A Divinity of Immoral Description

The sectarian divinity, which Christianity presents to us, is

represented as a consuming fire, as a being possessing fiery

indignation and an uncontrollable vengeance; as a being who

disregards all just discrimination upon the subject of moral

principle. He declares in some parts of the New Testament, that every

thing shall be regulated by his arbitrary will without regard to the

nature or character of the case. "He will have mercy on whom he will

have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth." (See Rom. chap. ix. &c.)

Is it possible that even a Christian believer can suppose, for a

single moment, that the principles of genuine morality can rest upon

such an arbitrary basis? No; a divinity of immoral description is the

bane of moral virtue. The purest theism is independent of morality,

and morality is independent of that; much less then can the corrupt

and vitiated conceptions of barbarous ages be produced in support of

a principle which could, not exist without the intellectual faculties

of man and which cannot be destroyed while these faculties exist. The

principle and the practice of immortal virtue will long remain, after

the plundering and bloody theology of Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, has

ceased to afflict the human race. The essential principles of

morality are founded in the nature of man, they cannot be

annihilated, they are as indestructible as human existence itself.

 --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species