The priests are cannibals, and that in the most odious way
Everyone understands what cannibals are, they are man-eaters. One shudders at hearing or reading about this frightful practice, that there are savages who kill their enemies in order to eat them. One shudders, one is inclined to disavow kinship with such beings, to deny that they are men.
I shall now show that the priests are cannibals, and in a far more odious way.
What is the Christianity of the New Testament? It is the suffering truth. In this mediocre, miserable, sinful, evil, ungodly world (this is the Christian doctrine) the truth must suffer, Christianity is the suffering truth because it is the truth and is in this world.
For this reason the Founder not only suffered death upon the cross, but His whole life was suffering from first to last. For this reason the Apostles suffered, for this reason the witness to the truth. And the Saviour required one thing, the Apostles after Him required the same thing, and the witness to the truth required only one thing: imitation.
But what does the "priest" do ? This educated man is far from being crazy. "To imitate him! What a proposal to make to a shrewd man! First this shrewd man must have undergone a transformation, he must have become crazy, before it could occur to him to go in for such a thing. No, but might it not be feasible to describe the sufferings of these glorious ones, to preach their teaching as doctrine, and in such a way that it would yield so much profit that a man could live off of it, marry on it, beget children who are fed on it? That is to say, is it not feasible to turn the glorious ones into money, or to eat them, with wife and children to live by eating them?"
Here you have the cannibals, the proof that the priests are cannibals. O ye glorious ones, departed this life; in the animal world, which is called a parte potiori, the world of man, it is your fate in life and after death to be eaten: while you live you are eaten by the contemporary vermin, at last you are put to death, and when you are dead the real cannibals take hold, the priests who live by eating you! As in the farmhouses at the slaughtering season provision for the winter is salted away, so the "priest" keeps in brine tubs the glorious ones who were required to suffer for the truth. In vain the deceased man cries out, "Follow me, follow me!" "That was a good joke," replies the priest. "No, keep your mouth shut and stay where you are. What nonsense to require that I should follow you, I who have to live precisely by eating you, and not I alone, but my wife and my children! To suppose that I should follow you, perhaps myself become a sacrifice — instead of living off you, or eating you, so as to make the most brilliant career, to earn money like grass for me and my wife and children, who, if only you could see them, thrive in a way it is a pleasure to look at."
This is cannibalism, and it is the most odious form of it, as I shall now show.
1. The cannibal is a savage; the priest is an educated, a cultivated man, which makes the abomination far more revolting.
2. The cannibal eats his enemies. Quite differently the "priest." He makes a show of being devoted in the highest degree to the man whom he eats. The priest, precisely the priest, is the most devoted friend of these glorious ones. "Only hear him, hear how he is able to describe their sufferings and preach their doctrine. Does he not deserve a silver centerpiece, the cross of a knightly order, a whole stock of embroidered armchairs, a few thousand more a year, this grand man who, himself moved almost to tears, can so describe the sufferings of the glorious ones?" The cannibal is not like that; he admits openly that he is a maneater, and he does not call the man he eats his friend; he calls him his enemy, and himself the enemy of this man. The priest on the contrary conceals with the greatest possible care that he is a cannibal (like the crocodile with its piteous tears), he conceals it by making a show of being most devoted precisely to the man he eats. The priest binds himself by an oath upon the New Testament, therefore binds himself to imitation, to the obligation of following the Saviour of the world — and then says good-bye to imitation, but with his family he lives by describing His sufferings (that is, by eating Him), by preaching His doctrine, by making a show of being a true, devoted disciple of the Crucified. "You should hear him on Sundays! That man is a true disciple of Christ, in such an affecting way he can describe Christ's sufferings and bear witness to Him. . . . Does he not deserve velvet stripes on the front of his gown, and stars, and thousands a year?"
3. The cannibal does it all in no time: savagely he springs up, overpowers his enemy, puts him to death, eats a bit of him. Then it's all over. Then he lives again off his customary food, until another time when savage hatred of his enemy comes over him.
It is different with the "priest" as a cannibal. His cannibalism is well thought out, cunningly planned, calculated on the basis of having nothing else to live on throughout his whole life, and that what one has to live on must suffice to feed a man with a family, in such a way that from year to year it yields more. The priest is snugly settled in his rural residence, with the prospect also of attractive promotion; his wife is plumpness itself, and his children no less. And all this is due to... the sufferings of the glorious ones, the Saviour, the Apostles, the witness to the truth, on this the priest lives, these men he eats, and with a joyful zest for life he feeds them to his wife and children. He keeps these glorious ones in brine tubs. Their cry, "Follow me, follow me!" is in vain. For a time he may perhaps defend himself against this cry, lest (in conjunction with the oath he has taken) it might make a disturbing impression upon his whole business venture. In the course of years he becomes so hardened against this cry that he hears it no more. At the beginning it is perhaps with a certain sense of shame he hears himself called a true disciple of Christ. In the course of years he has become so accustomed to hearing it that he himself believes he is that. Then he dies, as fundamentally depraved as it is possible for a man to be — and he is buried as a witness to the truth.