Priesthood -- Controversial literature; Priests -- Controversial literature
It is by inflexible truth, by the invariable laws of Nature, that the
impostor will be analyzed; bring him to the shrine of reason, denude him
of his robes, of his mask, of his hypocrisy, he is not more than man
by Nature, but worse by morality, inasmuch as he is covered by infamous
offences; however intention may operate, however simplicity may
be deluded, there cannot be one honest, one independent, and one
intelligent man among the whole body of Priests; bigots by education,
dishonest by trade, ignorant of the first principles of science, they
must necessarily be superstitious, cruel, and vindictive; whatever
purity, whatever humility, whatever candour, the Priest may profess, is
resolvable into individual interest; he has no parent but avarice,
no God but money. Although the Evangelists, the Priests, the sacred
impostors, are similar by nature, similarly educated in chicane and
hypocrisy, they do not agree in any one religious profession: the
Bonzes, the Muftis, and the Priests, have different churches, different
Gods, different creeds. Religious impostors uniformly coincide in
plundering the people; there is no other symptom of similarity, no
atom of cohesion, but rapine, among Priests: God is made something and
nothing, every where and no where; he is one thing at Ispahan, another
at Constantinople, and a third at Rome; what is religion at one place,
is blasphemy at another.
If truth was as mutable, as liable to change, as subject to variation,
as the dogmas of Priests, conflicting opinions would act to mutual
destruction. God, acting always through Nature, always by universal
and self-evident laws, would not permit a thousand sects of ignorant,
profane, impious, blaspheming Priests, to mislead, impoverish, and
barbarize the people. If God manifested himself through the medium
of Priests, of churches, and of creeds, it would be by means as
self-evident as universal, and as candid and invariable as the rotations
of the solar system; it would not be by starvation at one hour, and
gluttony at another; or kneeling, tenths, pilgrimages, exorcisms,
sprinklings, crosses, sacraments, ablutions, circumcision, and
gibberish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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