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 war 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!
You know, Madam, that these odious maxims have been a thousand times
enforced by the priests, who say the prince has _encroached upon the
authority of the church_; and the people respond that _it is better to
obey God than man_. The priests are only devoted to the princes when
the princes are blindly led by the priests. These last preach arrogantly
that the former ought to be exterminated, when they refuse to obey the
church, that is to say, the priests; yet, how terrible soever may be
these maxims, how dangerous soever their practice to the security of
the sovereign and the tranquillity of the state, they are the immediate
consequences drawn from Judaism and Christianity. We find in the Old
Testament that the regicide is applauded; that treason and rebellion
are approved. As soon as it is supposed that God is offended with
the thoughts of men,--as soon as it is supposed that heretics are
displeasing to him,--it is very natural to conclude that an impious and
heretical sovereign, that is to say, one who does not obey a clerical
body that set themselves up as the directors of his belief, who opposes
the sacred views of an infallible church, and who might occasion the
loss and apostasy of a large part of the nation,--it is natural that the
priests should conclude it to be legitimate for subjects to attack such
a prince, alleging their religion to be the most important thing in the
world, and dearer than life itself. Actuated by such principles, it
is impossible that a Christian zealot should not think he rendered a
service to heaven by punishing its enemy, and a service to his country
by disembarrassing it of a chief who might interpose an obstacle to his
eternal happiness.
The obedience of the clergy is never otherwise than conditional. The
priests submit to a prince, they flatter his power, and they sustain his
authority, provided he submits to their orders, makes no obstacles to
their projects, touches none of their interests, and changes none of
the dogmas upon which the ministers of the church have founded their own
grandeur. In fine, provided a government recognizes, as divine, clerical
privileges that are plainly opposed to popular rights, and tend to
subvert them, the hierarchy will submit to it These considerations prove
how dangerous are the priesthood, since the end they purpose by all
their projects is dominion over the mind of mankind, and by subjugating
it to enslave their persons, and render them the creatures of despotism
and tyranny. And we shall find, upon examination, that, with one or two
exceptions, the pious have been the enemies of the progress of science
and the development of the human understanding; for by brutalizing
mankind they have invariably striven to bind them to their yoke. Their
avarice, their thirst of power and wealth, have led them to plunge
their fellow-citizens in ignorance, in misery, and unhappiness. They
discourage the cultivation of the earth by their system of tithes,
their extortions, and their secret projects; they annihilate activity,
talents, and industry; their pride is to reign on the ruin of the rest
of their species. The finest countries in Europe have, when blindly
submissive to the priests, been the worst cultivated, the thinnest
peopled, and the most wretched. The _Inquisition_ in Spain, Italy, and
Portugal has only tended to impoverish those countries, to debase the
mind, and render their subjects the veriest slaves of superstition. And
in countries where we see heaven showering down abundance, the people
are poor and famished, while the priests and monks are opulent and
bloated. Their kings are without power and without glory; their subjects
languish in indigence and wretchedness.
The priests boast of the utility of their office. Independently of
their prayers, from which the world has for so many ages derived neither
instruction nor peace, prosperity nor happiness, their pretensions
to teach the rising generations are often frivolous, and sometimes
arrogant, since we have found others equally well calculated to the
discharge of those functions, who have been good citizens, that have not
drawn from the pockets of their neighbors the tenth of their earnings.
Thus, in what light soever we view them, the pretensions of the priests
are reduced to a nonentity, compared to the disservice they render the
community by their exactions and dissolute lives.
In what consists, in effect, the education that our spiritual guides
have, unhappily for society, assumed the vocation of imparting to youth?
Does it tend to make reasonable, courageous, and virtuous citizens? No;
it is incontestable that it creates ignoble men, whose entire lives are
tormented with imaginary terrors; it creates superstitious slaves, who
only possess monastic virtues, and who, if they follow faithfully the
instructions of their masters, must be perfectly useless to society; it
forms intolerant devotees, ready to detest all those who do not think
like themselves; and it makes fanatics, who are ready to rebel against
any government as soon as they are persuaded it is rebellious to the
church. What do the priests teach their pupils? They cause them to
lose much precious time in reciting prayers, in mechanically repeating
theological dogmas, of which, even in mature life, they comprehend
nothing. They teach them the dead languages, which, at the best, only
serve for entertainment, being by no means necessary in the present form
of society. They terminate these fine studies by a philosophy which, in
clerical hands, has become a mere play of words, a jargon void of sense,
and which is exactly calculated to fit them for the unintelligible
science called _theology_. But is this theology itself useful to
nations? Are the interminable disputes which arise between profound
metaphysicians of such a character as to be interesting to the people
who do not comprehend them? Are the people of Paris and the provinces
much advanced in heavenly knowledge when the priests dispute among
themselves about what should really be thought of grace?
In regard to the instruction imparted by the clergy, it is indeed
necessary to have faith in order to discover its utility. Their boasted
instruction consists in teaching ineffable mysteries, marvellous dogmas,
narrations and fables perfectly ridiculous, panic terrors, fanatical
and lugubrious predictions, frightful menaces, and above all, systems
so profound that they who announce are not able to comprehend them. In
truth, Madam, in all this I can see nothing useful. Should nations feel
any extraordinary obligations to teachers who concoct doctrines that
must always remain impenetrable for the whole human race? It must
be confessed that our priests, who so painfully occupy themselves in
arranging a pure creed for us, must signally lose all their labor. At
any rate, the people are not much in the situation to profit by such
sublime toils. Very frequently the pulpit becomes the theatre of
discord; the sacred disclaimers launch injuries at each other, infusing
their own passions into the bosoms of their _Christian_ auditors,
kindling their zeal against the enemies of the church, and becoming
themselves the trumpets of party spirit, fury, and sedition. If these
preachers teach morality, it is a kind of supernatural morality, little
adapted to the nature of man. If they inculcate virtue, it is that
theological virtue whose inutility we have sufficiently shown. If by
chance some one among them allows himself to preach that morality and
virtue which is practical, human, and social, you know, Madam, that
he is proscribed by his confederates, and becomes an object of their
acrimonious criticisms and their deadly hatred. He is also disdained
by devotees who are attached to evangelical virtues that they cannot
comprehend, and who consider nothing as more important than mysterious
forms and ceremonies, in which zealots make morality to consist.
See, then, in what limits are entertained the important services
that the ministers of the Lord have for so many centuries rendered to
nations! They are not worth, in all conscience, the excessive price
which is paid for them. On the contrary, if priests were treated
according to their real merit, if their functions were appreciated at
their just value, it would, perhaps, be found that they did not merit
a larger salary than those empirics who, at the corners of the streets,
vend remedies more dangerous than the evils they promise to cure.
It is by subjecting the immense revenues, lands, abbeys, and estates,
which clerical bodies have levied upon the credulity of men, to just and
equal taxation, as with other property; it is by rendering the church
and state entirely distinct; it is by stripping the hierarchy of
immunities not possessed by other citizens, and of privileges both
chimerical and injurious; it is by rigorously exacting the same civil
obedience alike from priests and people,--that government can be rightly
administered, that justice can be impartially rendered, and that the
nation, as a whole, can be trained to courage, activity, industry,
intelligence, tranquillity, and patriotism. So long as there are two
powers in a state, they will necessarily be at variance, and the one
which arrogates the favor of the Almighty will have immense advantages
over that which claims no authority above the earth. If both pretend
to emanate from the same source, the people would not know which to
believe; they would range themselves on each side; the combat would be
furious, and the power of the government would be unable to maintain
itself against the many heads of the ecclesiastical hydra. The magicians
of Pharaoh yielded to the Jewish priests, and in conflicts between the
church and state, the immunities of the priests,
"Like Aaron's serpent, swallowed all the rest."
If such is the case, you will inquire, Madam, how can an enlightened
civil power ever make obedient citizens of rebellious priests, who
have so long possessed the confidence of the people, and who can with
impunity render themselves formidable to any government? I reply,
that in spite of the vigilant cares and the redoubled efforts of the
priesthood, the people have begun to be more enlightened; they are
becoming weary of the heavy yoke, which they would not have borne so
long had they not believed it was imposed upon them by the Most High,
and that it was necessary to their happiness. It is impossible for error
to be eternal; it must give way to the power of truth. The priests, who
think, know this well, and the whole ecclesiastical body continually
declaim against all those who wish to enlighten the human race and
unveil the conspiracies of their spiritual guides. They fear the
piercing eyes of philosophy; they fear the reign of reason, which will
never be that of tyranny or anarchy. Governments, then, ought not to
share the fears of the clergy, nor render themselves the executors of
their vengeance; they injure themselves when they sustain the cause of
their turbulent rivals, who have ever been the enemies of civil polity
and perturbera of the public repose. The magistrates of a state league
themselves with their enemies when they form an alliance with the
priesthood, or prevent the people from recognizing their errors.
Governments are more interested than individuals in the destruction of
errors that often lead to confusion, anarchy, and rebellion. If men had
not become gradually enlightened, nations would now, as formerly, be
under the yoke of the Roman pontiff, who could occasion revolution in
their midst, overturn the laws, and subvert the government. But for
the insensible progress of reason, states would now be filled with
a tumultuous crowd of devotees, ready to revolt at the signal of an
unquiet priest or a seditious monk.
You perceive, then, Madam, that men who think, and who teach others
to think, are more useful to governments than those who wish to stifle
reason and to proscribe forever the liberty of thought. You see that the
true friends of a stable government are those who seek most sedulously
to enlighten, educate, and elevate the people. You feel that by
banishing knowledge and persecuting philosophy, government sacrifices
its dearest interests to a seditious clergy, whose ambition and avarice
push them to usurp boundless authority, and whose pride always makes
them indignant at being in subjection to a power which they contend
should be subordinate to themselves.
There is no priest who does not consider himself superior to the highest
ruler of any country. We have often seen the priesthood avow pretensions
of this character. The clergy are always enraged when an attempt is made
to subject them to the secular power. Such an attempt they regard as
profane, and they denounce it as tyranny whenever it is sought to be
enforced. They pretend that in all times the priesthood has been sacred,
that its rights come from God himself, and that no government can,
without sacrilege, or without outraging the Divinity, touch the
property, the privileges, or the immunities which have been snatched
from ignorance and credulity. Whenever the civil authority would
touch the objects considered inviolable and sacred in the hands of the
priests, their clamors cannot be appeased; they make efforts to excite
the people against the government; they denounce all authority as
tyrannical when it has the temerity to think of subjecting them to the
laws, of reforming their abuses, and neutralizing their power to injure.
But they consider authority legitimate when it crushes _their_ enemies,
though it appears insupportable as soon as it is reasonable and
favorable to the people. The priests are essentially the most wicked of
men, and the worst citizens of a state. A miracle would be necessary to
render them otherwise. In all countries they are the _spoiled children_
of nations. They are proud and haughty, since they pretend it is from
God himself they received their mission and their power. They are
ingrates, since they assume to owe only to God benefits which they
visibly hold from the generosity of governments and the people. They
are audacious, because for many ages they have enjoyed supremacy with
impunity. They are unquiet and turbulent, because they are never without
the desire of playing a great part. They are quarrelsome and factious,
because they are never able to find out a method of enabling men
to understand the pretended truths they teach. They are suspicious,
defiant, and cruel, because they sensibly feel that they may well dread
the discovery of their impostures. They are the spontaneous enemies
of truth because they justly apprehend it will annihilate their
pretensions. They are implacable in their vengeance, because it would
be dangerous to pardon those who wish to crush their doctrines, whose
weakness they know. They are hypocrites, because most of them possess
too much sense to believe the reveries they retail to others. They are
obstinate in their ideas, because they are inflated with vanity, and
because they could not consistently deviate from a method of thinking
of which they pretend God is the author. We often see them unbridled
and licentious in their manners, because it is impossible that idleness,
effeminacy, and luxury should not corrupt the heart We sometimes see
them austere and rigid in their conduct in order to impose on the people
and accomplish their ambitious views. If they are hypocrites and rogues,
they are extremely dangerous; and if they are fanatical in good faith,
or imbecile, they are not less to be feared. In fine, we almost always
see them rebellious and seditious, because an authority derived from God
is not disposed to bend to authority derived from men.
You have here, Madam, a faithful portrait of the members of a powerful
body, in whose favor governments, for a long time, have believed it
their duty to sacrifice the other interests of the state. You here see
the citizens whom prejudice most richly recompenses, whom princes honor
in the eyes of the people, to whom they give their confidence, whom
they regard as the support of their power, and whom they consider as
necessary to the happiness and security of their kingdoms. You can
judge yourself whether the likeness delineated is correct You are in a
position to discover their intrigues, their underplots, their conduct,
and their discourse, and you will always find that their constant object
is to flatter princes for the purpose of governing them and keeping
nations in slavery.
It is to please citizens so dangerous that sovereigns mingle in
theological questions, take the part of those who succeed in seducing
them, persecute all those who do not submit, proscribe with fury the
friends of reason, and by repressing knowledge injure their own power.
Because the priests, who urge princes to sacrilege when they combat for
them, are indignant against the same princes when they refuse to
destroy the enemies of their own particular clerical body. They likewise
denounce sovereigns as impious if the latter treat theological disputes
with the indifference they merit.
When hereafter, reclaimed from their prejudices, princes wish to govern
for the good of all, let them cease to hear the interested and often
sanguinary councils of these pretended divine men, who, regarding
themselves as the centre of all things, wish to have sacrificed for
this object the happiness, the repose, the riches, and the honors of
the state. Let the sovereign never enter into their dissensions, let
him never persecute for religious opinions, which, among sectaries, are
commonly on both sides equally ridiculous and destitute of foundation.
They would never involve the government if the sovereign had not the
weakness to mingle in them. Let him give unlimited freedom to the course
of thinking, while he directs by just laws the course of acting on the
part of his subjects. Let him permit every one to dream or speculate as
he pleases, provided he conducts himself otherwise as an honest man
and a good citizen. At least let the prince not oppose the progress
of knowledge, which alone is capable of extricating his people from
ignorance, barbarity, and superstition, which have made victims of
so many Christian rulers. Let him be assured that enlightened and
instructed citizens are more law-abiding, industrious, and peaceable
than stupid slaves without knowledge and without reason, who will always
be ready to take all the passions with which a fanatic wishes to inspire
them.
Let the sovereign especially occupy himself with the education of his
subjects, nor leave the clergy unobstructedly to impregnate his people
with mystic notions, foolish reveries, and superstitious practices,
which are only proper for fanatics. Let him at least counterbalance the
inculcation of these follies by teaching a morality conformable to the
good of the state, useful to the happiness of its members, and social
and reasonable. This morality would inform a man what he owed to
himself, to society, to his fellow-citizens, and to the magistrates who
administered the laws. This morality would not form men who would hate
each other for speculative opinions, nor dangerous enthusiasts, nor
devotees blindly submissive to the priests. It would create a tranquil,
intelligent, and industrious community; a body of inhabitants submissive
to reason and obedient to just and legitimate authority. In a word, from
such morality would spring virtuous men and good citizens, and it would
be the surest antidote against superstition and fanaticism. In this
manner the empire of the clergy would be diminished, and the sovereign
would have a less portentous rival; he would, without opposition, be
assured of all rational and enlightened citizens; the riches of the
clergy would in part reenter society, and be of use in benefiting the
people; institutions now useless would be put to advantageous uses; a
portion of the possessions of the church, originally destined for the
poor, and so long appropriated by avaricious priests, would come
into the hands of the suffering and the indigent, their legitimate
proprietors. Supported by a nation who were sensible of the advantages
he had procured them, the prince would no longer fear the cries of
fanaticism, and they would soon be no longer heard. The priests, the
lazy monks, and turbulent persons living in forced celibacy, could no
longer calculate on the future, and, aliens in the state which nourished
them, they would visibly diminish. The government, more rich and
powerful, would be in a better situation to diffuse its benefits; and
enlightened, virtuous, and beneficent men would constitute the support,
the glory, and the grandeur of the state.
Such, Madam, are the ends which all governments would propose who opened
their eyes to their own true interests. I flatter myself that these
designs will not appear to you either impossible or chimerical.
Knowledge and science, which begin to be generally diffused, are already
advancing these results; they are giving an impulse to the march of
the human mind, and in time, governments and people, without tumult
or revolution, will be freed from the yoke which has oppressed them so
long.
Do we see any thing useful in the pious endowments of our ancestors?
We find them to consist of institutions invented to continue a lazy,
monastic life; costly temples elevated and enriched by indigent people
to augment the pride of the priests, and to erect altars and palaces.
From the foundation of Christianity the whole object of religion
has been to aggrandize the priesthood on the ruins of nations and
governments. A jealous religion has exclusively seized on the minds
of men, and persuaded them that they live upon earth merely to occupy
themselves with their future happiness in the unknown regions of the
empyrean. It is time that this prestige should cease; it is time that
the human race should occupy itself with its own true interests. The
interests of the people will always be incompatible with those of the
guides who believe they have acquired an imprescriptible right to lead
men astray. The more you examine the Christian religion, the more will
you be convinced that it can be advantageous only to those whose object
it is easily to guide mankind after having plunged them into darkness. I
am, &c.