Whenever the government of these great and powerful States shall become so mentally imbecile as to favor, by an exclusive state establishment, any form of superstition,* or system of religion pretending to supernatural revelation, the fatal time of their division, weakness, and final decline and fall, will follow at a very short distance. * Let the priest be ever kept on the same footing as the merchant--that is, maintained at the expense of the consumer. He who has no priest, and consumes none of the commodity he deals in, should not be compelled to pay any part of his hire. END OF LECTURE FIFTH. LECTURE SIXTH. EFFECTS OF THE CHRISTIAN SUPERSTITION (Continued) Let those weak minds that live in doubt and fear, To juggling priests--fair Nature's foes, repair; These soul-savers,--truth's blackest enemies, I ne'er consult, and heartily despise. Its foul leagues with tyranny, persecutions, cruelty; society poisoned by its all-pervading influence; what is good in gospel morals borrowed from the ancients; its usurpation of one-seventh of man's time, and one-tenth of the proceeds of his industry; other evils which it occasions generally. In extending our view of the immoral, degrading, and malign effects of the Christian superstition, it is but just and fair to observe, that all other systems of religion which have successively plagued the world, founded on the pretensions of impostors to supernatural revelations, have also been destructive of human welfare, though in a degree much less subversive of natural rights. The scanty remains of ancient history and science, which Christian and Mahommedan priests and tyrants have suffered to reach us, show clearly that in all ages and countries, the ignorance of the bulk of mankind hath constantly rendered them the dupes of some sort of priests, by whom that ignorance has been uniformly cherished and promoted, as the most congenial soil for the growth of church and state corruptions. There never has been, and there never can be, any very bad government without the confederate aid of that master evil,* the imaginary science of theology (for all is illusion that is said to be beyond the physical powers of Nature** the poetical personification of which is called "Nature's God"); and a wicked and tyrannical government, whether kingly or aristocratic, can no more do without a sympathetic priesthood, than the latter can do without their devil; hence it follows that all state authority has been pernicious in the exact ratio of its connexion with these priesthoods. This may partly be proved by the superiority of the government of the United States, (where the alloy of ecclesiastical union is strictly guarded against) over that of any European nation, not excepting England, where both houses of Parliament are sadly tainted, and one of them almost governed