at these truths are not adapted to reasonable
beings? To pretend that reason can deceive us, is to say, that truth
can be false; that the useful can be hurtful. Is reason any thing but a
knowledge of the useful and true? Besides, as our reason and senses are
our only guides in this life, to say they are unfaithful, is to say, that
our errors are necessary, our ignorance invincible, and that, without the
extreme of injustice, God cannot punish us for following the only guides
it was his supreme will to give.

To say, we are obliged to believe things above our reason, is ridiculous.
To assure us, that upon some objects we are not allowed to consult reason,
is to say, that, in the most interesting matter, we must consult only
imagination, or act only at random. Our divines say, we must sacrifice our
reason to God. But what motives can we have to sacrifice our reason to a
being, who makes us only useless presents, which he does not intend us to
use? What confidence can we put in a God, who, according to our divines
themselves, is malicious enough to harden the heart, to strike with
blindness, to lay snares for us, to _lead us into temptation?_ In fine,
what confidence can we put in the ministers of this God, who, to guide us
more conveniently, commands us to shut our eyes?

137.

Men are persuaded, that religion is to them of all things the most
serious, while it is precisely what they least examine for themselves. In
pursuit of an office, a piece of land, a house, a place of profit; in any
transaction or contract whatever, every one carefully examines all,
takes the greatest precaution, weighs every word of a writing, is guarded
against every surprise. Not so in religion; every one receives it at a
venture, and believes it upon the word of others, without ever taking the
trouble to examine.

Two causes concur to foster the negligence and carelessness of men, with
regard to their religious opinions. The first is the despair of overcoming
the obscurity, in which all religion is necessarily enveloped. Their first
principles are only adapted to disgust lazy minds, who regard them as a
chaos impossible to be understood. The second cause is, that every one
is averse to being too much bound by severe precepts, which all admire in
theory, but very few care to practice with rigour. The religion of many
people is like old family ties, which they have never taken pains to
examine, but which they deposit in their archives to