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as much as with the conqueror. The orthodox are those among whom the prince ranks; the heretics are those who are not of the established sect. Hindoos, Mussulmen, Christians, all are right in their own eyes; but let us examine their pretensions.

According to the Christians, there is no salvation, no getting up to heaven, no escaping hell,—a place no one knows where situate, whether in the sun or the nucleus of a comet-but by Christ. Now the Hindoos believe not in Christ but in Vistnou, a God of their own making, therefore the Hindoos cannot get to heaven. And the Musselmans believe in Mahomet; but Mahomet was an impostor according to the Christians; therefore the Musselmans cannot get to heaven. According to the Protestants, idolaters cannot get to heaven; but according to the same Protesants, the Roman Catholics worship images; therefore the poor Catholics cannot get to heaven, for no idolater shall enter that blest abode. According to the Catholics, there is no salvation but within the pale of their church, at the head of which his Holiness of Rome presides, as vicar of Jesus Christ upon earth; therefore the Protestants being without the pale of the Church of Rome, must all be damned. According to the Jews, Christians are impostors; and the impostor and his followers must both perish; therefore both sects of Christians, Catholics and Protestants, must go headlong to the devil. And for the same reason the Musselmans may go to the devil also. In what religion then is salvation to be found?

Yet although we have considered the priests as the authors of the various religions they as variously support, we shall find, that kings and emperors have been the chief, the final resort of the priests for fixing the faith of the Christians; and that one stroke of the sword has done more to establish it than all the ratiocinations of the clergy; yet by this means opinions pleasing to the divinity are propagated. So Mahomet established the Al' Coran; so the Roman emperors

after Constantine made whole nations of the Germans Christians, and baptized them by the thousand in the waters of the Danube. The true faith is, then, that which has always princes as its adherents; the faithful are always those who are employed to exterminate their enemies; the weak, not the powerful, are the enemies of God! Horrible! most horrible! In a word, the princes of the earth, not the priests of this or that religion, are infallible; they are those whom we must regard as the true founders of the faith over which they preside; they are those who, in all ages and in all countries, have fixed the faith that must be obeyed; they are those who have invariably fixed the religion of their subjects.

Ever since Christianity has been adopted by some nations, have we not seen that religion has almost entirely occupied the attention of sovereigns? For the princes, blinded by superstition, have been wholly devoted to the priests, and have believed that prudence required, as the surest means for supporting their own power, that they also should submit themselves to the clergy, who seemed to be the real leaders and guides of the people, who saw nothing more divine than the ministers of a God, of whom all their ideas resemble the shadows of evening, growing darker, and rendering them more gloomy as the twilight of time rapidly declines. In either case the health of the body politic has never been consulted; it was cowardly sacrificed to the interests of the court, or the vanity and luxury of the priests. It is by a continuation of superstition on the part of the princes, that we behold the church so richly endowed in times of ignorance; when men believed they would enrich Deity, by putting all their wealth into the hands of the priests of a good God, the declared enemy of riches. Savage warriors, destitute of the manners of men, flattered themselves that they could expiate all their sins by founding monasteries, and giving immense wealth to a set of men who had made vows of poverty. It was believed that they

would merit from the all-powerful a great advantage by recompensing laziness, which, in the priests, was regarded as a great good, and that the blessings procured by their prayers would be in proportion to the continual and pressing demands their poverty made on the wealthy.

It is thus that by the superstition of princes, the great men of the earth, and the people also, the clergy have become opulent and powerful; that monachism was honoured, and citizens the most useless, the least instructed, but withal the most dangerous, were very well recompensed and become in time the most considerable portion of the community, surrounded by privileges and immunities, enjoying independence, power, and licence denied to all other ranks and classes; it was thus that the imprudent devotion of sovereigns put the priests in a condition to resist even those sovereigns themselves, to make laws independent of their authority, and trouble their governments with impunity.

The clergy arriving at this point of power and grandeur, became redoubtable to monarchs themselves, who were frequently forced to submit to the yoke imposed on them by the haughty priesthood. When the sovereigns yielded, they were the veriest slaves of the priests, the instruments of their passions, the vile adorers of their power. When they refused to yield, the priests annoyed and embarrassed them by the cruelest stratagems; hurled against them the anathemas of the church, dissolved the people from their obedience, and set subjects and princes in array, declaring that whoever obeyed the church were the favourites of heaven, and those who refused the children of the devil. Nor could the prince in this case keep himself on his throne but by consenting at length to obey the priests. And there have been times when, in Europe, princes could enjoy no repose for themselves or their people, unless they unequivocally conceded every point to the caprice of the clergy. For in these times of ignorance, civil

broils were as favourable to the cause of the clergy, as devotion, and a weak and poor prince, surrounded by a wretched people, was entirely at the mercy of the priesthood, who would at any moment they chose annihilate his power, excite his people against him, and hurl him from the height of royalty into the lowest abyss of misery.

In general, Madam, we find that in countries where religion has gained dominion, the sovereign is necessarily dependent on the clergy, and enjoys power in proportion as he obeys them, for the instant he displeases them, his power vanishes like the dew of morning; and the priests, with the people, and the cross for their banner, hold the balance to weigh the legitimacy of every prince.

But we no where find, except in the creeds which the priests have formed for themselves, that the laziness, the ignorance, and unreasonable demands of the priesthood should be supported; and on examination we discover that perpetual trickery and conjuration are at work among the priests to prevent the people from prying into the falsehood and chicanery of these organs of the divinity.

Do you not, then, conclude with me, that the interests of the sovereign accord not with the ministers of the Christian religion, who have, in all ages, been the most troublesome of the people among whom they have sprung up, the most rebellious, the most difficult to reduce to obedience, and whose satellites are too often the declared enemies of the person of the king? And it is thus that Christianity is the firmest support of the throne; that it regards kings as the express images of the divinity; that it addresses a worin of the dust with the title of the Mightiest and the Highest.

The maxims of the clergy are, however, best calculated to lull kings on the couch of slumber; they are calculated to flatter those on whom the clergy can rely,

and who will serve their ambition; and their flatterers can soon change their tone, when the princes have the temerity to question the pernicious tendency of priestly influence. Then the prince is a heretic; his destruction is laudable; heaven rejoices in his overthrow. And all this is the religion of the Bible!

You know, Madam, that these odious maxims have been a thousand times enforced by the priests, who, when they have found themselves puzzled, have invariably replied, that the sovereign cannot encroach upon the authority of the church, since it is better to obey God than man.

The priests are devoted to the princes, when the princes are blindly led by the priests. These last preach arrogantly that the former ought to be exterminated, when they refuse to obey the church, that is to say, the priests; yet how terrible soever may be these maxims, how dangerous soever their practice to the security of the sovereign, and the tranquillity of the state, they are the immediate consequences drawn from Judaism and Christianity. We find in the Old Testament that the regicide is applauded; that treason and rebellion are approved. Why then should we suppose that God is offended with the thoughts of his creatures, that heretics are displeasing to him? It is very natutal to conclude, that if a sovereign be a heretic or impious, that is to say, if he disobeys the clergy, or opposes their views of aggrandizement, and is eventually successful in carrying his projects as David of old, or Henry VIII. in modern times, then the clergy conform to the king, who is now no longer a heretic, might being right, incapacity error, but the head of the church legitimately king, and the church and he are infallible; the one can do no wrong; and whoever does not conform to the other is incapable of enjoying the rights and privileges of a citizen.

You perceive then, Madam, that such conduct, though talked of by the priests, as founded on the prin

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