Double Despotism

The double despotism of Church and state has borne so hard upon

human existence, that man is sunk beneath its dreadful weight; but

resuscitated nations are about to teach kings and tyrants a lesson

awfully impressive, in regard to the destiny which awaits the

aggregate injustice of the world. The period is at hand, in which

kings and thrones, and priests and hierarchies, and the long

catalogue of mischiefs which they have produced, shall be swept away

from the face of the earth, and buried in the grave of everlasting

destruction. Then will the era of human felicity, in which the heart

of unfortunate man shall be consoled; then will appear the moment of

national consolation, and universal freedom; then the empire of

reason, of science, and of virtue, will extend over the whole earth,

and man, emancipated from the barbarous despotism of antiquity, will

assume to himself his true predicament in nature, and become a

standing evidence of the divinity of thought and the unlimited power

of human reason.

 --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species