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Its general scope was to show that every man has a right to think freely on all religious as well as other subjects, and that the exercise of this right is the sole remedy for the evil of superstition. The necessity of freethinking is shown by the endless variety of opinions which priests hold about all religious questions.
His writings were mainly attacks on Christianity, and, in addition to the "Discourse on Freethinking," he published: "Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion;" "Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered;" "Priestcraft in Perfection;" "Historical and Critical Essay on the Thirty-Nine Articles;" and "A Philosophical Enquiry concerning Human Liberty."
For England and Holland were formerly the Christian territories of the devil; I told you how he left Holland; and freethinking and the revolution banished him from England; I defy all the clergy to shew me when they ever had such success against him.
In this last he indeed discovers the whole secret of a statesman and politician, by denying the vulgar the privilege of freethinking, and here I differ from him. However, it is manifest from hence, that the Trinity was an invention of statesmen and politicians. He was a profound grammarian, historian, and philosopher.
What about his freethinking? English freethinkers may be divided into two classes those who have been educated and those who have had to educate themselves. The former class might apply to their own case the language once employed by Dr.
I certainly don't think that the qualities, half savage and half freethinking, expressed in 'Jane Eyre' are likely to suit a model governess or schoolmistress; and it amuses me to consider them in that particular relation. People are so curious even here among the Raffaels about this particular authorship, yet nobody seems to have read 'Shirley'; we are too slow in getting new books.
Why should I mention the pious cheats of the priests, who in the New Testament translate the word ecclesia sometimes the church, and sometimes the congregation; and episcopus, sometimes a bishop, and sometimes an overseer? A priest, translating a book, left out a whole passage that reflected on the king, by which he was an enemy to political freethinking, a most considerable branch of our system.
This triumph of absolutism in the field of government in fact assured its eventual triumph in all other fields as well. For, in the long run, despotism can no more tolerate liberty of thought than it can liberty of action. Some of the Damascus caliphs, to be sure, toyed with Motazelism, the Ommeyyads being mainly secular-minded men to whom freethinking was intellectually attractive.
I had anticipated that freethinking writers would look at Christ, not merely, like the Churchmen, as the founder of a religion of personal salvation, but, to express it in their language, as a reformer who laid down new principles of life and destroyed the old, and whose reforms are not yet complete, but are still in progress even now. Such a view of Christ and his teaching follows from my book.
"You are an abominable scoffer," said the officer; "out of a libertine humour you hate marriage, and desire now that all men should live as licentious freethinking bachelors, and because your taste is not suited to that circle, you slander those persons, who are exalted above every calumny." "Quite martial!" cried the Baron.
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