the Jews who lived four thousand years after the murder, the guilt of it; nay more, “of all the righteous blood that had been shed upon the earth,” were they guilty of all that too?  If such assertions, and such reasonings do not prove what I asserted, what can?

It is said, that Jesus, by giving himself up to suffer death, proved the truth of his mission and doctrines, by his readiness to die for them.  But this is an argument which will recoil upon those who advance it.  Are there no instances upon record of mild, zealous, and amiable men who preached to the savages of America that they ought to worship the Virgin Mary? and did they not cheerfully die by the most excruciating torments to prove it?  Yes certainly! and let any Protestant Christian read the accounts of the preaching, sufferings, deaths, aye! and miracles too, of the Roman Catholic missionaries in Asia, and America; and then let him candidly answer whether he is willing to rest the issue of his controversy with the Papists upon the argument of martyrdom?  We all know the power of enthusiasm upon a susceptible mind; and we have read of, and perhaps sees, its effects in producing martyrdoms among people of all religions, in all parts of the world.  Nay, more, such is the power of this principle, that even now, women in India burn themselves alive on the funeral piles of their husbands, to prove, as they say, their love for them, and their determination to accompany them to the other world; when it is well known, that they burn themselves from the impulse of vanity, and the fear of disgrace, if they should not do so.  Nay, more still, so little support does martyrdom yield to truth, that there are more martyrdoms in honour of the false, ridiculous, and abominable idols of Hindostan, than any where else.  You may see men hooked through the ribs, and supported, and whirled round in the air in honour of their gods, clapping their hands, and testifying pleasure, instead of crying out with pain.  You may see in that country, the misguided enthusiastic worshippers of misshapen idols prostrate their bodied before the enormous wheels of the car of Seeva, and piously suffering themselves to be crushed in pieces by the rolling mass.  And any man who has been upon the banks of the Ganges, can tell you of the Yoguis, and of their self-inflicted torments, compared to which, even the cross is almost a bed of roses.  Indeed the argument of martyrdom will support any religion; and it has, in fact, been cheerfully undergone by enthusiasts and zealots of all religions, in testimony of the firm belief of the sufferers not only in the absurdities of Popery, and Brachinanism, but of every, even the most monstrous system that ever disgraced the human understanding.  There have been martyrs for Atheism itself.