Theology, from the remotest antiquity to the present time, has had the exclusive privilege of directing philosophy. What assistance has been derived from its labours? It changed philosophy into an unintelligible jargon, calculated to render uncertain the clearest truths; it has converted the art of reasoning into a jargon of words; it has carried the human mind into the airy regions of metaphysics, and there employed it in vainly fathoming an obscure abyss. Instead of physical and simple causes, this transformed philosophy has substituted supernatural, or rather, occult causes; it has explained phenomena difficult to be conceived by agents still more inconceivable. It has filled language with words, void of sense, incapable of accounting for things, better calculated to obscure than enlighten, and which seems invented expressly to discourage man, to guard him against the powers of his mind, to make him mistrust the principles of reason and evidence, and to raise an insurmountable barrier between him and truth.