Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 1).djvu/367

Rh what the Roman Catholic religion has been.—No one knows much of the early times of the Christian religion, until about three hundred years after its beginning, two great churches called the Roman and the Greek churches divided the opinions of men. They fought for a very long time, a great many words were wasted and a great deal of blood shed. This as you may suppose did no good. Each party however, thought they were doing God a service, and that he would reward them. If they had looked an inch before their noses they might have found that fighting and killing men, and cursing them and hating them, was the very worst way for getting into favour with a Being who is allowed by all to be best pleased with deeds of love and charity. At last, however, these two Religions entirely separated, and the Popes reigned like Kings and Bishops at Rome, in Italy. The inquisition was set up, and in the course of one year thirty thousand people were burnt in Italy and Spain, for entertaining different opinions from those of the Pope and the Priests. There was an instance of shocking barbarity which the Roman Catholic Clergy committed in France by order of the Pope. The bigotted Monks of that country, in cold blood, in one night massacred 80,000 Protestants; this was done under the authority of the Pope, and there was only one Roman Catholic Bishop who had virtue enough to refuse to help. The vices of Monks and Nuns in their Convents were in those times shameful, people thought that they might commit any sin, however monstrous, if they had money enough to prevail upon the Priests to absolve them; in truth, at that time the Priests shamefully imposed upon the people, they got all the power into their own hands, they persuaded them that a man could not be entrusted with the