He heard theological lectures. Thinking that
in this field he could infuse most venom and reap a greater harvest of
gold than in any other, he stripped for the undertaking. While a mere
youth he gained, by his tricky management, a professor's chair. He
blasphemed to his auditors by day, while at night he surrendered himself
to the corruptions of the gambling-room, the beer-cellar and the house
of prostitution. The slave of passion and of doubt, he was, of all his
contemporaries, the most loud-spoken against the claims of God's truth,
and adherence to the canons of the church. His mind was quick, active,
and penetrating. Seizing the pen, he invaded the sanctity of every
doctrine that stood in the way of his corrupt theories. He took up the
Bible with sacrilegious purpose, and made it the plaything of his
vicious heart. He sneered at what was revered by the church and the good
men of past ages, with the kind of levity that should greet the recital
of the stories of _Sinbad the Sailor_ and the _Wonderful Lamp_.
He published many works, the aim of all being to infuse into the masses
a contempt of the received Scriptures.
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