An English critic, noticing this defect, says: "His vigor
of style was deformed by a power of sarcasm, which often invested the
most sacred subjects with caricature and vulgarity; a boundless
malignity against supposed errors.... He equals Paine in vulgarity and
Voltaire in sarcasm."[271]
Parker felt that a bold course must be taken or orthodoxy could not be
made to yield its position. His biographer informs us that when he was
less than seven years of age "he fell out with the doctrines of eternal
damnation and a wrathful God."[272] In later life, when striving to find
the sources of what he considered the evils of the popular theology, he
fixed upon two common idols: "the Bible, which is only a record of men's
words and works; and Jesus of Nazareth, a man who only lived divinely
some centuries ago. The popular religion is wrong in that it tells man
he is an outcast, that he is but a spurious issue of the devil, must not
pray in his own name, is only sure of one thing--and that is damnation.
Man is declared to be immortal, but it is such immortality as proves a
curse instead of a blessing.
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