Without the consent of his priests, the Christian cannot participate in the knowledge of the mysteries of his religion, from which they have a right to exclude him entirely. This privation, however, he has no great reason to lament. But the anathemas or excommunications of the priests generally do a real mischief to mankind. These spiritual punishments produce temporal effects, and every citizen who incurs the disgrace of the church is in danger of that of the government, and becomes odious to his fellow-citizens.
We have already remarked that priests have taken upon themselves the management of marriages. Without their consent, a Christian cannot, become a father. He must first submit to the capricious formalities of his religion, without which his children must be excluded from the rank of citizens.
During all his life, the Christian is obliged to assist in the ceremonies of worship under the direction of his priests. When he has performed this important duty, he esteems himself the favourite of God, and persuades himself that he no longer owes any thing to society. Thus frivolous practices take place of morality, which is always rendered subordinate to religion.
When death approaches, the Christian, stretched in agony on his bed, is still assailed in those distressful moments by priests. In some sects religion seems to have been invented to render the bitter death of man ten thousand times more bitter. A malicious priest comes to the couch of the dying man, and holds before him the spectacle of his approaching end, arrayed in more than all its terrors. Although this custom is destructive to citizens, it is extremely profitable to the priesthood,1 who owe much of their riches to legacies procured by it. Morality is not quite so highly advantaged by it. Experience proves, that most Christians live in security and postpone till death their reconciliation with God. By means of a late repentance, and largesses to the priesthood, their faults are expiated, and they are permitted to hope that Heaven will forget the accumulated crimes of a long and wicked life.
1 In Catholic countries.
Death itself does not terminate the empire of the priesthood in certain sects, which finds means to make money even out of the dead bodies of their followers. These, for a sufficient sum, are permitted to be deposited in temples, where they have the privilege of spreading infection and disease. The sacerdotal power extends still further. The prayers of the church are purchased at a dear rate, to deliver the souls of the dead from their pretended torments in the other world, inflicted for their purification. Happy they who are rich in a religion, whose priests being favourites with God, can be hired to prevail on him to remit the punishments which his immutable justice had intended to inflict!
Such are the principal duties recommended by the Christians; and upon the observation of these they believe their salvation to depend. Such are the arbitrary, ridiculous, and hurtful practices substituted for the real duties of morality. We shall not combat the different superstitious practices, admitted by some sects and rejected by others; such as the honours rendered to the memory of those pious fanatics and obscure contemplators whom Roman pontiffs have ranked among the saints. We say nothing of those pilgrimages which superstition has so often produced, nor those indulgences by means of which sins are remitted. We shall only observe, that these things are commonly' more respected where they are admitted, than the duties of morality, which in those places frequently, are wholly unknown. Mankind find their natural propensities much less thwarted by such rites, ceremonies, and practices, than by being virtuous. A good Christian is a man who conforms exactly to all that his priests exact from him; these substitute blindness and submission in the place of all virtues.
CHAP. XIV.—OF THE POLITICAL EFFECTS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
After having seen the inutility and even danger of the perfections, virtues, and duties proposed by the Christian religion, let us enquire whether its political influences be more happy, and whether it can in reality promote the welfare of nations among whom it is established and faithfully observed. We at once find, that wherever this religion is admitted, two opposite legislations, ever at variance with each other, establish themselves. Although this religion preaches love and peace, it soon annihilates the effects of those precepts by the divisions which it necessarily sows among its sectaries, who unavoidably interpret diversely the ambiguous oracles announced in Holy Writ. We find, that from the infancy of religion the most acrimonious disputes have continually taken place among divines. The successive ages of Christianity have been stained with schisms, heresies, persecutions, and contests, widely discordant from its boasted spirit of peace and concord; which is in fact incompatible with a religion whose precepts are so dark and equivocal. In all religious disputes, each party believes that God is on its side, and consequently they are obstinate. Indeed, how can it be otherwise, when they confound the cause of God with that of their own vanity? Thus, mutually averse to concession, they quarrel and fight until force has decided a contest in which they never appeal to reason, in fact, political authorities have ever been forced to interfere in all the dissensions which have arisen among Christians. Governments have always taken in the frivolous disputes of priests, and foolishly considered them as objects of the last importance. They have conceived, that in a religion established by God himself there could be nothing of a trifling nature. Thus, princes have armed themselves against their own subjects, whose opinions differed from theirs. The way of thinking at court has decided the creed and the faith of subjects. Opinions supported by kings and priests have been the only true ones. Their creatures have been the guardians of orthodoxy, and were commissioned to exterminate all whom they chose to denominate heretics and rebels.