In the proud rank of national greatness which the United States have so deservedly attained in the present day, and with the example of priest-governed Europe continually before their eyes, nothing more than the prudent vigilance of common patriotism is required in the supreme councils, to guard against the co-partnership, or admission of anyone of all the pernicious systems of churchcraft, to the slightest connexion with the government. But in the unsettled infancy of the republic, after the declaration of independence, when those insidious clerical hypocrites, who had kept aloof, as aforesaid, ready to join whichever party might be victorious, and, backed by ignorance and fanaticism, beset the framers of the constitution with their spiritual claims and conflicting pretensions--by incessant solicitations and intrigues, to gain their execrable ends, it required the incorruptible virtues of a Washington, a Jefferson, a Paine, a Franklin, and a Barlow, to prevent their effecting a similar "adulterous connexion" with the state to that which is now the bane and disgrace of the mother country.
Whenever the government of these great and powerful States shall become so mentally imbecile as to favor, by an exclusive state establishment, any form of superstition,* or system of religion pretending to supernatural revelation, the fatal time of their division, weakness, and final decline and fall, will follow at a very short distance.
* Let the priest be ever kept on the same footing as the merchant--that is, maintained at the expense of the consumer. He who has no priest, and consumes none of the commodity he deals in, should not be compelled to pay any part of his hire.
LECTURE SIXTH. EFFECTS OF THE CHRISTIAN SUPERSTITION (Continued)
Let those weak minds that live in doubt and fear, To juggling priests--fair Nature's foes, repair; These soul-savers,--truth's blackest enemies, I ne'er consult, and heartily despise.
Its foul leagues with tyranny, persecutions, cruelty; society poisoned by its all-pervading influence; what is good in gospel morals borrowed from the ancients; its usurpation of one-seventh of man's time, and one-tenth of the proceeds of his industry; other evils which it occasions generally.