METAPHYSICS. 35 



Greece commands Europe ; Europe, the whole world ; 

 therefore my son governs the whole world. 



Motion. 



A body must either move where it is, or where it 

 is not, and both suppositions are equally absurd. 



Purgatory. 



It has been remarked that the Popes having had 

 the invisible world on which to fix their lever, had 

 the TO OTW, which Archimedes wanted.* 



Transubstantiat ion. f 



It is difficult to account for the zeal of the See of 

 Rome in advancing and pertinaciously propagating so 

 absurd a doctrine as that of transubstantiation ; for 

 what use could there be in understanding a figura- 

 tive expression according to the letter when it makes 

 nonsense, and what is worse, unprofitable nonsense ? 



The supremacy and infallibility of the Bishops of 

 Rome ; the doctrine of Purgatory ; masses and pray- 

 ers for the dead ; the worship of saints and images ; 

 the celibacy of the clergy ; the merit of monastic 

 vows ; the necessity of confession and absolution ; the 

 power of the Pope to grant indulgencies, and apply 

 to the benefit of other men the works of supereroga- 

 tion done by saints, and consequently belonging to 

 the treasury of the church ; all these opinions have 

 a clear and evident tendency to raise and support the 

 dominion and wealth of the Roman church and 

 clergy; whereas the multiplied contradictions and 

 impossibilities contained in the doctrine of transub- 

 stantiation served only to expose the Christian faith 



* Archimedes boasted that if he had a pivot or fulcrum, on 

 which he might rest his machinery, he could move the earth, 

 t That intellectual monster. 



