"Cavaliere," said he, "the ancients did not admit the rabble to their
sacred mysteries; nor dare we permit the unlettered to enter the
hollowed precincts of the temple of Reason."
"True," Odo acquiesced; "but if the teachings of Christianity are the
best safeguard of the people, should not those teachings at least be
stripped of the grotesque excrescences with which the superstitions of
the people and--perhaps--the greed and craft of the priesthood have
smothered the simple precepts of Jesus?"
The Bishop shrugged his shoulders. "As long," said he, "as the people
need the restraint of a dogmatic religion so long must we do our utmost
to maintain its outward forms. In our market-place on feast-days there
appears the strange figure of a man who carries a banner painted with an
image of Saint Paul surrounded by a mass of writhing serpents. This man
calls himself a descendant of the apostle and sells to our peasants the
miraculous powder with which he killed the great serpent at Malta. If it
were not for the banner, the legend, the descent from Saint Paul, how
much efficacy do you think those powders would have? And how long do you
think the precepts of an invisible divinity would restrain the evil
passions of an ignorant peasant? It is because he is afraid of the
plaster God in his parish church, and of the priest who represents that
God, that he still pays his tithes and forfeitures and keeps his hands
from our throats. By Diana," cried the Bishop, taking snuff, "I have no
patience with those of my calling who go about whining for apostolic
simplicity, and would rob the churches of their ornaments and the
faithful of their ceremonies.
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