'
"As for our getting any quarter at the hands of theologians, we don't
expect it, and have no right to. You don't give each other any quarter.
I have had two religious books sent me by friends within a week or
two. One is Mr. Brownson's; he is as fair and square as Euclid; a
real honest, strong thinker, and one that knows what he is talking
about,--for he has tried all sorts of religions, pretty much. He tells
us that the Roman Catholic Church is the one 'through which alone we can
hope for heaven.' The other is by a worthy Episcopal rector, who appears
to write as if he were in earnest, and he calls the Papacy the 'Devil's
Masterpiece,' and talks about the 'Satanic scheme' of that very Church
'through which alone,' as Mr. Brownson tells us, 'we can hope for
heaven'! What's the use in _our_ caring about hard words after
this,--'atheists,' heretics, infidels, and the like? They're, after all,
only the cinders picked up out of those heaps of ashes round the stumps
of the old stakes where they used to burn men, women, and children for
not thinking just like other folks. They'll 'crock' your fingers, but
they can't burn us.
"Doctors are the best-natured people in the world, except when they get
fighting with each other. And they have some advantages over you. You
inherit your notions from a set of priests that had no wives and no
children, or none to speak of, and so let their humanity die out of
them.
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