* "The object of the first legislators was to govern the
people; and the easiest method to effect it was through the
priesthood, to terrify their minds, and prevent the exercise
of reason. They led them through winding by-paths, lest they
might perceive the designs of their guides; they forced them
to fix their eyes in the air lest they should look at their
feet; they amused them on the way with idle stories; in a
word, they treated them as nurses do children."
By thus playing upon the unlimited credulity of man, in a state of ignorance, through the delusive medium of supernatural existences, he is trained from childhood to submit to mental and bodily oppressions, which manhood would make him shake off, and spurn with indignation, were it not for these paralyzing deceptions, which, while they degrade, form the principal tower of strength against him in the hands of his oppressors. His belief in the traditionary tales of the Jewish compilation, is anxiously instilled into his mind in childhood, as the word of the Supreme Power of the Universe; and this false impression subsequently becomes so rooted and strong, that he neither can nor dares to see the immoral and destructive tendency of these tales; and, that from them have been drawn precedents to justify the most atrocious and murderous invasions of peaceful countries. From these mischievous legends have also been drawn, as a common fountain of evil, all those conflicting doctrines, dogmas, and creeds, which the militant priests of Christendom have made convertible at will, and turned into a channel overflowing with the good things of a world which they affect to despise. This is the polluted source from which has sprung what is falsely called civilisation, which has created around man an unnatural atmosphere, wherein vice and dissimulation are the chief ingredients, rendering civilised man in many respects, the vilest of animals; and more contemptible, because less virtuous, than the uncorrupted child of Nature.
These pernicious dogmas and creeds did not begin to show their deadly effects nationally, until the imperial apostate Constantine gave patronage and strength to one of the belligerent sects; and by interposing his authority, prevented, for a short time, their cutting each other's throats; but as for attempting to assimilate their wild and discordant schemes, he might as well have commanded the winds to blow continually from one point; for as the heterogeneous mass of theological machinery arose out of the fabulous or allegorical legends of various countries, a system drawn from such chaotic materials, must be always at war in its parts; hence the fierce and virulent animosities—the remorseless and exterminating devastations, which these maniacal notions and creeds engendered all over Europe. Such of the contending sects who, from their number or their violence, were considered most suitable for the purposes of political tyranny, were taken into league with successive governments, which gave them the power of exercising over all their opponents, the utmost cruelty and oppression. From these times till about the close of the sixteenth century, when the science of Nature began to check the mischievous demon of theology, we repeat that millions upon millions of men, women and children were tortured and murdered in religious persecutions* and wars; whilst a sum not less than £400,000,000,000 in money, besides other property, was wrung from the laboring man, not to instruct him in a particle of useful knowledge, but to keep him in that state of abject ignorance which alone fits him for slavery.
* All religions pretending to revelation, are necessarily of
the persecuting kind; and it is these alone that show an
extraordinary zeal for-dissemination in other countries:
but the religion of Nature being perfectly tolerant, leaves
its own propagation to self-evidence.
All this has been done to maintain various denominations of aristocratic tyranny, combined with rapacious priests, in whose minds were seated the deepest hypocrisy and the blackest vices—who carried humanity on their lips, and robbery and murder in their hearts. The victims of Christianity far exceed in number the whole that have fallen by all the other idolatrous superstitions which at any time have plagued the world; and most truly did it announce that it "came not to send peace on earth, but a sword;" a sword that never has, and never will find a scabbard, until the whole baseless fabric of delusion shall sink into merited oblivion; we would say a thousand times over—look at Spain—look at Ireland—look at any country in Europe before the 17th century, and you will see the priests reeking with gore. And if you are not utterly lost in ignorance and prejudice, you will see the effects of corrupt governments striving to force favored superstitions upon the dupes of other religions. No intellectual blindness but that which will not see, could prevent your seeing palpably, that all religion, except that of Nature, is the accursed thing which occasions and perpetuates the deadly feuds between man and man; and creates those insane animosities which embitter and poison all the natural sweets of this fair world. Such fatal results must be inevitable whilst man has the credulous folly to maintain in idleness and luxury, myriads of his own species whom his labor educates, as it were, for the express purpose of deceiving him. These are the professors of the pretended science of supernaturals, alias, nonentities, or at all events of unproved existences, of which the most illiterate hind knows just as much as the proudest hierarch.
The principle of priestcraft being unchangeable, the countries where this freshly modified superstition first gained a footing had been kept in deep ignorance by the old mythology,* so that the hierarchy of the new were safe in going any lengths in multiplying absurdities; for nothing can ever be monstrous enough to shake the credulity of the vulgar populace;** so prodigies of all dimensions grew common, and every cunning impostor, who found himself able to deceive others, had inspirations from heaven—turned priest, and dealt in supematurals; knowing well that where mental imbecility has been successfully fostered by the craft, it is sheer silliness to be scrupulous about the means of deception, however monstrous.***
"Be joggled mob! you are the tools
That priests do work with, called fools."
* One universal mythos, or fable wearing the garb of
history, has been the basis of all religions, ancient and
modern. This mythos is rooted in, and has secret allusion to
the zodiac and the solar system, in which the sun and the
rest of the "Host of Heaven" were turned into imaginary
personages, under peculiar nomenclatures in each country;
and fanciful narratives concerning them, were invented by
the astronomising priests, in order to stultify and subject
the minds of the ignorant populace. This deception continues
to the present day, for the solar mythos was the true
Christianity. When the French, under Napoleon, possessed
Italy, they examined the chair of St. Peter, and found upon
it the signs of the zodiac.
** Nothing, says the Cardinal de Retz, convinces fools so
much as that which they cannot comprehend.—Lucian
Redivivus.
*** As the ignorance of nations grows darker, priests of all
religions see their way the more clearly.
In regard to the theogony upon which these conjurors founded their various systems, it appears never to have been of the slightest importance whether it consisted of one, two, three, or thirty thousand divinities; though it must be confessed that the triune mythology of Christianity has answered, better than any other, the aristocratic purpose of general ignorance and oppression. Like their predecessors, its priests have governed solely in the names of their gods, whom on all occasions they cause to speak whatever is fitting and agreeable to sacerdotal interests and power; and all this passes as the commands of God, which, they declare, must take precedence of all civil affairs. From this usurpation is formed the almost insurmountable barrier against human liberty, "the imperium in imperio," or the visionary empire of supernaturalism within, and either confederate with, or independent of, the secular empire. All belief in anything supernatural is a pitiable and deplorable hallucination of mind, everything pretending to be such being the offspring of sheer imposture; and until the age of reason and science shall have succeeded those ages of delusion and ignorance through which the world has hitherto rolled, the paramount power upon its surface will be priestcraft.
This craft is twin sister to witchcraft; and the former cherished and supported the latter as long as her head could be kept above water; but when the sun of science (the mortal foe of these two crafts) began to beam upon the imaginary hag, she sank to rise no more;* and men are now astonished at the credit she had gained in the world, and still more at the brutal ignorance which allowed her to shed so much innocent blood.**
* Science having thus as it were suffocated the weird hag of
witchcraft, a most useful auxiliary is gone of that religion
which, more than all others, has been
"Blood-nursed, and watered by the widow's tears."
** The Stat. 1 James 1st, c. 12, enacts, "That all persons
invoking any evil spirit, or consulting, covenanting with,
entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil
spirit, etc., etc., etc., shall be guilty of felony, without
benefit of clergy, and suffer death." Oh the height, the
profound depth of the "wisdom of our ancestors!"