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The foregoing has shown that witchcraft is not an isolated incident in the history of Christianity, as the ecclesiastics would have us believe, but is a vital part of their religion. Witchcraft bears the same relation to Christianity that an arm bears to the body; neither can be removed without destroying the symmetrical aspect of the whole.
In fact, if you only fancy to yourself a city, where there are no manufactures, no commerce, no public life of any kind; where the rich are condemned to involuntary idleness, and the poor to enforced misery; where there is a population of some ten thousand ecclesiastics in the prime of life, without adequate occupation for the most part, and all vowed to celibacy; where priests and priest-rule are omnipotent, and where every outlet for the natural desires and passions of men is carefully cut off if you take in fully all these conditions and their inevitable consequences, you will not be surprised if to me, as to any one who knows the truth, the outward morality of Rome seems but the saddest of its many mockeries.
In doing this Barbara's caution in not calling Erasmus by name proved to have been futile, for Cassian had recognised him, and told the ecclesiastics what he knew.
Consumed with a passion for human betterment, seeing that the "love of God" had deplorably failed as an incentive to morality, he made the tremendous effort of endeavouring to substitute the love of man as a stimulus towards the accomplishment of duty. If Comte denied God, let the Churches and ecclesiastics of France and of Europe bear the responsibility.
These chapters breathe the bitterest contempt for Christianity, the most undisguised hatred for its historical development, the intensest rancor against Catholic ecclesiastics. Discorsi, i. 55.
Recognising the honesty of my character, the purity of my morals and the uprightness of my mind, it never occurred to him for a moment that I could be led to feel doubt upon subjects about which he himself had none. The great number of young ecclesiastics who had passed through his hands had somewhat weakened his powers of diagnosis.
The doors of the Convent remained closed, and ecclesiastics almost alone succeeded in effecting an entrance. Still, even this was too much for her desire for solitude, and she often had to be obstinate, to request that the priests who had called might be sent away, weary as she was of always telling the same story, of ever answering the same questions.
He was not, however, so silent towards Grandier's enemies; for the ill-success of the exorcisms of November 26th having made increased precautions necessary, they considered it would be well to apply to the bishop for a new commission, wherein he should appoint certain ecclesiastics to represent him during the exorcisms to come. Barre himself went to Poitiers to make this request.
It is very curious to see how science, that is, looking at and arranging the facts of a case with our own eyes and our own intelligence, without minding what somebody else has said, or how some old majority vote went in a pack of intriguing ecclesiastics, I say it is very curious to see how science is catching up with one superstition after another.
The powers of reaction had only to catch hold of a perfectly modern sentiment, the doctrine that ecclesiastics should be men of peace, in order to dissipate the myth of a Pope liberator. It was beside the question that, from the moment he accepted such a doctrine, the Pope condemned the institution of prince-bishoprics, of which he represented the last survival.
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