Note 2 — Chapter LVI · (43) OBJECTIONS TO THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN (continued)
Cecil N. Sidney Woolf translation
Religion is a matter between each man and the Divinity. By what right do you come and place yourself between my God and me? I accept a proctor appointed by the social contract only in those matters which I cannot do myself.
Why should not a Frenchman pay his priest like his baker? If we have good bread in Paris, the reason is that the State has not yet ventured to declare the provision of bread gratuitous and put all the bakers at the charge of the Treasury.
In the United States every man pays his own priest. These gentry are compelled to have some merit, and my neighbour does not see good to make his happiness depend on submitting me to his priest. (Letters of Birkbeck.)
What will happen if I have the conviction, as our fathers did, that my priest is the intimate ally of my bishop? Without a Luther, there will be no more Catholicism in France in 1850. That religion could only be saved in 1820 by M. Grégoire(49): see how he is treated.