Though reason and science have now cooled the roasting-alive spirit down to the moderate temperature of modern times, yet the essential property of priestcraft to augment, and in no rational manner ever to alleviate, human suffering will never fail to show itself, wherever its views and interests are concerned. By laws and customs procured in its all-powerful days, the mental and bodily tortures of condemned criminals are most unmercifully prolonged between sentence and execution, and their situation rendered as horrid as possible. Under pretence of the soul-saving anxiety, the dreadful anguish of their minds is, by a cruel delay, increased in a ten-fold degree, whilst they are inexorably guarded lest they should anticipate their doom by relieving themselves, and give the priest the go-by, which they are told is the acme of sin and wickedness; but if they drag out their agonising misery quietly, and give him due opportunity to play off his incantations, and above all--believe, or pretend to believe in the efficacy of his dogmas, then a heavenly pardon is secured, even at the gallows. If, in the endeavor to avoid this catastrophe, the unhappy victim of the ignorance and crimes of society--overwhelmed as he is with misery and despair, is driven to seek relief in the quiet sleep of death, he is seized and accused by the "authorities" of a "_felonious intention_" to escape from the evils with which bad laws and abominable superstitions have surrounded him; and is, therefore, absurdly required to "_find security_" that he will not again attempt to elude his wretchedness, but will quietly linger out the remainder of life in hunger, rags and cold; all entailed upon him by existing society, every element of which is pregnant with corruption. Thus the action which, amongst the Romans and others of the ancients, was deemed virtuous heroism, has, by the selfish inventions of modern theology, been condemned as a deadly crime, and even stigmatised as cowardice, than which nothing can be more false and contemptible. But in every attempt to depict, in their true colors and direful effects, the evils generated by that canker, there must ever be a want of words to convey adequate force of execration. Such diabolical mockeries of humanity may be authorised by modern godism, but they were not approved by that of antiquity.