The priest alone has
all knowledge, for he has the doctrine of salvation. Had it occurred to
any man to defend his own opinions in contradiction to the system of the
Church, that man would speedily have come to the conclusion that the
devil had tempted him to false observations, or false deductions, and
his submission to the Church would have been the outward sign of his
victory over the evil which had blinded his spiritual vision. A man had
to choose between the worship of God and the worship of the devil, there
was no alternative. Nobody knew the limits of human knowledge;
everybody, the learned ecclesiastic as well as the unlearned, plain man,
believed others to be in possession of the key to profound secrets and
unlimited power. One thing only was needful: to possess one's self of
the philosopher's stone; therefore the belief in witchcraft and the
fear of certain men supposed to be endowed with supernatural power--the
priests--were but the obvious results of a world-system, founded on a
revealed and exact religion.
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