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And what was the secret of the uncontrolled power, the shameless indifference to opinion that made such misdeeds possible? It was to be found partly in the tolerance of the people a tolerance which was the result of the imposture which made ill-gained objects of plunder consulships, priesthoods, triumphs seem the proof of merit.
They were intended, moreover, to withdraw from the nobles the exclusive possession of spiritual dignities; and in carrying out this purpose for reasons sufficiently obvious the old Latin priesthoods of the augurs and Pontifices were left to the old burgesses, but these were obliged to open up to the new burgesses the third great college of more recent origin and belonging to a worship that was originally foreign.
It has been increasingly difficult for any class of reading, talking, and discussing people such as are the bulk of the priesthoods of the Christian churches to escape hearing and reading the accumulated criticism of the Trinitarian theology and of the popularly accepted story of man's fall and salvation.
Philosophy alone possesses this secret, because it alone perceives that all our political, civil, and even domestic broils grow out of this identical warfare between men's religions and scientific convictions, have no other source than that persistent insubmission which the interests of force, as represented by priesthoods and governments, are under to the interests of freedom, represented by society.
It is likely, although it can no longer be proved, that all the old Latin priesthoods of Rome the Augurs, Pontifices, Vestals, and Fetials originated in the same way from a combination of the priestly colleges of the Palatine and Quirinal communities.
Euclid and Apollonius, indeed, carried the positive science of mathematics to great height, but physical science is the growth of comparative to-day; with habits of thought hampered by priesthoods and systems, the efforts of antiquity were like abortive shoots, it is within the last four centuries that the strong stem has sprung up, and the plant has flowered.
The priesthoods particularly those politically most important, the colleges of men of lore according to ancient custom filled up the vacancies in their own ranks, and nominated also their own presidents, where these corporations had presidents at all; and in fact, for such institutions destined to transmit the knowledge of divine things from generation to generation, the only form of election in keeping with their spirit was cooptation.
The rewards promised by the early priesthoods had, by centuries of evolution, developed from good crops and fat cattle, fruitful vines and successful villainy, into mansions in Heaven; the punishments from a protracted drought or descent of the Assyrians, a bad case of buck ague or boils into a Hell of fire where the souls of aged unbelievers and unbaptized babes forever burn.
On their side priesthoods know these leaders of rebellion by an unerring instinct and pursue them to the death. The ministers of New England were formalists to the core, and the society over which they dominated was organized upon the avowed basis of the manifestation of godliness in the outward man.
Governing through the magistracy which had been reduced to be their servant, preponderating in the Senate, in sole possession of all public offices and priesthoods, armed with exclusive cognizance of things human and divine and familiar with the whole routine of political procedure, influential in the public assembly through the large number of pliant adherents attached to the several families, and, lastly, entitled to examine and to reject every decree of the community, the patricians might have long preserved their practical power, just because they had at the right time abandoned their claim to sole legal authority.
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