ife itself. Actuated by such principles, it is impossible that a
Christian zealot should not think he rendered a service to heaven by
punishing its enemy, and a service to his country by disembarrassing
it of a chief who might interpose an obstacle to his eternal
happiness.

The obedience of the clergy is never otherwise than conditional. The
priests submit to a prince, they flatter his power, and they sustain
his authority, provided he submits to their orders, makes no obstacles
to their projects, touches none of their interests, and changes none
of the dogmas upon which the ministers of the church have founded
their own grandeur. In fine, provided a government recognizes, as
divine, clerical privileges that are plainly opposed to popular
rights, and tend to subvert them, the hierarchy will submit to it.

These considerations prove how dangerous are the priesthood, since the
end they purpose by all their projects is dominion over the mind of
mankind, and by subjugating it to enslave their persons, and render
them the creatures of despotism and tyranny. And we shall find, upon
examination, that, with one or two exceptions, the pious have been the
enemies of the progress of science and the development of the human
understanding; for by brutalizing mankind they have invariably striven
to bind them to their yoke. Their avarice, their thirst of power and
wealth, have led them to plunge their fellow-citizens in ignorance, in
misery, and unhappiness. They discourage the cultivation of the earth
by their system of tithes, their extortions, and their secret
projects; they annihilate activity, talents, and industry; their pride
is to reign on the ruin of the rest of their species. The finest
countries in Europe have, when blindly submissive to the priest, been
the worst cultivated, the thinnest peopled, and the most wretched. The
_Inquisition_ in Spain, Italy, and Portugal has only tended to
impoverish those countries, to debase the mind, and render their
subjects the veriest slaves of superstition. And in countries where we
see heaven showering down abundance, the people are poor and famished,
while the priests and monks are opulent and bloated. Their kings are
without power and without glory; their subjects languish in indigence
and wretchedness.

The priests boast of the utility of their office. Independently of
their prayers, from which the world has for so many ages derived
neither instruction nor peace, prosperity nor h