if the Catholics employ much music, if their temples are decorated with the productions of the greatest masters in painting as well as in sculpture, yet the discourses of the reformed clergy produce upon their audiences an effect much more beneficial to the public than all the sermons of the Catholic priests, whose principal object always consists in extracting as much money as possible to defray the expense of worship, and to support the clergy; and that, in consequence of these facts, it is impossible to deny that the Protestant worship is preferable to that of the Catholics.
To this I answer: my object is not to inquire which of the two religions, the Protestant or the Catholic, is the least heretical: I have undertaken to prove that they are both heretical, although in different degrees; that is to say, that neither one nor the other is Christianity. I have undertaken to demonstrate, that, since the fifteenth century, Christianity has been entirely abandoned. I have undertaken to re-establish Christianity by restoring its youth. I propose to subject this religion (eminently philanthropic) to a purification which shall divest it of all its superstitious and useless creeds and practices.
New Christianity is commissioned to give a triumph to the principles of general morality, in the strife which exists between these principles and the combinations, which have for their object to promote a private interest, at the expense of the public weal. This religion, restored to its youth, is commissioned to establish all mankind in a state of permanent peace, in leaguing them all against the nation which proposes to aggrandize or enrich itself at the expense of the well-being of the human race; and in combining them against every government so anti-Christian as to sacrifice the national interests to the private interests of rulers. It is commissioned to bind together the men of science, the artists, and the working men, and to make them the general directors of the human race, as well as of the particular nations that compose it. It is commissioned to place the fine arts, the demon-
