The laws of the clergy in certain provinces of France, ruled by them in old times, provided that every man that died without bequeathing part of his estate to the church, should be deprived of the Sacrament (and would consequently go to Hell). If he died without making a will, his relatives were obliged to prevail upon the Bishop to appoint arbitrators to determine what sum the deceased should have given to the church in case he had made a will. At one time in France, “married couples could not sleep together the first three nights without purchasing leave of the church.”—Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws, 665. “Pope John XII was assassinated in the arms of his mistress. Crecentious, the illegitimate son of John X, caused Benedict VI to be murdered. His faction elected Boniface VII, and a third faction elected John XV, who was put to death by Boniface. We find shortly after 1044 Benedict IX, a boy of twelve, and Rholeme and Sylvester III all reigning at the same time, and all leading the most profligate and scandalous lives.”—Doubts of Infidels, 95. Bishop Hopkins says that “the great body of the clergy before the seventh century were steeped in licentiousness, avarice, simony, cruelty, violence and blood. They consecrated every vice in the interest of so-called religion, they graduated sins by pecuniary amercement, they commissioned assassins, having pardoned them before the commission of the murder.” The priests or Magi of Persia, as ecclesiastical bandits, were unexcelled. The people had to give up one tenth of their income to these magical fakirs. Every woman in Babylon was obliged to offer her person for sale one day in the year at the temple of Astarte, and the money went to the priests. The pirates of Babylon ransacked the world and bought or stole the most beautiful women on earth for the use of the priests, who made a pretence of offering them up as human sacrifices to Baal. The god held in his hand the appropriate symbol of the traffic, the circle and the pillar, that may still be seen in nearly all churches. The beautiful sacrifice was placed on the lap of the god in the presence of the audience, to be devoured by the lions that surrounded the god. But after the meeting the priests drove the lions out and stole the sacrifice, as priests always did steal the offerings from god.