did it died in peace. There is not an orthodox preacher in the
city that has not a respect for every one of them. As, for instance,
for John Calvin, who was a murderer and nothing but a murderer, who
would have disgraced an ordinary gallows by being hanged upon it.
These men when they came to die were not frightened. God did not send
any devils into their death-rooms to make mouths at them. He reserved
them for Voltaire, who brought religious liberty to France. He
reserved them for Thomas Paine, who did more for liberty than all the
churches. But all the inquisitors died with the white hands of peace
folded over the breast of piety. And when they died, the room was
filled with the rustle of the wings of angels, waiting to bear the
wretches to Heaven.

When I read these frightful books it seems to me sometimes as though I
had suffered all these things myself. It seems sometimes as though I
had stood upon the shore of exile, and gazed with tearful eyes toward
home and native land; it seems to me as though I had been staked out
upon the sands of the sea, and drowned by the inexorable, advancing
tide; as though my nails had been torn from my hands, and into the
bleeding quick needles had been thrust; as though my feet had been
crushed in iron boots; as though I had been chained in the cell of
Inquisition, and listened with dying ears for the coming footsteps of
release; as though I had stood upon the scaffold and saw the glittering
axe fall upon me; as though I had been upon the rack and had seen,
bending above me, the white faces of hypocrite priests; as though I had
been taken from my fireside, from my wife and children, taken to the
public square, chained; as though fagots had been piled about me; as
though the flames had climbed around my limbs and scorched my eyes to
blindness, and as though my ashes had been scattered to the four winds
by all the countless hands of hate. And, while I so feel, I swear that
while I live I will do what little I can to augment the liberties of
man, woman and child. I denounce slavery and superstition everywhere.
I believe in liberty, and happiness, and love, and joy in this world.
I am amazed that any man ever had the impudence to try and do another
man's thinking. I have just as good a right to talk theology as a
minister. If they all agreed I might admit it was a science, but as
all disagree, and the more they study the wider they get apart, I may
be permitted to suggest, i