We are obliged to grant that all this is true; and to this may be added, that in these shocking devastations, the blind ferocity of the Christians was everywhere written in blood, whereas the behavior of their opponents was frequently marked by clemency. As an instance let us compare the conduct of Saladin with that of Godfrey of Bouillon, and his followers, though shame and detestation would draw a veil over the contrast: when the latter took Jerusalem, an indiscriminate butchery took place; neither age nor sex was spared; and after the surrender, the streets streamed with the blood of at least seven thousand victims. When Saladin retook the place, no lives were taken after the surrender; and he showed the greatest kindness to the Christian captives; giving those who were poor their liberty without ransom. The massacres of Antioch and Thessalonica, by the Emperor Theodosius, may be regarded as other instances of sectarian ferocity, partaking, as they certainly did, of religious animosity. Did the Emperor Julian punish these Antiochians in any way whatever, when they heaped upon him every kind of abuse and indignity?*
* Did he not also spare the ten or more Christian soldiers
of his own army, who were proved to have conspired against
his life?
Descending from the great and general calamities which the Christian superstition has entailed upon nations, let us notice a very few of its malignant persecutions of individuals whose only crimes were superior genius, learning, and science; and this persecution has ever been marked by a deadly rancor, which plainly shows that the study and knowledge of Nature is incompatible with, and a decided enemy to, this theological fabrication. Before the time of Copernicus, and the famous Galileo, Christians were taught by their priests, that the sun revolved round the earth; that the latter was flat like a table, (it is quite clear that the Bible-makers knew no better) and one-third longer than it was broad, hence our terms of latitude and longitude. Copernicus showed the absurdity of these notions, and taught that the sun is the centre of his own, or the solar, system, in which this globe of ours is comparatively but a mole-hill. But knowing of the hosts of priests who were ready to pounce upon him if he discovered these truths openly, he declined to publish his works till near the time of his death, and he lived just long enough to receive a corrected copy of them.
Galileo, at the distance of more than a hundred years after the former, offended the church by defending the system of Copernicus, but still more in proving that the earth had a double motion, in revolving on its own centre in twenty-four hours, and also in its orbit round the sun; the former being the cause of day and night, and the latter measuring the solar year. The discovery, or rather the revival, of these and many other grand and sublime truths, drew down upon the head of this great man the implacable vengeance of an interested priesthood; and he was condemned by a wicked conclave, which calls itself holy, for daring to know and to propagate truths that are now known to every schoolboy. All that could be done for him by the wise and learned of the age was merely to save him from being burnt by the priests. He was confined for life, and died a prisoner of the Inquisition. As the sentence against him is hardly credible in the present day, we cite the following part of it:—"To assert that the earth is not immoveable in the centre of the world, is an absurd proposition, false in philosophy, heretical in religion, and contrary to the testimony of Scripture." As an instance of the malicious and inexorable nature of priestcraft, we note the curious fact, that Galileo's sentence was, in spite of the clearest light, renewed at Rome in 1819!
Virgilius, Bishop of Saltzberg, was condemned by the church for maintaining that the figure of the earth is spherical; and, consequently, the existence of antipodes.
The learned Stephen Dolet was burnt by the Inquisition for exposing priestcraft, and asserting the unity of God.
Julius Vanini was burnt by the clergy for saying that "God is both the beginning and the end, without being in need of either—in no one place, yet present everywhere; his power is his will." For these tenets did the theologians burn the innocent Vanini.
The blameless life and manners of William Tyndale could not save him from the stake and fagot; his great learning enabled him to expose the frauds of the priests, and the false translations of their Scriptures: so he fell their victim, through the aid and authority of his tyrannical and blood-thirsty king.
The great Descartes died in a foreign land from church persecution.
That persecution is necessarily ingrained in priests of every denomination, and that they will have recourse to it whenever they have the power, we have a memorable instance in the much vaunted reformer, John Calvin, who, when armed with authority by the magistrates of Geneva, wrote to the high Chamberlain of the King of Navarre, (of date the 30th Sept., 1561) as follows:—"Honor, glory, and riches, shall be the reward of your pains; but, above all, do not fail to rid the country of those zealous scoundrels who stir up the people to revolt against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael Servetus, the Spaniard." Now the fact is well known, that when Calvin found himself unable to cope in argument with this learned Spaniard, he took the true orthodox way of getting a riddance, by roasting him alive at a slow fire, inhumanly made on purpose, of green wood.