Letters To Eugenia; Or, A Preservative Against Religious Prejudices

by baron d' Paul Henri Thiry Holbach

LETTER IX. Of the advantages contributed to Government by Religion

Having already shown you, Madam, the feebleness of those succors which religion furnishes to morals, I shall now proceed to examine whether it procure advantages in themselves really politic, and whether it be true, as has so often been urged by the priests, that it is absolutely necessary to the existence of every government. Were we disposed to shut our eyes, and deliver ourselves up to the language of our priests, we should believe that their opinions are necessary to the public tranquillity, and the repose and security of the State; that princes could not, without their aid, govern the people, and exert themselves for the prosperity of their empire. Nor is this all; our spiritual pilots approach the throne, and gaining the ear of the sovereign, make him also believe that he has the greatest interest in conforming to their caprices, in order to subject men to the divine yoke of royalty. These priests mingle in all important political quarrels, and they too often persuade the rulers of the earth that the enemies of the church are the enemies of all power, and that in sapping the foundations of the altar, the foundations of the throne are likewise necessarily overthrown.

We have, then, only to open our eyes and consult history, to be convinced of the falsity of these pretensions, and to appreciate the important services which the Christian priests have rendered to their sovereigns. Ever since the establishment of Christianity, we have seen, in all the countries in which this religion has gained ground, that two rival powers are perpetually at war one with the other. We find a government within the government; that is to say, we find the Church, a body of priests, continually opposed to the sovereign power, and in virtue of their pretended divine mission and sacred office, pretending to give laws to all the sovereigns of the earth. We find the clergy, puffed up and besotted with the titles they have given themselves, laboring to exact the obedience due to the sovereign, pretending to chimerical and dangerous prerogatives, which none are suffered to question, without risking the displeasure of the Almighty. And so well have the priesthood managed this matter, that in many countries we actually see the people more inclined to lean to the authority of the Vicars of Jesus Christ than to that of the civil government. The priesthood claim the right of commanding monarchs themselves, and sustained by their emissaries and the credulity of the people, their ridiculous pretensions have engaged princes in the most serious affairs, sown trouble and discord in kingdoms, and so shook thrones as to compel their occupants to make submission to an intolerant hierarchy.

Such are the important services which religion has a thousand times rendered to kings. The people, blinded by superstition, could hesitate but little between God and the princes of the earth. The priests, being the visible organs of an invisible monarch, have acquired an immense credit with prejudiced minds. The ignorance of the people places them, as well as their sovereigns, at the mercy of the priests. Nations have continually been dragged into their futile though bloody quarrels; princes, for a long series of years, have either had to dispute their authority with the clergy, or become their tools or dupes.

The continual attention which the princes of Europe have been forced to pay to the clergy has prevented them from occupying their thoughts about the welfare of their subjects, who, in many instances the dupes of the priesthood, have opposed even the good their rulers desired to procure them. In like manner, the heads of the people, their kings and governors, too weak to resist the torrent of opinions propagated by the clergy, have been forced to yield, to bow, nay, even to caress the priesthood, and to consent to grant it all its demands. Whenever they have wished to resist the encroachments of the clergy, they have encountered concealed snares or open opposition, as the holy power was either too weak to act in the face of day, or strong enough to contend in the sunshine. When princes have wished to be listened to by the clergy, these last have invariably contrived to make them cowardly, and to sacrifice the happiness and respect of their people. Often have the hands of parricides and rebels been armed, by a proud and vindictive priesthood, against sovereigns the most worthy of reigning. The priests, under pretext of avenging God, inflict their anger upon monarchs themselves, whenever the latter are found indisposed to bend under their yoke. In a word, in all countries we perceive that the ministers of religion have exercised in all ages the most unbridled license. We every where see empires torn by their dissensions; thrones overturned by their machinations; princes immolated to their power and revenge; subjects animated to revolt against the prince that ought to give them more happiness than they actually enjoyed; and when we take the retrospect of these, we find that the ambition, the cupidity, and vanity of the clergy have been the true causes and motives of all these outrages on the peace of the universe. And it is thus that their religion has so often produced anarchy, and overturned the very empires they pretended to support by its influence.

Sovereigns have never enjoyed peace but when, shamefully devoted to priests, they submitted to their caprices, became enslaved to their opinions, and allowed them to govern in place of themselves. Then was the sovereign power subordinate to the sacerdotal, and the prince was only the first servant of the church; she degraded him to such a degree as to make him her hangman; she obliged him to execute her sanguinary decrees; she forced him to dip his hands in the blood of his own subjects whom the clergy had proscribed; she made him the visible instrument of her vengeance, her fury, and her concealed passions. Instead of occupying himself with the happiness of his people, the sovereign has had the complaisance to torment, to persecute, and to immolate honest citizens, thus exciting the just hatred of a portion of his people, to whom he should have been a father, to gratify the ambition and the selfish malevolence of some priests, always aliens in the state which nourishes them, and who only style themselves members of the realm in order to domineer, to distract, to plunder, and to devour with impunity.

How little soever you are disposed to reflect, you will be convinced, Madam, that I do not exaggerate these things. Recent examples prove to you that even in this age, so ambitious of being considered enlightened, nations are not secure from the shocks that the priests have ever caused nations to suffer. You have a hundred times sighed at the sight of the sad follies which puerile questions have produced among us. You have shuddered at the frightful consequences which have resulted from the unreasonable squabbles of the clergy. You have trembled with all good citizens at the sight of the tragical effects which have been brought about by the furious wickedness of a fanaticism for which nothing is sacred. In fine, you have seen the sovereign authority compelled to struggle incessantly against rebellious subjects, who pretend that their conscience or the interests of religion have obliged them to resist opinions the most agreeable to common sense, and the most equitable.

Our fathers, more religious and less enlightened than ourselves, were witnesses of scenes yet more terrible. They saw civil wars, leagues openly formed against their sovereign, and the capital submerged in the blood of murdered citizens; two monarchs successively immolated to the fury of the clergy, who kindled in all parts the fire of sedition. They afterwards saw kings at war with their own subjects; a famous sovereign, Louis XIV., tarnishing all his glory by persecuting, contrary to the faith of treaties, subjects who would have lived tranquil, if they had only been allowed to enjoy in peace the liberty of conscience; and they saw, in fine, this same prince, the dupe of a false policy, dictated by intolerance, banish, along with the exiled Protestants, the industry of his states, and forcing the arts and manufactures of our nation to take refuge in the dominions of our most implacable enemies.

We see religion throughout Europe, without cessation, exerting a baleful influence upon temporal affairs; we see it direct the interests of princes; we see it divide and make Christian nations enemies of each other, because their spiritual guides do not all entertain the same opinions. Germany is divided into two religious parties whose interests are perpetually at variance. We every where perceive that Protestants are born the enemies of the Catholics, and are always in antagonism to them; while, on the other hand, the Catholics are leagued with their priests against all those whose mode of thinking is less abject and less servile than their own.

Behold, Madam, the signal advantages that nations derive from religion! But we are certain to be told that these terrible effects are due to the passions of men, and not to the Christian religion, which incessantly inculcates charity, concord, indulgence, and peace. If, however, we reflect even a moment on the principles of this religion, we should immediately perceive that they are incompatible with the fine maxims that have never been practised by the Christian priests, except when they lacked the power to persecute their enemies and inflict upon them the weight of their rage. The adorers of a jealous God, vindictive and sanguinary, as is obviously the character of the God of the Jews and Christians, could not evince in their conduct moderation, tranquillity, and humanity. The adorers of a God who takes offence at the opinions of his weak creatures, who reprobates and glories in the extermination of all who do not worship him in a particular way, for the which, by the by, he gives them neither the means nor the inclination, must necessarily be intolerant persecutors. The adorers of a God who has not thought fit to illuminate with an equal portion of light the minds of all his creatures, who reveals his favor and bestows his kindness on a few only of those creatures, who leaves the remainder in blindness and uncertainty to follow their passions, or adopt opinions against which the favored wage war, must of necessity be eternally at odds with the rest of the world, canting about their oracles and mysteries, supernatural precepts, invented purely to torment the human mind, to enthral it, and leave man answerable for what he could not obey, and punishable for what he was restrained from performing. We need not then be astonished if, since the origin of Christianity, our priests have never been a single moment without disputes. It appears that God only sent his Son upon earth that his marvellous doctrines might prove an apple of discord both for his priests and his adorers. The ministers of a church founded by Christ himself, who promised to send them his Holy Spirit to lead them into all the truth, have never been in unison with their dogmas. We have seen this infallible church for whole ages enveloped in error. You know, Madam, that in the fourth century, by the acknowledgment of the priests themselves, the great body of the church followed the opinions of the Arians, who disavowed even the divinity of Jesus Christ. The spirit of God must then have abandoned his church; else why did its ministers fall into this error, and dispute afterwards about so fundamental a dogma of the Christian religion?