The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 03 (of 12) / Dresden Edition—Lectures

by Robert Green Ingersoll

The little time that hangmen could snatch from professional duties was occupied in burning books.

The courts of justice were traps, in which the innocent were caught. The judges were almost as malicious and cruel as though they had been bishops or saints. There was no trial by jury, and the rules of evidence allowed the conviction of the supposed criminal by the proof of suspicion or hearsay.

The witnesses, being liable to be tortured, generally told what the judges wished to hear.

The supernatural and the miraculous controlled the world. Everything was explained, but nothing was understood. The church was at the head. The sick bought from monks little amulets of consecrated paper. They did not send for a doctor, but for a priest, and the priest sold the diseased and the dying these magical amulets. These little pieces of paper with the help of some saint would cure diseases of every kind. If you would put one in a cradle, it would keep the child from being bewitched. If you would put one in the barn, the rats would not eat your corn. If you would keep one in the house, evil spirits would not enter your doors, and if you buried them in the fields, you would have good weather, the frost would be delayed, rain would come when needed, and abundant crops would bless your labor. The church insisted that all diseases could be cured in the name of God, and that these cures could be effected by prayers, exorcism, by touching bones of saints, pieces of the true cross; by being sprinkled with holy water or with sanctified salt, or touched with magical oil.

In that day the dead saints were the best physicians; St. Valentine cured the epilepsy; St. Gervasius was exceedingly good for rheumatism; St. Michael for cancer; St. Judas for coughs and colds; St. Ovidius restored the hearing; St. Sebastian was good for the bites of snakes and the stings of poisonous insects; St. Apollonia for toothache; St. Clara for any trouble with the eyes; and St. Hubert for hydrophobia. It was known that doctors reduced the revenues of the church; that was enough—science was the enemy of religion.

The church thought that the air was filled with devils; that every sinner was a kind of tenement house inhabited by evil spirits; that angels were on one side of men and evil spirits on the other, and that God would, when the subscriptions and donations justified the effort, drive the evil spirits from the field.

Satan had power over the air; consequently he controlled the frost, the mildew, the lightning and the flood; and the principal business of the church was with bells, and holy water, and incense, and crosses, to defeat the machinations of that prince of the power of the air.

Great reliance was placed upon the bells; they were sprinkled with holy water, and their clangor cleared the air of imps and fiends. And bells also protected the people from storms and lightning. In that day the church used to anathematize insects. Suits were commenced against rats, and judgment rendered. Every monastery had its master magician, who sold incense and salt and tapers and consecrated palms and relics. Every science was regarded as an enemy; every fact held the creed of the church in scorn. Investigators were regarded as dangerous; thinkers were traitors, and the church exerted its vast power to prevent the intellectual progress of man.

There was no real liberty, no real education, no real philosophy, no real science—-nothing but credulity and superstition. The world was under the control of Satan and the church.

The church firmly believed in the existence of witches and devils and fiends. In this way the church had every enemy within her power. It simply had to charge him with being a wizard, of holding communications with devils, and the ignorant mob were ready to tear him to pieces. So prevalent was this belief, this belief in the supernatural, that the poor people were finally driven to make the best possible terms they could with the spirit of evil. This frightful doctrine filled every friend with suspicion of his friend; it made the husband denounce the wife, children their parents, parents their children. It destroyed the amenities of humanity; it did away with justice in courts; it broke the bond of friendship; it filled with poison the golden cup of life; it turned earth into a very perdition peopled with abominable, malicious and hideous fiends. Such was the result of a belief in the supernatural; such was the result of giving up the evidence of their own senses and relying upon dreams, visions and fears. Such was the result of the attack upon the human reason; such the result of depending on the imagination, on the supernatural; such the result of living in this world for another; of depending upon priests instead of upon ourselves. The Protestants vied with Catholics; Luther stood side by side with the priests he had deserted in promoting this belief in devils and fiends. To the Catholic every Protestant was possessed by a devil; to the Protestant every Catholic was the home of a fiend. All order, all regular succession of causes and effects were known no more; the natural ceased to exist; the learned and the ignorant were on a level. The priest was caught in the net he had spread for the peasant, and Christendom became a vast madhouse, with the insane for keepers.