When I see the superstitions which the world's religion has fastened on the conscience, the spiritual terrors with which it has haunted and subdued the ignorant and susceptible, the dark, appalling views of God which it has spread far and wide, the dread of inquiry which it has struck into superior understanding, and the servility of spirit which it has made to pass for piety—when I see all this, the fire, the scaffold, and the outward inquisition, terrible as they are, seem to me inferior evils.
