In religion every man has a right to think for himself.

in one scale he should put the opinion of Locke, Fontenelle, Bayle, &c. and in the other that of the Italian, French, and Spanish nations, the last scale would rise up, as if loaded with no weight. The diversity and absurdity of different forms of worship shew in how little esteem we ought to hold the opinion of the people. The divine wisdom itself appeared, says the scripture, a stumbling-block to the Jews, and to the Gentiles foolishness; Judæis scandalum, gentibus stultitiam. In matters of religion I owe no respect to the opinion of a people; it is to myself alone that I owe an account of my belief; all that immediately relates to God, should have no judge but he. The magistrate himself, solely charged with the temporal happiness of men, has no right to punish any crimes not committed against society: no prince or priest has a right to persecute in me the pretended crime of not thinking as he does.

From what principle does the law forbid my neighbour to dispose of my property, and permit him to dispose of my reason and my soul? My soul is my property. It is from nature that I hold the right of thinking, and of speaking what I think. When the first Christians laid before the nations of the earth their belief, and the motives for that belief; when they permitted the Gentiles to judge between the Christian religion and their own, and to make use of the reason given to man to distinguish between vice and virtue, truth and falsehood; the exposition of their sentiments had certainly nothing criminal in it. At what period did the Christians deserve the hatred and

contempt

Force can never produce belief.

contempt of the world? When by burning the temples of the idols, they would have forced the pagans to relinquish the religion they thought the best (69). What was the design of that violence? Force imposes silence on reason; it can proscribe any worship rendered to the Divinity. But what power has it over belief? To believe supposes a motive to belief? Force is no motive. Now without motive we cannot really believe; the most we can do is to think we believe (70).

There can be no pretence for admitting an intolerance condemned by reason and the law of nature : that law is holy; it is from God; it cannot be disannulled; on the contrary, God has confirmed it by his gospel.

Every priest, who under the name of an angel of peace excites men to persecution, is not, as is imagined, the dupe of a stupid and ill-informed zeal (71); it is not by his zeal but by his ambition that he is directed.

CHAP. XX.

INTOLERANCE IS THE FOUNDATION OF THE GRANDEUR OF THE CLERGY.

THE doctrine and practice of the priest both prove his love of power. What does he protect? Ignorance. Why?

Enmity of the priests to talents and genius.

Why? Because the ignorant and credulous, make little use of their reason, think after others, are easy to be deceived, and are the dupes of the grossest sophistry (72).

What does the priest persecute? Learning. Why? Because a man of learning will not believe without examination; he will see with his own eyes, and is hard to be deceived. The enemies of learning are the bonze, the dervise, the bramin, in short, every priest of every religion. In Europe the priests rose up against Galileo; excommunicated Polydore Virgil and Scheiner for the discovery which the one made of the antipodes, and the other of the spots in the sun. They have proscribed sound logic in Bayle, and in Descartes the only method of acquiring knowledge; they forced that philosopher to leave his country (73); they formerly accused all great men of magic (74); and now magic is no longer in fashion, they accuse those of atheism and materialism, whom they formerly burned

as sorcerers.

The care of the priest has ever been to keep men at a distance from the truth all instructive study is forbidden. The priest shuts himself up with them in a dark chamber, and carefully stops up every crevice by which the light might enter. He hates, and ever will hate, the philosopher: he is in continual fear lest men of science should overthrow an empire founded on error and intellectual darkness.

Without love for talents, the priest is a secret enemy

to

Difference between virtue and sanctity.

to the virtues of humanity; he frequently denies their very existence. There are, in his opinion, no virtuous actions but what are conformable to his doctrines, that is, to his interest. The first of virtues with him are faith, and a submission to sacerdotal power: it is to slaves only that he gives the name of saints and virtuous

men.

What, however, are more distinct than the ideas of virtue and sanctity? He is virtuous who promotes the prosperity of his fellow-citizens: the word virtue always includes the idea of some public utility. It is not the same with sanctity. A hermit or monk imposes on himself the law of silence, flogs himself every night, lives on pulse and water, sleeps on straw, offers to God his nastiness and his ignorance, and thinks by virtue of maceration to make a fortune in heaven. He may be decorated with a glory; but if he do no good on earth, he is not honest. A villain is converted at the hour of death; he is saved, and is happy: but he is not virtuous. That title is not to be obtained but by a conduct habitually just and noble.

It is from the cloister that saints are commonly taken: but what are monks in general? Idle and litigious men, dangerous to society, and whose vicinity is to be dreaded. Their conduct proves that there is nothing in common between religion and virtue. To obtain a just idea of it, we must substitute a new mo. rality in the place of that theological morality, which, always indulgent to the perfidious arts practised by the different

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Means employed by the priests to increase their power.

different sects (76), sanctifies to this day the atrocious crimes with which the Jansenists and Molinists reciprocally charge each other (77), and which, in short, commands them to plunder their fellow-citizens of their property and their liberty.

An Asiatic tyrant would have his subjects promote his pleasures with all their power, and pay down at his feet their homage and their riches: the popish priests exact in like manner the homage and the riches of the catholics.

Are there any means of increasing their power and wealth that they have not employed? When it was necessary for that purpose to have recourse to barbarity and cruelty, they became cruel and barbarous.

From the moment the priests, instructed by experience, found that men paid more regard to fear than to love, that more offerings were presented to Ariman than Oromaza, to the cruel Molva than the gentle Jesus, it was on terror that they founded their empire. They sought to have it in their power to burn the Jew, imprison the Jansenist and Deist; and notwithstanding the horror with which the tribunal of the inquisition fills every sensible and humane soul, they then conceived the project of its establishment. It was by dint of intrigues that they accomplished this design in Spain, Italy, Portugal, &c.

The more arbitrary the proceedings of this tribunal became, the more it was dreaded. The priests, per

ceiving

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