2. Georg Ernest Stahl's Commentary on Becher's Metallurgy, 8vo.
3. Concordantia Chymica Becheri, 40º, published by Stahl.
4. Cadmologia, or the Natural History of Cobalt, by J. G. Lehmann, Berlin, 1760, 4°.
After 1760 Holbach became interested in another line of intellectual activity, namely the writing and translation of anti-religious literature. His first book of this sort really appeared in 1761 although no copies bear this date. From 1767 on however he published a great many works of this character. It is convenient to deal first with his translations of English deistical writers. They are in chronological order.
1. Esprit du clergé, ou le Christianisme primitif vengé des entreprises et des excès de nos Prêtres modernes. Londres (Amsterdam), 1767. This book appeared in England in 1720 under the title of The Independent Whig; its author was Thomas Gordon (known through his Commentaries on Sallust and Tacitus) who wrote in collaboration with John Trenchard. The book was partially rewritten by Holbach and then touched up by Naigeon, who, according to a manuscript note by his brother, "atheised it as much as possible." It was sold with great secrecy and at a high price—a reward which the colporters demanded for the risk they ran in peddling seditious literature. The book was a violent attack on the spirit of domination which characterized the Christian priesthood at that time.
2. De L'imposture sacerdotale, ou Recueil de Pièces sur le clergé, Londres (Amsterdam), 1767. Another edition 1772 under title De la Monstruosité pontificale etc.
Contains translations of various pamphlets including Davisson, A true picture of Popery; Brown, Popery a Craft, London 1735; Gordon, Apology for the danger of the church, 1719; Gordon, The Creed of an Independent Whig, 1720.
3. Examen des Prophéties qui servent de fondement à la religion Chrétienne, Londres (Amsterdam), 1768. Translation of Anthony Collins, A Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, London, 1724. Contains also The Scheme of literal Prophecy considered, 1727, also by Collins in answer to the works of Clarke, Sherlock, Chandler, Sykes, and especially to Whiston's Essay towards restoring the text of the Old Testament, one of the thirty-five works directed against Collins' original "Discourse". Copies of this work have become very rare.
4. David, ou l'histoire de l'homme selon le coeur de Dieu. Londres (Amsterdam), 1768. This work appeared in England in 1761 and is attributed to Peter Annet, also to John Noorthook. Some English eulogists of George II, Messrs. Chandler, Palmer and others, had likened their late King to David, "the man after God's own heart." The deists, struck by the absurdity of the comparison, proceeded to relate all the scandalous facts they could find recorded of David, and by clever distortions painted him as the most execrable of Kings, in a work entitled David or the Man after God's Own Heart, which formed the basis of Holbach's translation.
5. Les prêtres démasqués ou des iniquités du clergé chrétien. Londres, 1768. Translation of four discourses published under the title The Ax laid to the root of Christian Priestcraft by a layman, London, T. Cooper, 1742. A rare volume.