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heaven and a hell, for, with those two agents, they act upon the hope and fear of mankind, the two most influential passions. Priestcraft never could be profitable without a heaven and a hell; hence we find that the priests of all ages and nations, when they arrived at any degree of perfection in their trade, had those two powers. Consistent with financial views, the priests have created an intermediate condition, or purgatory, from whence mercy could effect a redemption even after death. This master stroke of policy has well paid the actors of this drama.* Indulgences have been another source of wealth, the priests would allow, or promise any thing to their dupes, provided they were paid: the people have been robbed in every manner, there was no escaping the priests' exchequer, they even condescended to regulate eating, and drinking, and clothing.

Bands of Catholic Priests, with a policy that would be credita ble in a better cause, keep their dupes in ignorance, and not only deny them the use of the Bible. but the knowledge of letters; these subtle rogues take the wives, the daughters, and the money of their slaves when they please. Should a ray of knowledge appear, the vengeance of heaven is invoked, and eternal perdition threatened; when men begin to reason and the priests are unable to preserve entire darkness, they change their ground, and when one system of tricks are exposed, they resort to arms; by turns, they are grave or volatile, mysterious or candid; they will despise those they dread, and flatter the philosopher to the sacrifice; if now and then the political tyrants have sprinkled the earth with blood, the religious have deluged it. If the progress of priestcraft is exposed by a plain reasoner, the priests never neglect to persecute him to destruction, and the honester, the better, and the wiser, so much the surer is his destruction. Priestcraft has nothing to apprehend from the base, the ignorant, and the dissolute, such wretches it hugs to its heart; the good man who teaches his fellow creatures to reason, provokes its persecution; so tenacious are the priests of power, that they do not allow men to defend the justice and mercy of God. They claim the privilege of interpreting the Bible, and every interpretation gives effect to some mercenary view; nothing is religion but what they do; nothing will they do without being paid, so that in short any thing is religion if the priests get money by it; pay, believe, and be saved, notwithstanding the greatest crimes. The subtle policy of the priests is well seen in their anxiety to bring up children in bigotry and error, for they are not only subjected to many ridiculous ceremonies, but sponsors must be had: if this nonsense is not observed, lots of vengeance are poured upon the defaulters, and the malediction of heaven is invoked for a sinless omission; the priests have great reliance upon an early false bias, they hope much from starting on these principles, they well know how ditVide Voltaire's Phil. Diet. art. Purgatory.

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cult it is to eradicate false impressions. There should be no ceremonies observed except those that are essential to make men better than they are, such as make them superstitious should be discarded as dangerous. Human contrivance never can form part of any religion, and every one must see how much of any religion is made up of human schemes. All religions supported by the sword are false, and all are supported by the sword that are upheld by power; if religion emanates from the Deity, it must be omnipotent without the least aid of human power; because the Deity is omnipoteat, and consequently his will is so, the omnipotence of the Deity is always to be distinguished from the little paltry passion of a priest. By contemplating the grand designs of the Deity in the vast expanse of nature, we are more likely to penetrate his humanity and his benevolence, than if we only study the trash views of the venal priests.

The antiquity of the priest's dogmas has been sometimes fallacious to importance, but error brought forward with all the solemnity of fact never misleads men accustomed to reason from the first principles of science; reasoning from the elements of matter invariably dispels the delusions appended to mystery and superstition. It is not to be expected that priests can reason when their very trade is founded upon sophistry and fallacy; when assertion is passed for fact, and superstition for truth, the priests are ever in error in their doctrines, and will ever be refuted by those who reason from axioms founded on nature. While veneration for antiquity consecrated priestcraft, and mantled over those functions that reason now discovers to be fraudulent, the charlatans reigned triumphant-but folly and deceit are discovered. Error and false doctrines will often descend from generation to generation as truths, for want of investigation; but apply to superstition the touchstone of reason, delusion is dispelled and absurdity is detected. The priests do not allow their dupes to reason, but command them to believe, or all their affected mysteries would be exploded; they tell the silly people that God has forbidden it under pain of the greatest punishment. All State religion must be a jargon of words and fallacious conjectures, so much so, that its very excess of folly makes it too despicable to merit any serious refutation. All religions have been founded by rogues and madmen; reason never had any thing to do in the foundation of superstition. The tyrannical priests forbid the eyes to be opened, and command the devotees in the name of God to act according to their temporal policy. There would soon be an end of priestcraft if men would only be guided by reason instead of passion; for all religion is but conjecture, and as conjecture is ever various, so must religions be numerous but if religion was founded upon fact, there could be only one religion. It is impossible for the Deity to have a thousand minds, and wish to be worshipped by as many ridiculous ceremonies; if this was

on the case, his versatility would only be equalled by the invention and vices of priests. The very multitude of religions, as multifarious as priests, destroys the possibility of there being any established religion of divine origin.

Fanatics have abandoned themselves to be the prey of the imagination; they are under the guidance of those who arrogate the power of interpreting the divine will; and those interpreters are only human, who are subject to all the delusions, infirmities, and caprices of man. When the spirit of fanaticism and persecution is armed with power, desolation falls upon all those who differ in opinion; and that is always the false religion that falls, and that is the true religion that is established by fire and sword--the moral, the rational, and the human are all heresies. Humanity never actuated the priests in their selection of means to establish religion; they have resorted to the perfidious and the cruel as the most sanguinary policy dictated. If such ruthless measures had eventually produced public benefits, the means might have justi#fied the ends, but when such tragedies introduced a more barbarous state of society, the progress of priestcraft all men of common sense must deplore. The inference from this essay makes it self-evident, that, man has no innate knowledge, and can have no innate idea of religion; and as he has no innate idea of religion, it must be derived from an external source-and that external source is the base passions of a vain indolence and power, existing in the persons of a part of the people, and that part of the people actuated by the basest passions of the base are the priests, and the chimeras of priests are religion.

AN ADDRESS TO RICHARD CARLILE:

Comprised in a Poetic Controversial Attack upon Atheism. By CICERO WINTERBOTTOM. Wigan: printed by R. Atkinson and Son. 1823.

Note by Editor.-[The following little poem was printed in 1823, but did not come into my possession until the last year. Ever since it has been in my possession, I have thought it worth preserving in "The Republican," as a part of that discussion which it has excited. I cannot answer Cicero Winterbottom in verse; but if he has been a constant reader of "The Republican," I trust he has found an answer to each of his queries. I confess that the style of his poem is that of civil and candid enquiry; but the more rapid way for a man to gain knowledge is to ask himself a few questions as to what he really does or does not know, in preference to asking another. There is a labour in study, and if a man will not labour for himself, he

will not receive right impressions from the representations of others. The man who thinks forms an original mind of his - own; but he who merely reads without thinking receives a colour from the minds of others which is not lasting, and he often attributes that as a weakness to the arguments and conclusions of others which in reality is his own mental weakness.] . R. C.

SIR,

HAVING heard of your zeal for the liberties of mankind, and being myself a well-wisher to my species, I read your publications with more than common attention; I saw with pain your unceasing attempts to overthrow the belief of a God, and determined to vindicate a belief so productive of both that temporal and eternal happiness which your scheme is completely calculated to destroy.

You endeavour to prove that philosophy teaches us that the Christian Religion is not of divine institution; that there is nothing in religion worthy our attention; that it is not reconcileable to human reason; that nothing is worthy our notice that is not within the inquest of our senses; that philosophy has enlightened the mind too much to admit of incomprehensibilities which are repugnant to reason, and which bugbears are common to all religions; that the soul is matter, and, consequently, perishes with the body; that all the dogmas and formulas of religion were only invented to torment man from his childhood to his last moment, by the fear of invisible powers, that render him more unfortunate than he otherwise would be; this you call philosophy.I always understood philosophy to mean an inquiry into truth, and the - love of wisdom. But, by your assertions, she holds the place of Divinity upon earth; she unites, enlightens, aids, and comforts man; she gives us every thing, and requires no worship; she does not demand the sacrifice of our passions, but teaches us how to nourish and cherish them; she dispenses her gifts, interprets her rights, and consecrates her knowledge to man to make him better, so that he may be happier. I venerate the sciences, and those who cultivate them. I acknowledge that arts and letters have abundantly smoothed the path of human life, have mutually assisted each other in diminishing our calamities, strewn with flowers man's passage upon earth, amused the mind with useful and entertaining discoveries, and seem even to shorten our journey, and lengthen that day which some men view with horror and affright. I do, with the most profound sincerity, glory in a sense of the many benefits we have received from the efforts of scientific men, and pay such homage as my silence will best express. But I am superlatively amazed that any human being should be so presumptive as to give the least hint against the existence of a God, or pretend to unravel the unsearchable penmanship of a Deity, and to weigh and construe the inconceivable ways of

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heaven by rules and laws made by beings so limited as is poor man, whom a twinge of the tooth-ache, or a prick from the soft tender fork of a fly would cause to forget his great capacities, and .cknowledge the frailty of his being.

Nor have sense and reason, any more than philosophy, power to enable us to understand and judge of the scriptures, How can such impotence scan an Omnipotence? or level the work of a Creator to the vague capacity of mortals? Such futile pretenders like the child who cried for the moon, stretch and strain every nerve for nothing. But when they have done, those who have a real sense of religion know that nothing but the emanations of heaven can enable man to understand the works of heaven.

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GOOD Heaven! that man who vaunts discerning sight,
And arrogant, from wisdom's distant height,

Looks down on holy mortals who revere

A cause Supreine, should the proud building rear.
Without one prop the pond'rous pile to bear!
How must the Judge who does in heav'n preside,
Remark the scoffer, and condemn his pride.
But see! the sad unsufferable hour

Advances fast, which will his error cure;

When he, compell'd, shall drink the wrathful bowl,
And, ruin'd, feel immortal vengeance roll
Through ev'ry vein, and sink his sinful soul,
Now, Mr. Carlile, ingenuous be and kind,

Respond this query of an anxious mind:

Say how you feel yourself when friends depart?

What makes those throbs and wailings of the heart?
Since well you know hereafter nothing is,

'Tis idle stuff to grieve at their decease;
For all on earth is merely pain and strife,
And happy's he who leaves the load of life.
Hence then, my Friend, if nothing is behind
The screen of time, then nothing there you'll find;
Then pluck up heart, and vanquish ev'ry fear,
For if you must be blest it must be here.
Ransack the country, eat and drink at ease,

Sleep while you will, and rise just when you please;
Indulge each sense with what it may desire;
Call those folks simple who do pay require;
Thanks are sufficient for both drink and meat,
For gratitude itself is sure a treat;

Nor future times do you anticipate,

But take the turns and bolts dealt out by fate:

And when grim death extends his gathering gripe,

Fall off like fruit that is grown fully ripe;

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