None but bigoted and priest-subdued minds will deny that it has been Christian superstition, and its offspring, cherished ignorance, that have distracted and made stages for theological gladiators, of Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, for a succession of ages. By its natural tendency to corrupt every kind of government, it has shed the blood of Erin's priest-ridden sons, to satisfy the rapacious hierarchy of a more favored sect! In England, at this moment, is it not a demonstrable fact that, as theology enters into, and taints everything, so it is the ready and insuperable barrier against every salutary improvement; for, whenever a reform of bad laws and abuses is proposed, or any measure attempted that would tend to the relief and benefit of the people at large, do not Churchcraft, Aristocracy and Co. put their veto upon it immediately? * It is the essence of this pretended science of theology, particularly that of triune-Christianity, to oppose, and in everything to combat the light of Nature and reason--to degrade and crush the human mind in youth, as the best security against its future expansion; and hence it is that, poor deluded man, in his abject and ludicrous terrors, has been rendered the most bewildered, piteous, and contemptible of all animals,** wishing to live for ever _after death_, yet afraid to die! Such being the nature of this dark pestilence, the terrible evils it has produced in Europe for so many centuries, and is still producing even to this day are precisely what might be expected from such a cause. * The demon of Toryism, which pervades Europe throughout, is the legitimate offspring of Priestcraft, Aristocracy and Co.--that is, a confederacy of the great monopolisers of the land and the church hierarchy, for the honest purpose of subjugating and fleecing the industrious wealth-producers. ** No man will ever write as a true philosopher who seeks the approbation of more than one in every ten thousand of men, as they are moulded at present by theology. To any species of political tyranny that happened to be strong enough to bestow riches and power upon its priests, it has ever been ready to link itself; and to form the mainstay and support of that flagitious and shameful policy which promotes ignorance, as the surest medium through which to deceive mankind into submission to bad government. Even now, in the nineteenth century, there are no legislative disputes and dissensions in which it is not the perpetual bone of contention--no national interests discussed wherein it forms not the most inflaming ingredient.* From a cause that is thus essentially and innately evil, such effects must emanate of necessity; and, therefore, there would be the highest folly in expecting that this baleful superstition can ever change, or be anything else than that which it hitherto has been--a burden and a scourge to every country _in the exact ratio of its influence_.