“Never has any one been less a priest than Jesus, never a greater enemy of forms, which stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it. By this we are all his disciples and his successors; by this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is essential to humanity, he has by this deserved the Divine rank the world has accorded him.”

Source: Vie de Jésus (The Life of Jesus) (1863), Ch. 5.

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Ernest Renan11

French philosopher and writer 1823–1892

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