in this infamy has ever been touched by the
wrathful hand of God. All kinds of criminals, except infidels, meet
death with reasonable serenity. As a rule there is nothing in the
death of a pirate to cast any discredit on his profession. The
murderer upon the scaffold, with a priest on either side, smilingly
exhorts the multitude to meet him in heaven. The man who has succeeded
in making his home a hell meets death without a quiver, provided he has
never expressed any doubt as to the divinity of Christ or the eternal
"procession" of the Holy Ghost.

Now and then a man of genius, of sense, of intellectual honesty, has
appeared. Such men have denounced the superstition of their day. They
have pitied the multitude. To see priests devour the substance of the
people--priests who made begging one of the learned professions--filled
them with loathing and contempt. These men were honest enough to tell
their thoughts, brave enough to speak the truth. Then they were
denounced, tried, tortured, killed by rack or flame. But some escaped
the fury of the fiends who loved their enemies and died naturally in
their beds. It would not do for the church to admit that they died
peacefully. That would show that religion was essential at the last
moment. Superstition gets its power from the terror of death. It would
not do to have the common people understand that a man could deny the
bible, refuse to kiss the cross; contend that humanity was greater than
Christ, and then die as sweetly as Torquemada did after pouring molten
lead into the ears of an honest man, or as calmly as Calvin after he
had burned Servetus, or as peacefully as King David after advising with
his last breath one son to assassinate another.

The church has taken great pains to show that the last moments of all
infidels (that Christians did not succeed in burning) were infinitely
wretched and despairing. It was alleged that words could not paint the
horrors that were endured by a dying infidel. Every good Christian was
expected to, and generally did, believe these accounts. They have been
told and retold in every pulpit of the world. Protestant ministers
have repeated the lies invented by Catholic priests, and Catholics, by
a kind of theological comity, have sworn to the lies told by the
Protestants. Upon this point they have always stood together, and will
as long as the same falsehood can be used by both. Upon the death-bed
subject the clergy grew eloquent