“Robert Taylor and Richard Carlile present their compliments as ‘infidel missionaries’, to and most respectfully and earnestly invite discussion on the merits of the Christian religion, which they argumentatively challenge, in the confidence of their competence to prove, that such a person as Jesus Christ, alleged to have been of Nazareth, never existed; and that the Christian religion has no such origin as has been pretended; neither is it in any way beneficial to mankind; but that it is nothing more than an emanation from the ancient Pagan religion. The researches of the Rev. Robert Taylor, on the subject, are embodied in his newly published work, The Diegesis, in which may be found the routine of their argument. They also impugn the honesty of a continued preaching, while discussion is challenged on the whole of the merits of the Christian religion.”

“It is evident that the notion of spirits, imagined by savages and adopted by the ignorant, is calculated to retard the progress of knowledge, since it precludes our researches into the true cause of the effects which we see, by keeping the human mind in apathy and sloth. This state of ignorance may be very useful to crafty theologians, but very injurious to society. This is the reason, however, why in all ages priests have persecuted those who have been the first to give natural explanations of the phenomena of nature— as witness: Anaxagoras, Aristotle, Galileo, Descartes—and, more recently, Richard Carlile, William Lawrence, Robert Taylor, and Abnet Kneeland; to which we may add the name of the learned and venerable Thomas Cooper M. D., lately president of Columbia College. South Carolina.”

— H.D. Robinson (1835), notes to Baron d’Holbach’s The System of Nature [1]