of the so-called prophecies, even granting the utmost warping of the real meaning of the Old Testament texts for Christian purposes, which he asserted were to be compared unfavorably with the oracles of Delphos, and points out that the Mohammedan dying for his prophet, or the Hindoo immolating himself under the wheels of Juggernaut could be cited equally as a proof of the divine origin of their faiths, as the reputed martyrdoms of Christians could of theirs.

The development of Christianity, which was really founded by Paul, was a subject to which Shelley devoted much attention—­he tells us that

“The same means that have supported every other belief, have supported Christianity.  War, imprisonment, assassination, and falsehood; deeds of unexampled and incomparable atrocity, have made it what it is.  The blood shed by the votaries of the God of mercy and peace, since the establishment of his religion, would probably suffice to drown all other sectaries now on the habitable globe.  We derive from our ancestors a faith thus fostered and supported; we quarrel, persecute, and hate, for its maintenance.  Even under a government which, while it infringes the very right of thought and speech, boasts of permitting the liberty of the press, a man is pilloried and imprisoned because he is a deist, and no one raises his voice in the indignation of outraged humanity.”

The numerical majority of Christians—­the Greek and Roman Catholic—­are as much pagans as their ancestors, the ancient Greeks and Romans were exoterically.  And why?  Simply because on the break-up of the Roman empire—­like Mohammedanism afterwards, which was the natural reformation and revolution from Christian image-worship—­Christianity, in a natural succession, and by fortuitous circumstances, took possession of the executive, and placed on the seat of power a Christian Byzantine emperor in lieu of a pagan.  Basilicas, dedicated to Jupiter, Mercury, Adonis, Venus and the deities of High Olympus, were re-dedicated to God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, and the other saints (or gods) of the Christian Pantheon.  Statues therein were rechristened, and the sacrificial altars were simply transferred for the use of the eucharistical sacrifice.  The vestal virgins became nuns of the church; the Sacerdotes, her priests; the mysteries of Isis, her Agapae.  Her incense, her pictures, her image-worship, her holy water, her processions, and her prodigies, too, all came from the same source.  Thus were the socialistic and communistic teachings, based on the Philoic-Essenism of the Reformer of Nazareth, paganized, prostituted, and entirely misrepresented.  His life and labors were transformed from the natural into what was considered by the vulgar the supernatural, and all those who dared—­like Hypatia, with thousands of other pious and noble ancients—­to deny his divinity, were sacrificed to this new Moloch, set up by parricide Constantines, or adulterers of the Theodosius caste.  Thus through the ages, has the race suffered under such murder, rapine, and lust, as never disgraced tolerant ancient heathendom in the interests of paganism, even as recently happened in Central America,[C] and would happen everywhere else, if priestcraft had the power to act without restraint, so that, as Shelley says,