the most ready to violate their oaths?

194.

_The vulgar_, it is repeatedly said, _must have a Religion. If enlightened
persons have no need of the restraint of opinion, it is at least necessary
to rude men, whose reason is uncultivated by education_. But, is it indeed
a fact, that religion is a restraint upon the vulgar? Do we see, that
this religion preserves them from intemperance, drunkenness, brutality,
violence, fraud, and every kind of excess? Could a people who have no idea
of the Deity conduct themselves in a more detestable manner, than these
believing people, among whom we find dissipation and vices, the most
unworthy of reasonable beings? Upon going out of the churches, do not the
working classes, and the populace, plunge without fear into their ordinary
irregularities, under the idea, that the periodical homage, which they
render to their God, authorizes them to follow, without remorse, their
vicious habits and pernicious propensities? Finally, if the people are
so low-minded and unreasonable, is not their stupidity chargeable to
the negligence of their princes, who are wholly regardless of public
education, or who even oppose the instruction of their subjects? Is not
the want of reason in the people evidently the work of the priests, who,
instead of instructing men in a rational morality, entertain them with
fables, reveries, ceremonies, fallacies, and false virtues which they
think of the greatest importance?

To the people, Religion is but a vain display of ceremonies, to which
they are attached by habit, which entertains their eyes, and produces
a transient emotion in their torpid understandings, without influencing
their conduct or reforming their morals. Even by the confession of the
ministers of the altars, nothing is more rare than that _internal_ and
_spiritual_ Religion, which alone is capable of regulating the life of
man and of triumphing over his evil propensities. In the most numerous
and devout nation, are there many persons, who are really capable of
understanding the principles of their religious system, and who find them
powerful enough to stifle their perverse inclinations?

Many persons will say, that _any restraint whatever is better than none._
They will maintain, that _if religion awes not the greater part, it serves
at least to restrain some individuals, who would otherwise without remorse
abandon themselves to crime_. Men ought undoubtedly to have a restraint,
but not an