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I am the President of the National Secular Society, which is the only open organisation of Freethinkers in England. My immediate predecessor in this office was Charles Bradlaugh, of whom you must have heard. Not to know him would argue yourself unknown.
If you are apt to be afraid of the devil, think freely of him, and you destroy him and his kingdom. Freethinking has done him more mischief than all the clergy in the world ever could do; they believe in the devil, they have an interest in him, and therefore are the great supports of his kingdom. The devil was in the States-General before they began to be freethinkers.
Suddenly, however, my curiosity was aroused. The hearse was followed by eight gentlemen, one of whom was weeping, while the others were chatting together, but there was no priest, and I thought to myself: "This is a non-religious funeral," and then I reflected that a town like Loubain must contain at least a hundred freethinkers, who would have made a point of making a manifestation.
"But suppose the other chance how then?" "Suppose I worked out as a disembodied spirit and I quite admit it's as likely as not, neither more nor less it does not necessarily follow that Malignity against Freethinkers is the only attribute of the Creator.
He was a foreigner, independent of French tradition and ways of thought, who not only stood aloof from the Catholics, as a Genevese, but also from the prevailing freethinkers, for Priestley describes him as nearly the only believer in religion whom he found in intellectual society at Paris.
As he pauses in the Voltaire Chamber he imagines the two great figures, seated in stiff-backed chairs at a little table on which stand, perhaps, a pair of cut Venetian wine-glasses and a tall bottle of old Rheinish the great man of thought and the great man of action, the two great atheists and freethinkers of Europe, with their earnest, sharply featured faces, and their wigs bobbing at each other, discussing the events and tendencies of their time.
It is objected, that freethinkers themselves are the most infamous, wicked, and senseless of all mankind. I answer, first, we say the same of priests, and other believers. But the truth is, men of all sects are equally good and bad; for no religion whatsoever contributes in the least to mend men's lives.
'Why are you unwilling to allow freethinking in women? he said in a low voice. 'Because, my boy, as far as my observations go, the only freethinkers among women are frights. The conversation was cut short at this point. Both the young men went away immediately after supper.
On Thursday, December 7, 1882, we published our second Christmas Number of the Freethinker. I will deal with its contents presently, when I have narrated how it led to our second prosecution. Let it here suffice to say that it was undoubtedly a very "warm" publication, and well calculated to arouse the slumbering Blasphemy Laws. Some Freethinkers even were astonished at its audacity.
Ah! what if it were so that the saint who stood over her, and whose cross she had so lately kissed, would not let her perish from beneath his feet? In these moments her mind wandered in a maze of religious doubts and fears, and she entertained, unconsciously, enough of doctrinal scepticism to found a school of freethinkers.
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