Macy Halford quotes one of Byron's letters to his friend and clergyman Francis Hodgson "trying to convince the Reverend of the ridiculousness of religion." From September 13, 1811:
God would have made His will known without books, considering how very few could read them when Jesus of Nazareth lived, had it been His pleasure to ratify any peculiar mode of worship. As to your immortality, if people are to live, why die? And our carcases, which are to rise again, are they worth raising? I hope, if mine is, that I shall have a better pair of legs that I have moved on these two-and-twenty years, or I shall be sadly behind in the squeeze into Paradise.