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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: than all Napoleon's battles and all Broussais' leeches. The mass
is a papal invention, not older than the sixth century, and
based on the Hoc est corpus. What floods of blood were shed to
establish the Fete-Dieu, the Festival of Corpus Christi--the
institution by which Rome established her triumph in the question
of the Real Presence, a schism which rent the Church during three
centuries! The wars of the Count of Toulouse against the
Albigenses were the tail end of that dispute. The Vaudois and the
Albigenses refused to recognize this innovation."
In short, Desplein was delighted to disport himself in his most
atheistical vein; a flow of Voltairean satire, or, to be
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