Priests, of churches, and of creeds, it would be by means as self-evident as universal, and as candid and invariable as the rotations of the solar system; it would not be by starvation at one hour, and gluttony at another; or kneeling, tenths, pilgrimages, exorcisms, sprinklings, crosses, sacraments, ablutions, circumcision, and gibberish.

Religion is a matter of imagination, of fiction, an hypothesis, and not of fact: the multifarious dogmas of sectarians, demonstrate the multiplicity of vapours and conjectures; while men reason from false principles, religions will multiply to infinity. Philosophers have only one God—the God of Nature; but roguish Priests, old women and fools have an endless number; every arch-impostor has profanely made a God of his own; Priestly genius, pregnant with extortion, and cogitating more effectually to pick pockets, with his own new trap, than with the stale tool of other men, has given rise to a multitude of diurnal Deities, if we witnessed as many variations in the laws of Nature as in the Priest-trade, the Priests might insist that some attention should be given to the business of fraud and cant. Every Priest differs from every other Priest, and all differ from the truth; the Deity does not operate by stealth, he does not work clandestinely in holes and corners, as the miracle-mongers attest, but generally, openly, in the face of day, before all the world, in his works: he does not skulk in mosques, in churches, or in wildernesses, but is equally every where; he knows no more of the cross, the crescent, or the crosier, than he does of a tobacco-pipe, a mile-post, or a broom-stick. If there is one man more wicked than another it is the impostor, and the lying, cheating Priest—the misleader of innocent, inoffensive, unsuspecting men; the more the Priests profess to believe, the greater is the iniquity, and impiety, and hypocrisy—the more religion they believe, the less morality they practice. The people should believe the Priests when they profess principles consistent with Nature, and scorn them: when they claim belief in inconceivable and false enigmas; attention is to be given when assertion is demonstrable by collateral facts and not to matters of faith, mystery and superstition; the Priests are more likely to tell lies, swindle and deceive the people, than the Deity is to be cruel, inconsistent, impotent, and enigmatical; believe nothing out of the order of Nature; the assertion of even one thousand honest fanatics would be inadequate to induce any sensible man to believe that the course of Nature was changed for one moment.

The Priests knew it would be useless to spend their time in declamation, in anathemas, in denunciation, against such as would not from mercenary motives, or good sense, pay tithes, and feed the idol of superstition; to enforce their doctrines, to support their extortion, to effect their unholy rapine, they fallaciously promulgated posthumous torture; they invented a Hell, to agonize, to rack, to torment such as would not help to support the imposition. The Priests know their Hell is not a place of actual existence, but a bugbear, and the Devil, the head master, is invented, is used as an emptying-pocket tool; such as do not believe this pick-pocket machinery, such as do not suffer themselves to be duped, misled, and plundered, by hypocrites, swindlers, rogues, and extortioners, are reproached as criminals, as sinners, as blasphemers, as infidels, and as lunatics, and doomed to suffer everlasting torture. Is it likely that a just, wise, and benevolent Deity would thus unmercifully punish innocent men for refusing to contribute to the lasciviousness, licentiousness, and drunkenness, of a vagabond, blaspheming Priesthood? there is no greater impiety than attributing such enormity to a wise and parental God! The profanity of Priests cannot be sufficiently deprecated for alledging such monstrous injustice to the Deity, and asserting that he has more horrible powers, principles, and actions than the Devil; the latter is generous, brave, and