Excerpt from The Oracle of Reason, or Philosophy Vindicated, Vol. 1

There are, besides schemers and fops, just alluded to, politicians who either can't or won't understand that'freedom of thought must precede freedom of action, and real reform have sound knowledge for its basis. They talk loudly about reforming the Commons' House of Parliament, without ofi'ering any definite prin ciples, the honest application of which would infallibly work out such reform. Now, we are prepared to maintain, that the commons' can only be reformed after the people have been reformed, and that it is impossible to reform any people, without thoroughly purging them of superstition. Superstition is the great evil all other evils, incidental or necessary to human society, are no match for it. It infects the life-blood of civilisation. Morals, Politics, physical science-all are polluted by superstition. Nothing which concerns the highest interests of indivi dual or aggregate man, can possibly escape its pestiferous influence. Its ministers have been, through all recorded time, and are, at this moment, from pole to pole, the legalised prime demoralisers of our species. They pour their poison of lies into the ear of cradled infancy - nay, they debauch reason in the very womb, and only in the grave can their multitudinous dupes find repose for their terrified and exhausted sensibilities. Superstition is the tyranny of tyrannies, and its priests the tyrants of tyrants. If every priest was at the bottom of the Red Sea, society would be infinitely more happy than it is at the present moment.

These are not crude or peculiar notions. The wisest men of all climes and parties have protested against the vices - the horrors of superstition But then, unfortunately, the majority of these wise men, while denouncing the superstitions of others, cling fast to their own. They see clearly the mote in their neighbour's eye, without dreaming of the beam in their own - and thus may everywhere be noted the painfully ludicrous spectacle, of all men sneering at or pitying the superstitions, and almost all supporting and landing superstition. The Protes tant despises the superstitious Catholic - the Catholic wonders at the spiritual blindness of her irreverent offspring - the Dissenter is ashamed of both Catholic and Protestant superstition - while the Deist is astonished that people can be so mad, as not to acknowledge the simplicity and grandeur of pure belief in one infi nite, eternal, glorious, marvellous, creator and preserver of the universe. Every one must know, there are at least as many kinds of christianity as days in the year, and as many sorts of faith as conventicles. Of course, all the various in terpreters of genuine religion, stigmatise every interpretation, save their own, as ungenuine, and the interpreters thereof gross and diabolical superstitionists. If disposed 'to write a lengthy preface, we could introduce to the reader a roll of true religions, each claiming to be of divine origin, that would fill a score pages nor do we comprehend why the snpernaturalism of China, of India, or of Arabia, may not have as good a claim to divine character as the supernaturalism of Europe. Every section of supernaturalists, or, as they call themselves, true religionists, differs from every other section of true religionists. They laugh at each other, of course (would that they never did more than laugh), and Atheists laugh at them all. Atheists reject supernaturalism in iota, as a principle and a thing - holding deism to be just as much a rank superstition, as any other form of supernaturalism.

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