The devotees and penitent debauchees, extortioners and misers of former days, to ensure themselves a better world than that they were about to leave, had bequeathed immense property in trust to the priesthood for pious uses; and the priesthood kept it for themselves.
In "Rights of Man," Paine critiques the historical accumulation of wealth by the clergy under the guise of pious bequests.
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Nothing can be more terrible to a Court or Courtier than the Revolution of France.
It was Government dethroning Government; and the old one, by attempting to make a new one, made a chasm.
Burke's Book is easily accounted for.--When a man in a wrong cause attempts to steer his course by anything else than some polar truth or principle, he is sure to be lost.