"He now set himself, with his associates, D'Alembert and Diderot, to excite universal discontent with the established order of things. For this purpose, they formed secret societies, assumed new names, and employed an enigmatical language. In their secret meetings they professed to celebrate the mysteries of _Mythra_; and their great object, as they professed to one another, was to confound the wretch, meaning Jesus Christ. Hence their secret watchword was 'Crush the wretch.' The following are some of their doctrines, as found in their books expressly designed for general circulation. Sometimes standing out in their naked horror, at other times enveloped in sophistry and disguise. The Universal Cause, that God of the philosophers, of the Jews, and of the Christians, is but a chimera and a phantom--The phenomena of nature only prove the existence of God to a few prepossessed men--It is more reasonable to admit, with Manes, of a two-fold God, than of the God of Christianity--We can not know whether a God really exists, or whether there is any difference between good and evil, or vice and virtue--Nothing can be more absurd than to believe the soul a spiritual being--The immortality of the soul, so far from stimulating men to the practise of virtue, is nothing but a barbarous, desperate, fatal tenet, and contrary to all legislation--All ideas of justice and injustice, of virtue and vice, of glory and infamy, are purely arbitrary, and dependent on custom--Conscience and remorse are nothing but the foresight of those physical penalties to which crimes expose us--The man who is above the law, can commit, without remorse, the dishonest act that may serve his purpose--The fear of God, so far from being the beginning of wisdom, should be the beginning of folly--The command to love one's parents is more the work of education than of nature--Modesty is only an invention of refined voluptuousness--The law which condemns married people to live together, becomes barbarous and cruel on the day they cease to love one another. "Such were the atrocious sentiments, though sometimes artfully veiled, which were disseminated in their books, and which, spreading all over Europe, imperceptibly took possession of the public mind, and prepared the way for the subversion of religion, morals, and government. As soon as the sale of the works was sufficient to pay expenses, inferior editions were printed and given away, or sold at a very low price; circulating libraries of them were formed, and reading societies instituted. While they constantly denied these productions to the world, they contrived to give them a false celebrity through their confidential agents and correspondents, who were not themselves always trusted with the entire secret.