He began learning Latin from a neighbourhood priest in 1678 and eventually joined the seminary; he later claimed, in the Author's Preface to his Testament, this was done to please his parents.

However, he was twice reproved by clerical authorities for inappropriately employing young adult servant women, with whom the atheist and Meslier biographer Michel Onfray suggests he was sexually involved.

[3] When Meslier died in Étrépigny, there were found in his house three copies of a 633-page octavo manuscript in which the village curate denounces organised religion as "but a castle in the air" and theology as "but ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system".

[5] He denied that any spiritual value could be gained from suffering,[6] and he used the deist's argument from design against god, by showing the evils that he had permitted in this world.

[10][11] In his most famous quote, Meslier refers to a man who "wished that all the great men in the world and all the nobility could be hanged, and strangled with the guts of the priests.

"[12] Meslier admits that the statement may seem crude and shocking, but comments that this is what the priests and nobility deserve, not for reasons of revenge or hatred, but for love of justice and truth.

"[14] During the political unrest of May 1968, the radical students of the Sorbonne Occupation Committee paraphrased Meslier's epigram, stating that "humanity won’t be happy till the last capitalist is hung with the guts of the last bureaucrat.

He considered the lack of compassion and concern by Christians for animal suffering at the hands of man to be, according to Matthieu Ricard, further proof of "the nonexistence, or the malice, of their God.

"[17] Various edited abstracts (known as "extraits") of the Testament were printed and circulated, condensing the multi-volume original manuscript and sometimes adding material that was not written by Meslier.

We can judge how weighty is the testimony of a dying priest who asks God's forgiveness.Another book, Good Sense (French: Le Bon Sens),[22] published anonymously in 1772, was long attributed to Meslier, but was in fact written by Baron d'Holbach.

He professed it, demonstrated it, arguing and quoting, sharing his reading and his reflections, and seeking confirmation from his own observations of the everyday world.

[25]Prior to announcing Meslier as the first atheist philosopher, Onfray considers and dismisses Cristóvão Ferreira, a Portuguese and former Jesuit who renounced his faith under Japanese torture in 1633 and went on to write a book titled The Deception Revealed.

[citation needed] This account, however, ignores the earlier publication of a philosophical treatise entitled De non existentia Dei (On the non-existence of God) by Kazimierz Łyszczyński, executed for atheism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1689.