The Anatomy of Melancholy

The ordinary instruments or agents he employs to spread his superstition—just as God himself employed good kings, lawful magistrates, patriarchs and prophets to establish his Church—are politicians, statesmen, priests, heretics, blind guides, impostors and false prophets. To begin with politicians: it has always been a chief maxim of theirs to maintain religion or superstition, deciding upon it, altering it and varying it whenever they think best. They make religion mere political expediency, a cloak, a human invention: nothing is so effective in governing the minds of the crowd as superstition, as Tacitus and Cicero hold.

Augustine, in The City of God, book 4, chapter 27, censures Scaevola for saying and acknowledging that it is expedient for communities to be deceived by religion: that it was fitting for cities to be deceived through religion. As the proverb says, if the world wishes to be deceived, let it be deceived; if the world wants to be fooled, let it be fooled—it is good, at any rate, to keep it in subjection. This is what Aristotle and Plato impress upon us in their political writings: neglected religion brings plagues upon the city and opens the way to every kind of wickedness.

This is what all our recent political writers repeat: Kromer, History of Poland, book 2; Botero, On the Growth of Cities, book 3; Clapmar, On the Secrets of States, book 2, chapter 9; and Arnisaeus, Politics, book 2, chapter 4. Captain Machiavelli insists that a prince must by every means counterfeit religion, be superstitious at least in appearance, seem devout, attend religious exercises, honour theologians, love the Church and favour priests, as Numa, Lycurgus and such lawgivers were and did: not to believe these things themselves, but to keep their subjects more easily at their duty through religious fear—to keep the people obedient.

For by its nature, as Cardano writes, the Christian law is a law of piety, justice, fidelity, simplicity, and so on. But this error of Machiavelli’s has been amply refuted by the French lawyer Innocent Gentillet, theorem 9, commentary 1, On Religion, and by Tommaso Bozio in his book On the Ruin of Nations and Kingdoms.

I cannot deny that many politicians uphold religion as a genuine means, speak sincerely of it without hypocrisy, and are themselves truly zealous and religious. Justice and religion are the two chief pillars supporting a well-governed state.

but most of them are merely Machiavellians, pretending only for political ends. For the king alone, as Campanella observes in chapter 18 of Atheism Defeated, and as among the Turks of our own day, is the purpose of the state. They know how great religion’s power over people’s minds is, and that, as Sabellicus says, a man without religion is like a horse without a bridle.