ct
to have them called 'surpliced ruffians,' not so the philosopher, who
sees in pious fraud on a gigantic scale, the worst species of ruffianism
that ever disgraced the earth.

These are no new tangled or undigested notions. From age to age the
wisest among men have abhorred and denounced superstition. It is true
that only a small section of them treated religion as if _necessarily_
superstition, or went quite so far as John Adams, who said, _this would
be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it_. But
an attentive reading of ancient and modern philosophical books has
satisfied the Author of this Apology that through all recorded time,
religion has been _tolerated_ rather than _loved_ by great thinkers, who
had _will_, but not _power_ to wage successful war upon it. Gibbon
speaks of Pagan priests who, 'under sacerdotal robes, concealed the
heart of an Atheist.' Now, these priests were also the philosophers of
Rome, and it is not impossible that some modern philosophical priests,
like their Pagan prototypes, secretly despise the religion they openly
profess. Avarice, and lust of power, are potent underminers of human
virtue. The mighty genius of Bacon was not proof against them, and he
who deserves to occupy a place among 'the wisest and greatest' has been
'damned to eternal fame' as the, 'meanest of mankind.'

Nor are avarice and lust of power the only base passions under the
influence of which men, great in intellect, have given the lie to their
own convictions, by calling that religion which they knew to be rank
superstition. Fear of punishment for writing truth is the grand cause
why their books contain so little of it. If Bacon had openly treated
Christianity as mere superstition, will any one say that his life would
have been worth twenty-four hours purchase. He lived at a time when
heresy, to say nothing of Atheism, was _rewarded_ with death. Bacon was
not the man to be ambitious of such a reward. Few great geniuses are.
Philosophers seldom covet martyrdom, and hence it came to pass that few
of them would run the terrible risk of provoking bigotted authority by
the 'truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth' concerning
religion. In our own day the smell of a faggot would be too much for the
nostrils of, that still unamiable but somewhat improved animal, called
the public. One delightful as well as natural consequence is, that
philosophical writers do ever and anon deal much more fr