Lactantius, Inst. lib. i. chap. 2. Under these and other similar pretences, have barbarous priests led their credulous followers to massacres in the name of their God; by means of that touchstone word, _Faith_, they made the multitude forget that their leaders were but men. Now, Sir, we have grown bolder: knowledge being no longer confined to clerical seminaries, priests are not kings. The church totters; and a single pamphlet, you say, "has unsettled the faith of thousands." Now, that you cannot stifle reason, you pretend to liberality of sentiment. The natural historian, or the astronomer, fears not the publication of opinions contrary to his own, except from a scholastic habit, learned in the clerical seminaries, which still disgrace almost every country. The chemist eagerly peruses all theories; the divine alone refuses to argue with his opponents, and trembles at the very name of reason. I differ in my philosophical opinions from Mr. Paine; my principles extend so much farther than his, that I suspect I come under the class which you are pleased to call madmen, and every clergyman would affect to despise, but dare not argue with, before an unprejudiced tribunal. These, Sir, are the effects of superstition, and the cunning policy of the Church. The Bible is hardly suffered to be read in Catholic countries. The English reformers could not go so far; their revolution sprung from a dawn of philosophy. The English clergy, however, would confine us to the reading of that unintelligible farrago, and the still more insufferable commentaries upon it. So did the scholastics with Aristotle; their bigotted partiality to this author was nearly of the same force with the priestly attachment to the Bible. They retarded science; but the motives of the clergy are stronger. By the Bible they live; and it is not uncommon to hear the parson deride in private what he preaches from the pulpit. But to your first letter. After the pious wish for Thomas Paine's death, you proceed to state how miserable the adoption of his doctrines would render the "unhappy virtuous." Fear not such a dire event: the _pious_ are few in number, and of those, few have the courage to open a book controverting their opinions, and which, they are taught to believe, contains nothing but blasphemies But, should chance lead them to a detection of their errors, they would only become less devout, and more useful citizens. Freed from the prospect of hell and heaven, they will have leisure to think of this world, in which they live somewhat like hermits, loving only their priests, and ready to sacrifice victims to credulity.