Richard Carlile

“ All the Priests—all that live by the trade of hypocrisy, all that live by sacred imposition, are blasphemers, are infidels, are perverters of the truth, are the distorters of the will and object of the Deity ”

“ If there is one man more wicked than another it is the impostor, and the lying, cheating Priest—the misleader of innocent, inoffensive, unsuspecting men; the more the Priests profess to believe, the greater is the iniquity, and impiety, and hypocrisy—the more religion they believe, the less morality they practice. The people should believe the Priests when they profess principles consistent with Nature, and scorn them: when they claim belief in inconceivable and false enigmas ”

“ The Priests have been, for selfish purposes, the orators and fomentors of most of the mischiefs that have disgraced, paralyzed, and disfigured the fair character of human nature: it is disgraceful to any man to be seen in a dispute between Priests and kings; as hypocrites, as impostors, as common rogues, men of wisdom will never participate, never be interested, never be duped by the quarrels, and the envious animosities of the swindling trades. ”

“ The multitude of assassinations, of massacres and of wars—the avarice, the villainy, the bigotry and bloody-mindedness of Priests have occasioned, exceeds the powers of calculation; the number of religious murders is lost in figures; every field has groaned under an altar of immolation; the vegetation of every country has been fertilized, and the streets of every town deluged with blood shed by the machinations of Priests ”

“ To please the Deity is to act consistent with his ways; his desire, his intention, his object, is manifested in the organization of nature, and as independence and equality are the predominating features in nature, so those who most strenuously advocate those principles are the most religious, the most patriotic, the most praiseworthy among men.
The contrary policy of Priests, destined solely to aggrandize their trade, is debasing the Deity, degrading man, and trampling upon his creation. Whatever the Deity values, Priests despise ”

“ Is it likely that a just, wise, and benevolent Deity would thus unmercifully punish innocent men for refusing to contribute to the lasciviousness, licentiousness, and drunkenness, of a vagabond, blaspheming Priesthood? there is no greater impiety than attributing such enormity to a wise and parental God! The profanity of Priests cannot be sufficiently deprecated for alledging such monstrous injustice to the Deity, and asserting that he has more horrible powers, principles, and actions than the Devil ”

“ All Nature acts in conformity with universal laws; man forms an integral part of Nature, and must act in unison with his elements; the laws of Nature are beyond human controul, they are independent of man, unchangeable by any power less than the contriver; the laws of Nature are neither arrested, interrupted, biassed, or controverted by venal, bigoted, fanatical Priests.
A Priest has the same essence, is composed of the same elements, endowed with the same organization as other men ”

“ If truth was as mutable, as liable to change, as subject to variation, as the dogmas of Priests, conflicting opinions would act to mutual destruction. God, acting always through Nature, always by universal and self-evident laws, would not permit a thousand sects of ignorant, profane, impious, blaspheming Priests, to mislead, impoverish, and barbarize the people. If God manifested himself through the medium of Priests, of churches, and of creeds, it would be by means as self-evident as universal, and as candid and invariable as the rotations of the solar system ”

“ The operations of Nature, the physical laws of men and of morality are as uniform as the revolutions of the solar system; every action is consistent with the essence of the acting body; nothing can act inconsistently with its elements. ”

“ Although the Evangelists, the Priests, the sacred impostors, are similar by nature, similarly educated in chicane and hypocrisy, they do not agree in any one religious profession: the Bonzes, the Muftis, and the Priests, have different churches, different Gods, different creeds. Religious impostors uniformly coincide in plundering the people; there is no other symptom of similarity, no atom of cohesion, but rapine, among Priests: God is made something and nothing, every where and no where ”

“ Religion is a matter of imagination, of fiction, an hypothesis, and not of fact: the multifarious dogmas of sectarians, demonstrate the multiplicity of vapours and conjectures; while men reason from false principles, religions will multiply to infinity. ”

“ Every Priest differs from every other Priest, and all differ from the truth; the Deity does not operate by stealth, he does not work clandestinely in holes and corners, as the miracle-mongers attest, but generally, openly, in the face of day, before all the world, in his works: he does not skulk in mosques, in churches, or in wildernesses, but is equally every where ”

“ There is no competition among Priests who shall do the utmost degree of good, but who shall have the power of tithing and deceiving the people: if the people had sufficient sense they would treat all Priests as the different kinds of Priests treat each other—as hypocrites and impostors ”

“ The Priests know their Hell is not a place of actual existence, but a bugbear, and the Devil, the head master, is invented, is used as an emptying-pocket tool; such as do not believe this pick-pocket machinery, such as do not suffer themselves to be duped, misled, and plundered, by hypocrites, swindlers, rogues, and extortioners, are reproached as criminals, as sinners, as blasphemers, as infidels, and as lunatics, and doomed to suffer everlasting torture. ”

“ Notwithstanding the bickering, the animosity, and the jealousy the Priests entertain towards each other, they are consistent, they are unanimous, they are combined in prosecuting any man who has ability, who has honesty, and who has independence to attack the fraud and hypocrisy by which they live ”