The Source of Human Misfortunes
When the human mind takes a retrospective view of past ages, through the mirror of history;... when, in fact, all Christendom exhibits a spectacle shocking to humanity, the weeping voice of Nature cries aloud, and demands a disclosure of the causes which have produced this general misery and distress. It asks, in the name of Reason and Truth, whence all these calamities, whence these innumerable evils that have overwhelmed and laid waste a beautiful and productive earth? Where is the source of these human misfortunes? Where the fountain whence these miseries proceed? Righteous God of Nature! What questions are these to ask in the face of the Christian church? But however painful the task, truth compels us to declare, that to this "holy" religion they are to be attributed. --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species