Christopher Hudson Jr.’s Reviews > Freethought and Freedom: The Essays of George H. Smith > Status Update

Since [Jean] Meslier did not believe in hell, he did not agree with those Christians who believed that tyrants will suffer eternal torment for their crimes, however comfortable their life on earth may be. He preferred to see rulers punished in this life at the hands of their victims. Meslier did not reserve justice and revenge for a god in whom he did not believe.

"Kings and princes are really like ravaging wolves and roaring lions who search for prey; they are always ready to burden or overburden the people with taxes, always ready to set up new ones and increase the old ones and always ready to ignite the fires of war, and, consequently, always ready to spill blood and take away men’s lives." -Jean Meslier

“The liberal deists attempted to safeguard the equal rights of individuals by discrediting all appeals to special revelation that sought to do an end run around natural rights and thereby justify political dominion over unwilling subjects.”

According to Toland, if we are to rescue the Bible from the depths of absurdity, then we must interpret much of it figuratively; otherwise, “the highest Follies and Blasphemies may be deduc’d from the Letter of Scripture.”

“The skeptical analysis of miracles—one defended by virtually every deist of the eighteenth century—had taken its toll, as purely secular histories became the rule rather than the exception. Although Edward Gibbon was not the first modern historian to adopt this approach—we also find it in the deists Voltaire and Adam Smith, for example—he was one of the most influential.”