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Anything to escape from realities that was his maxim. He puzzled his contemporaries. But we can now locate him with absolute certainty. He personifies the Revolt from Reason. SURTOUT, MON AMI, POINT DE ZELE. He talks about the Scylla of Atheism and the Charybdis of Christianity a state of mind which, by the way, is not conducive to bold navigation.
I leave to casuists the decision whether to the morals of the people, naked atheism, exposed with all its deformities, is more or less hurtful than concealed atheism, covered with the garb of piety; but for my part I think the noonday murderer less guilty and much less detestable than the midnight assassin who stabs in the dark.
"A certain author, being persuaded that idolatry did not take its rise till after the deluge, gives a very singular account of its origin. According to him, atheism had spread itself over the world. This disposition of mind, says he, is the capital crime. Atheists are much more odious to the Divinity than idolaters.
He did the first only by changing the meaning of the term materialism. Materialism the world has supposed to be the view of man's condition and destiny which makes these to begin and end in nature. That certainly was Comte's view. The accusation of atheism also he avoids by a mere play on words. He is not without a God. Humanity is God. Mankind is the positivist's Supreme.
In order to render the object of his idolatry more and more RATIONAL, the believer despoils him successively of all the qualities which would make him REAL; and, after marvellous displays of logic and genius, the attributes of the Being par excellence are found to be the same as those of nihility. This evolution is inevitable and fatal: atheism is at the bottom of all theodicy.
Another trick of the priests is, to charge all men with atheism, who have more wit than themselves; which therefore I expect will be my case for writing this discourse: This is what makes them so implacable against Mr. Gildon, Dr. Tindal, Mr. Toland, and myself, and when they call us wits, atheists, it provokes us to be freethinkers.
This nevertheless is generally to be reprehended in all estates of gentility, and which in short time will turn to the great ruin of our country, and that is, the usual sending of noblemen's and mean gentlemen's sons into Italy, from whence they bring home nothing but mere atheism, infidelity, vicious conversation, and ambitious and proud behaviour, whereby it cometh to pass that they return far worse men than they went out.
Some have tried to free Vanini from the charge of Atheism, but there is abundant evidence of his guilt apart from his books. The tender mercies of the Inquisition were cruel, and could not allow so notable a victim to escape their vengeance. Whether to burn a man is the surest way to convert him, is a question open to argument.
Russia is, at the present time, the last and sole bulwark of absolutism in Europe, and if a ruler called by God's grace to the highest and most responsible of all earthly offices is to remain strong enough to crush the spirit of rebellion and immorality which here and there, under the influence of foreign elements, has shown itself in our beloved country, we must, before all things, take heed to keep far away from our people the poison of the so-called liberal ideas, infidelity, and atheism with which it seems likely to be contaminated from the West.
There, too, I met Orestes Bronson, a remarkably well-read man, who had gone through every phase of religious experience from blank atheism to the bosom of the Catholic Church, where I believe he found repose at the end of his days.
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