subject to the penalty of death.

Now, it is evident that to visit the penalty of social ostracism or
public contumely upon all who reject the popular religion is to erect
an arbitrary barrier against intellectual and spiritual advance, and
to put a protective tariff upon orthodoxy to the disadvantage of
science and free thought.

The root of the idea that it is wicked to reject the popular religion--
a wickedness of which Christ and Socrates and Buddha are all represented
to have been guilty--thrives in the belief that the Scriptures are
the actual words of God, and that to deny the truth of the Scriptures
is to deny and to affront God.

But the difficulty of the unbeliever lies in the fact that he cannot
believe the Scriptures to be the actual words of God.

The Infidel, therefore, is not denying God's words, nor disobeying
God's commands: he is denying the words and disobeying the commands
of _men_.

No man who _knew_ that there was a good and wise God would be so
foolish as to deny that God. No man would reject the words of God
if he knew that God spoke those words.

But the doctrine of the divine origin of the Scriptures rests upon
the authority of the Church; and the difference between the Infidel
and the Christian is that the Infidel rejects and the Christian accepts
the authority of the Church.