on to infidelity, and that a humble and submissive spirit is alone
fitted to receive the truths of the gospel. In good earnest, should
we not be utterly bereft of every claim to the name of rational
beings, if we consent to surrender our judgment and our knowledge at
the command of a hierarchy, who have nothing to give us in exchange
but the most palpable absurdities? With what face can a reverend
Doctor of Nonsense dare to exact from my understanding a humble
acquiescence in a bundle of mysterious opinions, for which he is
unable to offer me a single solid reason? Is it, then, presumptuous to
think one's self superior to a class of pretenders, whose systems are
a mass of falsities, absurdities, and inconsistencies, of which they
contrive to make mankind at once the dupes and the victims? Can pride
or vanity be, with justice, imputed to you, Madam, if you see reason
to prefer the dictates of your own understanding to the authoritative
decrees of Mrs. D----, whose senseless malignity is obvious to all her
acquaintance?
If Christian humility is a virtue at all, it can be one only in the
cloister; society can derive no sort of benefit from it; it enervates
the mind; it benefits nobody but priests, who, under the pretext of
rendering men humble, seek, in reality, only to degrade them, to
stifle in their souls every spark of science and of courage, that they
may the more easily impose the yoke of faith, that is to say, their
own yoke. Conclude, then, with me, that the Christian virtues are
chimerical, always useless, and sometimes pernicious to men, and
attended with advantage to none but priests. Conclude that this
religion, with all the boasted beauty of its morality, recommends to
us a set of virtues, and enjoins a line of conduct, at variance with
good sense. Conclude that, in order to be moral and virtuous, it is
far from necessary to adopt the unintelligible creed of the priests,
or to pride ourselves upon the empty virtues they preach, and still
less to annihilate all sense of dignity in ourselves, by a degrading
subjection to the duties they require. Conclude, in short, that the
friend of virtue is not, of necessity, the friend of priestcraft, and
that a man may be adorned with every human perfection, without
possessing one of the Christian virtues.
All who examine this matter with a candid and intelligent eye, cannot
fail to see that true morality--that is to say, a morality really
serviceable to mankind--is absolutely incompatible with the Christian
religion, or any other professed revelation. Whoever imagines himself
the favored object of the Creator's love, must look down with disdain
upon his less fortunate fellow-creatures, especially if he regards
that Creator as partial, choleric, revengeful, and fickle, easily
incensed against us, even by our involuntary thoughts, or our most
innocent words and actions; such a man naturally conducts himself with
contempt and pride, with harshness and barbarity towards all others
whom he may deem obnoxious to the resentment of his Heavenly King.
Those men, whose folly leads them to view the Deity in the light of a
capricious, irritable, and unappeasable despot, can be nothing but
gloomy and trembling slaves, ever eager to anticipate the vengeance
of God upon all whose conduct or opinions they may conceive likely to
provoke the celestial wrath. As soon as the priests have succeeded in
reducing men to a state of stupidity gross enough to make them believe
that their ghostly fathers are the faithful organs of the divine will,
they naturally commit every species of crime, which their spiritual
teachers may please to tell them is calculated to pacify the anger of
their offended God. Men, silly enough to accept a system of morals
from guides thus hollow in reasoning, and thus discordant in opinion,
must necessarily be unstable in their principles, and subject to every
variation that the interest of their guides may suggest. In short, it
is impossible to construct a solid morality, if we take for our
foundation the attributes of a deity so unjust, so capricious, and so
changeable as the God of the Bible, whom we are commanded to imitate
and adore.
Persevere, then, my dear Madam, in the practice of those virtues which
your own unsophisticated heart approves; they will insure you a rich
harvest of happiness in the present existence; they will insure you a
rich return of gratitude, respect, and love from all who enjoy their
benign influence; they will insure you the solid satisfaction of a
well-founded self-esteem, and thus provide you with that unfailing
source of inward gratification which arises from the consciousness of
having contributed to the welfare of the human race. I am, &c.
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?
Notwithstanding these continual quarrels, the church arrogates to
itself the right of fixing the faith of the _true believers_, and in
this it pretends to infallibility; and if the Protestant parsons have
renounced the lofty and ridiculous pretensions of their Catholic
brethren, they are not less certain in the infallibility of their
decisions; for they talk with the authority of oracles, and send to
hell and damnation all who do not yield submission to their dogmas.
Thus on both sides of the cross they wish their assertions to be
received by their adherents as if they came direct from heaven. The
priests have always been at discord among themselves, and have
perpetually cursed, anathematized, and doomed each other to hell. The
vanity of each holy clique has caused it to adhere obstinately to its
own peculiar opinions, and to treat its adversaries as heretics.
Violence alone has generally decided the discussions, terminated the
disputes, and fixed the standard of belief. Those pugnacious, brawling
priests who were artful enough to enlist sovereigns on their side were
_orthodox_, or, in other words, boasted that they were the exclusive
possessors of the true doctrine. They made use of their credit to
crush their adversaries, whom they always treated with the greatest
barbarity.
But, after all, whatever the clergy may say, we shall find, even with
a small share of attention, that it has ever been kings and emperors
who, in the last resort, fixed the faith of the disputatious
Christians. It has been by downright blows of the sword that those
theological notions most pleasing to the Deity have been sustained in
all countries. The true belief has invariably been that which had
princes for its adherents. The faithful were those who had strength
sufficient to exterminate their enemies, whom they never failed to
treat as the enemies of God. In a word, princes have been truly
infallible; we should regard them as the true founders of religious
faith; they are the judges who have decided, in all ages, what
doctrines should be admitted or rejected; and they are, in fine, the
authorities which have always fixed the religion of their subjects.
Ever since Christianity has been adopted by some nations, have we not
seen that religion has almost entirely occupied the attention of
sovereigns? Either the princes, blinded by superstition, were devoted
to the priests, or the rulers of nations believed that prudence
exacted a concession on their part to the clergy, the true masters of
their people, who considered nothing more sacred or more great than
the ministers of their God. In neither case was the body politic ever
consulted; it was cowardly sacrificed to the interests of the court,
or the vanity and luxury of the priests. It is by a continuation of
superstition on the part of the princes that we behold the church so
richly endowed in times of ignorance; when men believed they would
enrich Deity by putting all their wealth into the hands of the priests
of a good God the declared enemy of riches. Savage warriors, destitute
of the manners of men, flattered themselves that they could expiate
all their sins by founding monasteries and giving immense wealth to a
set of men who had made vows of poverty. It was believed that they
would merit from the All-powerful a great advantage by recompensing
laziness, which, in the priests, was regarded as a great good, and
that the blessings procured by their prayers would be in proportion to
the continual and pressing demands their poverty made on the wealthy.
It is thus that by the superstition of princes, by that of the
powerful classes, and of the people themselves, the clergy have become
opulent and powerful; that monachism was honored, and citizens the
most useless, the least submissive, and the most dangerous, were the
best recompensed, the most considered, and the best paid. They were
loaded with benefits, privileges, and immunities; they enjoyed
independence, and they had that great power which flowed from so great
license. Thus were priests placed above sovereigns themselves by the
imprudent devotion of the latter, and the former were enabled to give
the law and trouble the state with impunity.
The clergy, arrived at this elevation of power and grandeur, became
redoubtable even to monarchs. They were obliged to bend under the yoke
or be at way with clerical power. When the sovereigns yielded, they
became mere slaves to the priests, the instruments of their passions,
and the vile adorers of their power. When they refused to yield, the
priests involved them in the most cruel embarrassments; they launched
against them the anathemas of the church; the people were incited
against them in the name of heaven; the nations divided themselves
between the celestial and the terrestrial monarch, and the latter was
reduced to great extremities to sustain a throne which the priests
could shake or even destroy at pleasure. There was a time in Europe
when both the welfare of the prince and the repose of his kingdom
depended solely upon the caprice of a priest. In these times of
ignorance, of devotion, and of commotions so favorable to the clergy,
a weak and poor monarch, surrounded by a miserable nation, was at the
mercy of a Roman pontiff, who could at any instant destroy his
felicity, excite his subjects against him, and precipitate him into
the abyss of misery.
In general, Madam, we find that in countries where religion holds
dominion, the sovereign is necessarily dependent upon the priests; he
has no power except by the consent of the clergy; that power
disappears as soon as he displeases the self-styled vicegerents of
God, who are very soon able to array his subjects against him. The
people, in accordance with the principles of their religion, cannot
hesitate between God and their sovereign. God never says any thing
except what his priests say for him; and the ignorance and folly in
which they are kept by their spiritual guides prevent them from
inquiring whether God's ambassadors faithfully render his decrees.
Conclude, then, with me, that the interests of a sovereign who would
rule equitably are unable to accord with those of the ministers of the
Christian religion, who in all ages have been the most turbulent
citizens, the most rebellious, the most difficult to render
subservient to law and order, and whose resistance has extended to
the very assassination of obnoxious rulers. We shall be told that
Christianity is a firm support of government; that it regards
magistrates as the images of the Deity; and that it teaches that _all
power comes from on high_. These maxims of the clergy are, however,
best calculated to lull kings on the couch of slumber; they are
calculated to flatter those on whom the clergy can rely, and who will
serve their ambition; and their flatterers can soon change their tone
when the princes have the temerity to question the pernicious tendency
of priestly influence, or when they do not blindly lend themselves to
all their views. Then the sovereign is an impious wretch, a heretic;
his destruction is laudable; heaven rejoices in his overthrow. And all
this is the religion of the Bible!