The priest not only proves the truth of Christianity, but he disproves it at the same time
There is only one relation to revealed truth: believing it.
The fact that one believes can only be proved in one way: by being willing to suffer for one's faith. And the degree of one's faith is proved only by the degree of one's willingness to suffer for one's faith.
In that way Christianity came into the world, being served by witnesses who were willing absolutely to suffer everything for their faith, and actually had to suffer, to sacrifice life and blood for the truth.
The courage of their faith makes an impression upon the human race, leading it to the following conclusion : What is able thus to inspire men to sacrifice everything, to venture life and blood, must be truth.
This is the proof which is adduced for the truth of Christianity.
Now on the contrary the priest is so kind as to wish to make it a livelihood. But a livelihood is exactly the opposite of suffering, of being sacrificed, in which the proof consists: it is the opposite of proving the truth of Christianity by the fact that there have lived men who have sacrificed everything, ventured life and blood for Christianity.
Here then is the proof and the disproof at the same time! The proof of the truth of Christianity from the fact that one has ventured everything for it, is disproved, or rendered suspect, by the fact that the priest who advances this proof does exactly the opposite. By seeing the glorious ones, the witnesses to the truth, venture everything for Christianity, one is led to the conclusion: Christianity must be truth. By considering" the priest one is led to the conclusion : Christianity is hardly the truth, but profit is the truth.
No, the proof that something is truth from the willingness to suffer for it, can only be advanced by one who himself is willing to suffer for it. The priest's proof: proving the truth of Christianity by the fact that he takes money for it, profits by, lives off of, being steadily promoted, with a family, lives off of...the fact that others have suffered, is a selfcontradiction, Christianly regarded, it is fraud.
And therefore, Christianly, the priest must be stopped — in the sense in which one speaks of stopping a thief. And as people cry, "Hip, ho!" after a Jew, so, until no priest is any more to be seen, they must cry, "Stop thief! Stop him, he is stealing what belongs to the glorious ones!" What they deserved by their noble disinterestedness, and what they did not get, being rewarded by unthankfulness, persecuted and put to death, that the priest steals by appropriating their lives, by describing their sufferings, proving the truth of Christianity by the willingness of these glorious ones to suffer for it. Thus it is the priest robs the glorious ones; and then he deceives the simpleminded human multitude, which has not the ability to see through the priest's traffic and perceive that he proves the truth of Christianity and at the same time disproves it.
What wonder then that Christianity simply does not exist, that the notion of "Christendom" is galimatias, when those who are Christians are such in reliance upon the priest's proof, assume that Christianity is truth in reliance upon the priest's proof: that something is truth because one is willing enough to make profit out of it, or perhaps even (by a greater refinement) to get the extra profit of protesting that he is willing to suffer. To assume the truth of Christianity in reliance upon this proof is just as nonsensical as to regard oneself as an opulent man because much money passes through one's hands which is not one's own, or because one possesses a lot of paper money issued by a bank which is insolvent.