The Holy Spirit
The concept of a monotheistic religion with three different modes of reference to its god is confusing enough even to the church leaders who are supposed to be able easily explain such things. The Father and the Son are easy enough, of course; it is that third element—that Holy Spirit or Ghost—that throws such a monkey wrench into the attempts to explain. This is one of the aspects of Christianity to which the author directs much effort, but ultimately it is simply metaphor that most effective:
“The Holy Spirit Himself also, which operates in the prophets, we assert to be an effluence of God, flowing from Him, and returning back again like a beam of sun.”
Refuting the Charges
Apologists for Christianity were forced into the position of apologizing primarily for three main offenses launched against them. Monotheism was misinterpreted by the polytheists as simple atheism and along with not believing in god at all, they also fell under the spotlight of conspiracy theories regarding the practice of cannibalistic rituals and engaging in wanton sexuality with pretty much anything with a pulse. The author responds thusly through metaphor:
“But if these charges are true, spare no class: proceed at once against our crimes; destroy us root and branch, with our wives and children, if any Christian is found to live like the brutes.”
Worshiping the Creator, not the Creation
The author creates an analogy to reveal the difference between rules and lords of man for whom great palaces are built by suggesting that God had no need to create the world for himself. Therefore, worship in Christian is directed toward the creator and not the universe. Metaphorical imagery further drives this point home:
“If, therefore, the world is an instrument in tune, and moving in well-measured time, I adore the Being who gave its harmony, and strikes its notes, and sings the accordant strain, and not the instrument.”
Sacrifices Not Necessary
Chapter XIII is subtitled “Why the Christians Do Not Offer Sacrifice” and it delivers on that promise. After first explaining why an all-powerful supreme deity has no need for blood resulting from sacrifice much less the foul bouquet left wafting in the air from burnt offering, the goes on to suggest that the Christian God needs just one expression of sacrifice from believers:
“the noblest sacrifice to Him is for us to know who stretched out and vaulted the heavens, and fixed the earth in its place like a center, who gathered the water into seas and divided the light from the darkness, who adorned the sky with stars and made the earth to bring forth seed of every kind”
The Purpose of Marriage
Chapter XXXIII is devoted to explaining the purpose of marriage. Since sexual intercourse is forbidden without entering into the covenant of marriage, one can well guess what that purpose is. Except that another rule is placed upon that purpose which kind of puts a drag on the whole premise. Marriage is for the purpose of making children. Or, metaphorically speaking:
“For as the husbandman throwing the seed into the ground awaits the harvest, not sowing more upon it, so to us the procreation of children is the measure of our indulgence in appetite.”
