VOLTAIRE. 7 



Let us for a moment, independent of what may be 

 termed the political view of the question independent 

 of all that regards the priesthood consider the posi- 

 tion of a person endowed with strong natural faculties, 

 and not under the absolute dominion of his spiritual 

 guides, nor prevented by their authority from exercising 

 his reason ; but, on the contrary, living at a moment 

 when a spirit of free inquiry was beginning generally 

 to prevail. He is told that the mystery of transubstan- 

 tiation must be believed by him as a fact; he is told 

 that there has been transmitted through a succession of 

 ages from the apostles one of the Divine attributes, 

 the power of pardoning sin, and that the laying a 

 priest's hands on a layman gives him this miraculous 

 power, to be exercised by him how guilty soever may 

 be his own life, how absolutely null his own belief in 

 the Divine being nay, that this power has come 

 through certain persons notorious atheists themselves, 

 and whose lives were more scandalously profligate than 

 anything that a modest tongue can describe. Presented 

 to a vigorous mind, and not enforced by an authority 

 which suffers no reasoning, or if enforced yet vainly 

 so enforced, these dogmas and these claims became the 

 subject of discussion, and were rejected almost as soon 

 as they were understood. But in company with them 

 were found many other doctrines and pretensions of a 

 very different complexion, yet all of them were pro- 

 nounced to have the same Divine original; and no 

 greater sanctity, no higher authority, no deeper vene- 

 ration was claimed for them than for the real presence 

 of the Creator at the summons of the priest, or the 



