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286 bearing of Christ’s ethic? Have these clerical writers frankly abandoned the claim that the “Spirit of God” guided their predecessors during those fifteen centuries? And have they read a line of the modern literature which shows that there is not one humane sentiment in the Gospels that was not well known to the Jews before the time of Christ?

The case of the clergy is a tissue of sophistry and untruth from beginning to end. They have done nothing as a body for European civilisation, in proportion to their power and leisure and resources. They did not even teach it chastity. They hindered the development of the culture which it vitally needed, and dissipated its finest intelligence in the tilling of barren soil. They fought fiercely for their own wealth and power, and were for fifteen hundred years a mighty parasitic growth on the working community. They kept the bandage of illiteracy on the eyes of ninety per cent, of their people for fifteen hundred years, and dined merrily with the nobles who exploited the people. They exacted respect in virtue of their supposed close communion with an all-holy God; and they were themselves, especially in their highest representatives, immoral and hypocritical in an appalling proportion, were brutal in coercing their critics, were traffickers in spurious and sordid relics, and were, when noble men and women at last won liberty from them, ignorant, slanderous, and careless of truth as no reputable body of laymen would stoop to become.