The vices of the universalist they ascribe to his creed. The vices of
the Christian to anything but his creed. Let professors of Christianity
be convicted of gross criminality, and lo its apologists say such
professors are not Christian. Let fanatical Christians commit excesses
which admit not of open justification, and the apologist of Christianity
coolly assures us such conduct is _mere rust on the body of his
religion--moss which grows on the stock of his piety._

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 as 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 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 then, 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