The Character of a Priest

Nature pregnant with equality, with justice, and generosity, has given all men the same organization, the same functions, the same powers; she has neither created higher nor lower, superior nor inferior, master nor slave; inequality would imply monopoly; monopoly, partiality; and partiality, divine injustice; all the operations of Nature are simple, just, equitable, and invariable: nothing is done at random, nothing is effected by chance, nothing is the result of uncertain laws. The operations of Nature, the physical laws of men and of morality are as uniform as the revolutions of the solar system; every action is consistent with the essence of the acting body; nothing can act inconsistently with its elements. All Nature acts in conformity with universal laws; man forms an integral part of Nature, and must act in unison with his elements; the laws of Nature are beyond human controul, they are independent of man, unchangeable by any power less than the contriver; the laws of Nature are neither arrested, interrupted, biassed, or controverted by venal, bigoted, fanatical Priests.

A Priest has the same essence, is composed of the same elements, endowed with the same organization as other men; he has no more natural command, no greater power, no greater right; Priests do not come into the world with crosiers, or with, mitres, or with rosaries; the revolutions of matter create and destroy them; they are decomposed as a cow or a cabbage. It is not Nature, but the folly of man that has given consequence to the Priest; all the wealth, all the advancement, all the power the Priests enjoy, are acquired by hypocrisy, by perjury, by extortion, and by swindling: the trade is founded in fraud, in blasphemy, and impiety; matured by cupidity, by venality, and by masked villainy. The impostor pretends to have exclusive access to exclusive favour from the Deity.

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.