me when I rose—do you think it was for the sake of listening to sermons that the preachers did not believe—and prayers that the lips that uttered them yawned at in the listlessness of their infidelity—and penances that might be hired out to a lay-brother to undergo for a pound of coffee or of snuff—and the vilest subserviencies to the caprice and passion of a Superior—and the listening to men with God forever in their mouths, and the world forever in their hearts—men who think of nothing but the aggrandizement of their temporal distinction, and screen, under the most revolting affectation of a concern in spiritualities, their ravening cupidity after earthly eminence:—Wretch! do you dream that it was for this?—that this
atheism of bigotry—this creed of all the priests that ever have existed in connection with the state, and in hope of extending their interest by that connection—could have any influence over
me? I had sounded every depth in the mine of depravity before them. I knew them—I despised them. I crouched before them in body, I spurned them in my soul. With all their sanctimony, they had hearts so worldly, that it was scarce worth while to watch their hypocrisy, the secret developed itself so soon. There was no discovery to be made, no place for detection. I have seen them on their high festivals, prelates, and abbots, and priests, in all their pomp of office, appearing to the laity like descended gods, blazing in gems and gold, amid the lustre of tapers and the floating splendour of an irradiated atmosphere alive with light, and all soft and delicate harmonies and delicious odours, till, as they disappeared amid the clouds of incense so gracefully tossed from the gilded censers, the intoxicated eye dreamed it saw them ascending to Paradise. Such was the
scene, but what was
behind the scene?—
I saw it all. Two or three of them would rush from service into the vestry together, under the pretence of changing their vestments. One would imagine that these men would have at least the decency to refrain, while in the intervals of the holy mass. No, I overheard them. While shifting their robes, they talked incessantly of promotions and appointments—of this or that prelate, dying or dead—of a wealthy benefice being vacant—of one dignitary having bargained hard with the state for the promotion of a relative—of another who had well-founded hopes of obtaining a bishopric, for what? neither for learning or piety, or one feature of the pastoral character, but because he had valuable benefices to resign in exchange, that might be divided among numerous candidates. Such was their conversation—such and such only were their thoughts, till the last thunders of the alleluia from the church made them start, and hurry to resume their places at the altar. Oh what a compound of meanness and pride, of imbecillity and pretension, of sanctimony so transparently and awkwardly worn, that the naked frame of the natural mind was visible to every eye beneath it—that mind which is ‘earthly, sensual, devilish.’ Was it to live among such wretches, who, all-villain as I was, made me hug myself with the thought that at least I was not like them, a passionless prone reptile—a thing made of forms and dressings, half satin and shreds, half
aves and
credos—bloated and abject—creeping and aspiring—winding up and up the pedestal of power at the rate of an inch a day, and tracking its advance to eminence by the flexibility of its writhings, the obliquity of its course, and the filth of its slime—was it for this?”—he paused, half-choked with his emotions.
This man might have been a better being under better circumstances; he had at least a disdain of all that was mean in vice, with a wild avidity for all that was atrocious. “Was it for this,” he continued, “that I have sold myself to work their works of darkness—that I have become in this life as it were an apprentice to Satan, to take anticipated lessons of torture—that I have sealed those indentures here, which must be fulfilled below? No, I despise—I loathe it all, the agents and the system—the men and their matters. But it is the creed of that system (and true or false it avails not—some kind of creed is necessary, and the falser perhaps the better, for falsehood at least flatters), that the greatest criminal may expiate his offences, by vigilantly watching, and severely punishing, those of the enemies of heaven. Every offender may purchase his immunity, by consenting to become the executioner of the offender whom he betrays and denounces. In the language of the laws of another country, they may turn ‘king’s evidence,’ and buy their own lives at the price of another’s—a bargain which every man is very ready to make. But, in religious life, this kind of transfer, this substitutional suffering, is adopted with an avidity indescribable. How we love to punish those whom the church calls the enemies of God, while conscious that, though our enmity against him is infinitely greater, we become acceptable in his sight by tormenting those who may be less guilty, but who are in our power! I hate you, not because I have any natural or social cause to do so, but because the exhaustion of my resentment on you, may diminish that of the Deity towards me. If I persecute and torment the enemies of God, must I not be the friend of God? Must not every pang I inflict on another, be recorded in the book of the All-remembering, as an expurgation of at least one of the pangs that await me hereafter? I have no religion, I believe in no God, I repeat no creed, but I have that superstition of fear and of futurity, that seeks its wild and hopeless mitigation in the sufferings of others when our own are exhausted, or when (a much more common case) we are unwilling to undergo them. I
