There is no better restraint than superstition for terrifying people’s consciences and keeping them in awe. They make new laws and statutes, invent new religions and ceremonies, all as so many screens for their own purposes. For this religion, even if false, provided it is believed true, tames fierce spirits, restrains desires, and makes subjects obedient to their prince.

That is why, Polybius says of Lycurgus, he maintained religious ceremonies: not because he was superstitious himself, but because he saw that mortals were more inclined to embrace paradoxes than anything else, and dared attempt nothing evil for fear of the gods.

This was Zamolxis’s stratagem among the Thracians; Numa’s device when he said he had spoken with the nymph Egeria; and Sertorius’s with a stag: to give their decrees greater authority by deriving them from the gods. Or else everything they did was divinely inspired, as Nicolaus of Damascus observes of Lycurgus, Solon and Minos: their laws were dictated on the sacred mountain by Jupiter himself.

So Muhammad attributed his new laws to the angel Gabriel, under whose direction, he declared, they had been made. In Dio, Caligula pretended to be on familiar terms with Castor and Pollux, and there were many such devices which kept the Romans in subjection. For, as Machiavelli shows in Discourses 1.11–12, they were above all moved by religion, most superstitious. These means restrained the people more effectively than force of arms or the severity of human laws.

Speaking of religion, Vanini says in On the Wonderful Secrets of Nature, book 4, dialogue 1: Only the easily deceived common crowd acknowledged it; the great and the philosophers did not at all. Your grandees and philosophers had no such belief, but used it to consolidate and enlarge their dominion, which they could not maintain without the pretext of religion. Many thousands in every age have held as much, especially philosophers: they always recognized these things as little fables, yet fear of the public authorities forced them to remain silent. They kept silent for fear of the laws, and so on.

For this purpose Pherecydes of Syros, Pythagoras’s teacher, first put forward the immortality of the soul among the pagans in the East, as Trismegistus did in Egypt, along with a host of invented gods.

Those Druids of France and Britain first taught in the West, Caesar says, that souls do not perish, but after death pass from one person to another, so that they might inspire courage.

It was for a political purpose. With this aim the ancient poets invented the Elysian fields; Aeacus, Minos and Rhadamanthus, their judges below; the Stygian lakes, fiery Phlegethons, Pluto’s kingdom, and the various torments after death. Those who had done good went to the Elysian fields; evildoers went to Cocytus and that burning lake of hell, to be tormented for ever with fire and brimstone.

This is what Plato strives to establish in his Phaedo and book 9 of the Republic.

The Turks do the same in their Quran when they assign rewards and distinct punishments to every particular virtue and vice; when they persuade people that those who die in battle will go straight to heaven, but those who live wickedly to eternal torment, and that everyone of every kind will be tortured in the grave for a fixed time, much like our papist purgatory. So it appears from the tract written in refutation of the Quran by John Baptista Alfaqui, that Moorish priest now converted to Christianity.

After a man’s death, two black angels, Nunquir and Nequir, as they call them, come to his grave and punish him for his former sins. If he lived well, they torture him less; if badly, with unceasing torments until judgement day: they punish him continually until the day of judgement. No living person hears them mentioned without shuddering and trembling all over. The thought of this torments them throughout their lives and makes them spend their days in fasting and prayer, so that these evils may not befall them, and so on.

A Tartar prince called the Old Man of the Mountains, says Marco Polo in book 1, chapter 28, wished to strengthen his rule over his subjects and keep them in awe. He found a suitable spot in a pleasant valley surrounded by hills, where he made a delightful park full of fragrant flowers and fruits, and a palace containing every worldly pleasure that could possibly be devised: music, pictures, varied foods, and so on. He selected a certain young man and stupefied him with a sleeping draught until he perceived nothing; then had him carried, fast asleep, into this beautiful garden.

After the young man had lived there for a while amid every pleasure a sensual man could desire, he put him to sleep again and brought him out, so that when he awoke he might tell others he had been in Paradise. He did the same for hell, and by this means brought his people into subjection.

Because heaven and hell are mentioned in Scripture and Christians must necessarily believe in them, the Devil and his ministers can cunningly imitate true religion, counterfeiting and inventing the like to ensnare and deceive his superstitious followers. Political schemers practise many such tricks and frauds, especially in China; I will discuss their effects under the symptoms.

Next to political schemers, if I may distinguish the two, come some of our priests, who turn religion into policy. Indeed they go far beyond them, for they lord it over princes and statesmen themselves. They practise butchery, one says; they tyrannize over people’s consciences more than any other tormentors whatsoever, partly for their own advantage and gain. For the abuse of all religions, as Postel holds, is caused by the profit made by the priests. They do it for supremacy and prestige, to maintain their position and reputation, out of ambition and avarice, their chief supports.