g the liberty of the press, a man is pilloried and
imprisoned because he is a deist, and no one raises his
voice in the indignation of outraged humanity."

The numerical majority of Christians--the Greek and Roman Catholic--are
as much pagans as their ancestors, the ancient Greeks and Romans were
exoterically. And why? Simply because on the break-up of the Roman
empire--like Mohammedanism afterwards, which was the natural reformation
and revolution from Christian image-worship--Christianity, in a natural
succession, and by fortuitous circumstances, took possession of the
executive, and placed on the seat of power a Christian Byzantine emperor
in lieu of a pagan. Basilicas, dedicated to Jupiter, Mercury, Adonis,
Venus and the deities of High Olympus, were re-dedicated to God the
Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, and the other
saints (or gods) of the Christian Pantheon. Statues therein were
rechristened, and the sacrificial altars were simply transferred for the
use of the eucharistical sacrifice. The vestal virgins became nuns of
the church; the _Sacerdotes_, her priests; the mysteries of Isis, her
Agapae. Her incense, her pictures, her image-worship, her holy water,
her processions, and her prodigies, too, all came from the same source.
Thus were the socialistic and communistic teachings, based on the
Philoic-Essenism of the Reformer of Nazareth, paganized, prostituted,
and entirely misrepresented. His life and labors were transformed from
the natural into what was considered by the vulgar the supernatural, and
all those who dared--like Hypatia, with thousands of other pious and
noble ancients--to deny his divinity, were sacrificed to this new
Moloch, set up by parricide Constantines, or adulterers of the
Theodosius caste. Thus through the ages, has the race suffered under
such murder, rapine, and lust, as never disgraced tolerant ancient
heathendom in the interests of paganism, even as recently happened in
Central America,[C] and would happen everywhere else, if priestcraft had
the power to act without restraint, so that, as Shelley says,

"Earth groans beneath religion's iron age,
And priests dare babble of a God of Peace--
Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,
Murdering the while, uprooting every germ
Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,
Making the earth a slaughter-house."

[Footnote C: I refer to the abominable outrages perpetrated