A Perversion of All Correct Principles
In the "Old Testament", national and individual justice is disregarded, and God is made the accomplice of crimes which human nature abhors. The maxims of the "New Testament" are a perversion of all correct principles in a code of moral virtue. The whole system is calculated to take man out of himself, to destroy his confidence in his own energies, to debase his faculties, vitiate his social affections, and brutalize the most useful qualities of human existence. --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species