The contrary policy of Priests, destined solely to aggrandize their trade, is debasing the Deity, degrading man, and trampling upon his creation. Whatever the Deity values, Priests despise; with a vandal ferocity they attack whatever does not tend to secure, enlarge, or multiply the emoluments of the mosque and the church; it is not, in fact, about the church they bicker, nor about souls and religion, but about tithes and offerings: the conduct of men is immaterial, they have a licence to commit any crime, so long as they will pay money for absolution and subscribe to the sanctity of tithes. There is no competition among Priests who shall do the utmost degree of good, but who shall have the power of tithing and deceiving the people: if the people had sufficient sense they would treat all Priests as the different kinds of Priests treat each other--as hypocrites and impostors; constant in jealousy, constant in acrimonious opposition and mutual abuse, every order, every genus, are contending for the spoil of credulity. The Priests are the enemies of liberty, the adversaries of free discussion, and the opposite of equality, constantly conspiring against a people enjoying the blessings of freedom, constantly fettering, debasing, and insulting the slave. While the Priest is too weak to be intolerant, he is flattering, deceitful, mean and servile; but when fraud has elevated him to power, he is arbitrary and domineering, inflated with despotism, with insolence, and with vanity. The multitude of assassinations, of massacres and of wars--the avarice, the villainy, the bigotry and bloody-mindedness of Priests have occasioned, exceeds the powers of calculation; the number of religious murders is lost in figures; every field has groaned under an altar of immolation; the vegetation of every country has been fertilized, and the streets of every town deluged with blood shed by the machinations of Priests; look at that fact, for the benefit of your religion, you followers of the cross and the crescent; cant no more about your justice, your generosity, your forbearance, your humanity, your meekness, or your candour. The Priests have been, for selfish purposes, the orators and fomentors of most of the mischiefs that have disgraced, paralyzed, and disfigured the fair character of human nature: it is disgraceful to any man to be seen in a dispute between Priests and kings; as hypocrites, as impostors, as common rogues, men of wisdom will never participate, never be interested, never be duped by the quarrels, and the envious animosities of the swindling trades. All the Priests--all that live by the trade of hypocrisy, all that live by sacred imposition, are blasphemers, are infidels, are perverters of the truth, are the distorters of the will and object of the Deity; and such as most assiduously attempt to dispel the delusion, are most religious in the eyes of God. Blasphemy is not an offence against truth, but the offence of truth against Priestcraft.