* In the title of the 81st chapter of the 12th book of his Evangelical Preparation, Eusebius tells "how it may be lawful and fitting to use falsehood as a medicine, for the benefit of those who want to be deceived." In this chapter, says Gibbon, he adduces a passage of Plato, which approves the occasional practice of pious and salutary frauds; and he justifies this sentiment of Plato, by the example of the sacred writers of the Old Testament. So much for the theological pharmacopæia of Eusebius. In the fifth century, the church being backed by the strong arm of imperial power, the hierarchy converted their successful institution into a channel overflowing with riches; whilst their doctrines and dogmas, continually changing, got rid of any vestiges of reason and common sense which they had originally had amongst the Therapeutæ and Essenes. The ignorance of the laity was a secure protection for the clergy in all their tyrannical usurpations, and they in their turn became fierce persecutors.* Nature and her laws were overlooked as objects of no consideration, or rather, proscribed as the deadly enemies, of the theologian, and poor credulous man sunk into slavery and misery. In the following centuries, the infatuated belief in miracles of all sorts and sizes became the order of the day, and the heads of the church, no doubt, founded their regularly organised system of deception upon the authority of St. Paul, who, in his second letter to the Thessalonians, fairly avows that, "for this cause God shall send them strong delusion,** that they should believe a lie, _that they all might be damned who believe not the truth_" * Not at all scrupulous about appropriating to themselves the property of others, they have been accused of expelling the Druids or Culdees, from their temples and monasteries, and substituting their own orders; and this they called founding monasteries. This was the fox taking possession of the hole that had been dug by the badger. ** In this epistle to the Thessalonians, Paul seemed to have attained the acme of falsehood and delusion. He assures his dupes that the resurrection of the dead, and the ascension of the living, will take place in his and their days. "Then we (says he, chap iv., 17), which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air," etc. Paul vouches for this being "the word of the Lord." "The whole passage is in the first person and present tense." By way of clinching this most notorious falsehood, it is elsewhere affirmed that "this generation shall not pass away till all these things be accomplished." Priests, have these things taken place?