“It should come as no surprise that Shelly viewed Christianity as the enemy. The more Shelley became convinced that he was in possession of the secrets of nature, the more violent became his hatred of “unnatural” conventions like the family, the state, and religion. “Yet here I swear,’ Shelly wrote in a letter, ‘and as I break my oath may Infinite Eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive Christianity!... Oh how I wish I were the Antichrist, that it were mine to crush the Demon, to hurl him to his native Hell never to rise again.’ ‘Oh I burn with impatience for the moment of Xtianity’s dissolution,’ he continued, ‘it has injured me; I swear on the altar of perjured love to revenge myself on the hated cause of the effect which even now I can scarcely help deploring. –Indeed I think it is to the benefit of society to destroy the opinions which can annihilate the dearest of its ties… Let us hope that the wound which we inflict tho’ the dagger be concealed, will rankle in the heart of our adversary.’”
Michael E. Jones, Monsters from the Id: The Rise of Horror in Fiction and Film, pg. 32
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