Between these two extremes of heaven and hell they keep him suspended, themselves holding the haulyards rope in their own hands, ready to pull him up to the one or lower him down to the other, according as he believes, in and supports, or rejects and condemns their craft and traffic. In the political and religious drama of enslaving the great majority of the people, the above parts of the play are, of course, the peculiar province of the priesthood, who to the fabled guilt of original sin, have charged upon the gloomy minds of their wretched votaries, an endless catalogue of sins, by thought, word, and deed; to every one of which the punishment of eternal flames has been awarded. The kingly and aristocratic part of this drama is to make laws to suit themselves and their priesthood--to bind down reason, so as to prevent it rebelling against the most shocking absurdities--compel it to acquiesce in the imperative mandates of a vile superstition; and _demonstrate_, through the powerful arguments of imprisonment and ruin, that all investigation of the plot or proof of falsehood adduced against the actors, is wickedness.* * Every rancorous feeling and motive among religious fanatics, conspire to create and provoke antipathy, and to swell it to the utmost pitch of intensity against the materialist, who holds them all in contempt. These are the only feelings in which the deluded votaries of supernatural revelations coincide, in directing their common enmity against that philosophy which, they know, treats them with derision. This enmity is inexorable and eternal, though restrained, at present, from gratifying its natural ferocity.