Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 5, 2025
THERE is a difference between religion and the amazing circumstructure which, under the name of theology, the priesthoods have builded round about it, which for centuries they made the world believe was the true temple, and which, after incalculable mischiefs wrought, immeasurable blood spilled in its extension and consolidation, is only now beginning to crumble at the touch of reason.
On the Calends of January Lentulus Crus and Caius Clodius Marcellus were inaugurated consuls. In solemn procession with Senate, priesthoods, and people, they had gone up to the Capitol and sacrificed chosen white steers to Jupiter, "Best and Greatest," and invoked his blessing upon the Roman State. And so began the last consulship of the Free Republic. Optimus maximus. Rome was in a ferment.
It strips off the mystery that invests their craft, and shows them as they really are, a horde of bandits who levy black mail on honest industry, and preach a despot in heaven in order to main-tain their own tyranny on earth. The gospel of Freethought would destroy all priesthoods. Every man should be his own priest.
And they handled bona fide purchasers in such a way that the latter discovered nothing and paid the very highest price for what they wanted, and consequently had no desire to buy again. As to the offices and priesthoods of such as had been put to death they distributed them not in the fashion prescribed by law but however it suited them.
This is the only way in which we can satisfactorily account for the systematic efforts of Augustus to renovate the old religious rites and priesthoods, and we can fairly argue back from it to the tendencies of the generation immediately before him.
The priesthoods were charged with the worship of a specific divinity; the skilled colleges, on the other hand, were charged with the preservation of traditional rules regarding those more general religious observances, the proper fulfilment of which implied a certain amount of knowledge and rendered it necessary that the state in its own interest should provide for the faithful transmission of that knowledge.
In no other way could the popular faith in their special sanctity be sustained. It is also true that few priesthoods have made more systematic use of terror. The slaughter of Anne Hutchinson and her family was exultingly declared to be the judgment of God for defaming the elders.
These colleges have been often, but erroneously, confounded with the priesthoods.
We are not a body of reformers, with all our opportunities we're as bigoted as most priesthoods, but we count fewer missionary martyrs. The sins, the negligences, and the ignorances of every age have gone on much the same as far as we have been concerned, though very few people keep family chaplains, and most folk have a family doctor."
The extravaganza deserved the applause it drew. Some of its features nevertheless were doubtfully regarded. Between the sections into which the column was divided there marched small groups, apparently officers, clad in gowns and vestments, carrying insignia and smoking tripods well known to have belonged to various priesthoods of mythologic fame.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking