§ 2.
What renders the evil without remedy is this, that, after having established these false ideas of the Divinity, they neglect no plan to compel the people to believe in them, without permitting any one to examine for himself. On the contrary, they have excited a hatred against philosophers—the truly learned, lest the doctrines which they would teach should lead to the exposure of those errors in which they have plunged mankind. The advocates of these foolish notions have succeeded so well, that it is dangerous to combat them. It is too much the interest of those impostors that the people be ignorant, to permit them to become enlightened. Thus the truth must either be kept in abeyance, or its promoters be prepared to be sacrificed at the shrine of a false philosophy, and to suffer from the rage of grovelling and interested minds.