Deja-vu

Hi all:

I came across this remarkably familiar quote earlier today. Can anyone name the author? (No googling allowed) I'll give you a hint. The author is not Eric Gage or James Lacey....

"I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw."

Jim

Here is another quote from the same author. This is Christianity Steve C. could love. As a matter of fact, the author of these quotes is (in my opinion) perhaps one of the most VCS in history....

"I abuse the priests, indeed, who have so much abused the pure and holy doctrines of their Master, and who have laid me under no obligations of reticence as to the tricks of their trade. The genuine system of Jesus, and the artificial structures they have erected, to make them the instruments of wealth, power, and preeminence to themselves, are as distinct things in my view as light and darkness ; and while I have classed them with soothsayers and necromancers, I place Him among the greatest reformers of morals, and scourges of priest-craft that have ever existed. They felt Him as such, and never rested until they had silenced Him by death. But His heresies against Judaism prevailing in the long run, the priests have tacked about, and rebuilt upon them the temple which He destroyed, as splendid, as profitable, and as imposing as that.

Government, as well as religion, has furnished its schisms, its persecutions, and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people. It has its hierarchy of emperors, kings, princes, and nobles, as that has of popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and priests. In short, cannibals are not to be found in the wilds of America only, but are reveling on the blood of every living people. Turning, then, from this loathsome combination of Church and State, and weeping over the follies of our fellow men who yield themselves the willing dupes and drudges of these mountebanks, I consider reformation and redress as desperate, and abandon them to the Quixotism of more enthusiastic minds."

J

One last quote. (These are all mined from the author's personal correspondence, late in his life.) Although these were penned 200 years ago, the similarity to modern religious discussion is amazing. I have read these precise sentiments on this very forum. Pretty cool.

"Of publishing a book on religion, my dear Sir, I never had an idea. I should as soon think of writing for the reformation of Bedlam, as of the world of religious sects. Of these there must be, at least, ten thousand, every individual of every one of which believes all wrong but his own. To undertake to bring them all right, would be like undertaking, single-handed, to fell the forests of America."

Jim