We remember the millions in the darkness of dungeons--the millions who perished by the sword--the vast multitudes destroyed in flames--those who were flayed alive--those who were blinded--those whose tongues were cut out--those into whose ears were poured molten lead--those whose eyes were deprived of their lids--those who were tortured and tormented in every way by which pain could be inflicted and human nature overcome. And we remember, too, the exultant cry of the church over the bodies of her victims: "Their bodies were burned here, but their souls are now tortured in hell." We remember that the church, by treachery, bribery, perjury, and the commission of every possible crime, got possession and control of Christendom, and we know the use that was made of this power--that it was used to brutalize, degrade, stupefy, and "sanctify" the children of men. We know also that the vicars of Christ were persecutors for opinion's sake--that they sought to destroy the liberty of thought through fear--that they endeavored to make every brain a bastile in which the mind should be a convict--that they endeavored to make every tongue a prisoner, watched by a familiar of the Inquisition--and that they threatened punishment here, imprisonment here, burnings here, and, in the name of their God, eternal imprisonment and eternal burnings hereafter. We know, too, that the Catholic Church was, during all the years of its power, the enemy of every science. It preferred magic to medicine, relics to remedies, priests to physicians. It thought more of astrologers than of astronomers. It hated geologists--it persecuted the chemist, and imprisoned the naturalist, and opposed every discovery calculated to improve the condition of mankind. It is impossible to forget the persecutions of the Cathari, the Albigenses, the Waldenses, the Hussites, the Huguenots, and of every sect that had the courage to think just a little for itself. Think of a woman--the mother of a family--taken from her children and burned, on account of her view as to the three natures of Jesus Christ. Think of the Catholic Church,--an institution with a Divine Founder, presided over by the agent of God--punishing a woman for giving a cup of cold water to a fellow-being who had been anathematized. Think of this church, "fruitful in all good things," launching its curse at an honest man--not only cursing him from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet with a fiendish particularity, but having at the same time the impudence to call on God, and the Holy Ghost, and Jesus Christ, and the Virgin Mary, to join in the curse; and to curse him not only here, but forever hereafter--calling upon all the saints and upon all the redeemed to join in a hallelujah of curses, so that earth and heaven should reverberate with countless curses launched at a human being simply for having expressed an honest thought.