ir credit to
crush their adversaries, whom they always treated with the greatest
barbarity.

But, after all, whatever the clergy may say, we shall find, even with
a small share of attention, that it has ever been kings and emperors
who, in the last resort, fixed the faith of the disputatious
Christians. It has been by downright blows of the sword that those
theological notions most pleasing to the Deity have been sustained in
all countries. The true belief has invariably been that which had
princes for its adherents. The faithful were those who had strength
sufficient to exterminate their enemies, whom they never failed to
treat as the enemies of God. In a word, princes have been truly
infallible; we should regard them as the true founders of religious
faith; they are the judges who have decided, in all ages, what
doctrines should be admitted or rejected; and they are, in fine, the
authorities which have always fixed the religion of their subjects.

Ever since Christianity has been adopted by some nations, have we not
seen that religion has almost entirely occupied the attention of
sovereigns? Either the princes, blinded by superstition, were devoted
to the priests, or the rulers of nations believed that prudence
exacted a concession on their part to the clergy, the true masters of
their people, who considered nothing more sacred or more great than
the ministers of their God. In neither case was the body politic ever
consulted; it was cowardly sacrificed to the interests of the court,
or the vanity and luxury of the priests. It is by a continuation of
superstition on the part of the princes that we behold the church so
richly endowed in times of ignorance; when men believed they would
enrich Deity by putting all their wealth into the hands of the priests
of a good God the declared enemy of riches. Savage warriors, destitute
of the manners of men, flattered themselves that they could expiate
all their sins by founding monasteries and giving immense wealth to a
set of men who had made vows of poverty. It was believed that they
would merit from the All-powerful a great advantage by recompensing
laziness, which, in the priests, was regarded as a great good, and
that the blessings procured by their prayers would be in proportion to
the continual and pressing demands their poverty made on the wealthy.
It is thus that by the superstition of princes, by that of the
powerful classes, and of the people themselves, the clergy ha