The Pope-worshipping Sect repay this hate with an equal abhorrence, and send the English _heretics_ to the awful Hell, with the same satisfaction.
All the Western Barbarians worship this new _Christ-God_, but, like our devoters of _Fo_, divided into many Sects, as I have already intimated. The benignant _Fo_, teaches his idolatrous devotees how to differ without hate. But, these _Christians_ are always at strife, bitter and irreconcilable; not as to essentials, even within the Superstition itself, (to say nothing of genuine morality), but as to things trivial and absurd. One will say, "Be baptised or be damned to the eternal Hell!" But another says, "Baptism is only a symbol, one may be saved without it." Then, "What is baptism?" Some say "The Priest must immerse in water;" but another, "No, the Priest must sprinkle the face only." Yet another, "Water is itself nothing, Priest nothing, unless before either, the baptism of the 'Holy Spirit' have occurred." To perfect the "rite," all say that the Priest must offer proper "Incantations," and generally in the Temples before the Idol. The contestants damn each other to everlasting torments for not being _truly_ baptised.
All the Sects say, "You must believe in Christ or be damned;" but do not agree as to what this _Belief_ is, and go on damning each the other for not having truly believed.
It is impossible, however, to make intelligible the countless vagaries of the Sects. They all fight under the same _Christ-God_, whom they all address, among other titles, as the "Prince of Peace" [Tchu-pe]. They all profess to follow His precepts, one of which is to love all men, even enemies (not _friends_, one of these angry disputants once said). These revered Precepts are written in the _Sacred Books_, and all the Sects swear their oaths upon these, and resort to them for the unchangeable rules of belief and practice. They all declare that the _Sacred Writings_ are so plain that a man, "though a fool, may understand," and so clear, "that he who runs may read." Yet, they curse each other to the eternal torments for interpreting erroneously. The truth is, that _the Books_ are most obscure, and differences of interpretation are inseperable from their use; the terrible thing is, that Superstition has made these differences so important. The _Sacred Writings_ are contradictory, and teeming with things indifferent, meaningless, or trivial. Written at widely different periods, by many hands, long ages ago, in an obscure and barbarous dialect, for different objects, their true meanings cannot always be rendered. But few, even of the Priest-class, can read them at all in the original. They are mainly Records of the Laws, customs and wars of an obscure and terrible race, here and there interspersed with Invocations to the Gods of that race, and with their Proverbs, or words of wisdom. This tribe, called _Jews_, revolted from their masters, the Egyptians, and fled into a desert region lying west from the Hindoos. The man who led them in this revolt was learned in the laws and customs of Egypt, and upon these he founded his own system. He declared himself to be directly called by Jah (Jehovah) to be their High Priest and Judge--that they were to obey him who received from Jah immediate instructions--that, in fact, to disobey him was to disobey Jah. That he was to lead them forth to found a new State, and that the power to announce the will of Jah alone resided with him and his successors, in this High Priesthood, and that they could only be successful over their enemies and prosper, by an implicit obedience to Jah, by the mouth of the High Priest.