s erroneous
motive in him makes no motive for love on the other part; and to say
that we can love voluntarily, and without a motive, is morally and
physically impossible.

Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first
place, are impossible to be performed, and if they could be would be
productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime. The maxim
of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine
of loving enemies; for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime
or for his enmity.

Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies, are in general
the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the
doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act
the reverse of what it preaches. For my own part, I disown the doctrine,
and consider it as a feigned or fabulous morality; yet the man does not
exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men,
either in the American Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that
I have, in any case, returned evil for evil. But it is not incumbent on
man to reward a bad action with a good one, or to return good for evil;
and wherever it is done, it is a voluntary act, and not a duty. It
is also absurd to suppose that such doctrine can make any part of a
revealed religion. We imitate the moral character of the Creator by
forbearing with each other, for he forbears with all; but this doctrine
would imply that he loved man, not in proportion as he was good, but as
he was bad.

If we consider the nature of our condition here, we must see there is
no occasion for such a thing as revealed religion. What is it we want
to know? Does not the creation, the universe we behold, preach to us the
existence of an Almighty power, that governs and regulates the whole?
And is not the evidence that this creation holds out to our senses
infinitely stronger than any thing we can read in a book, that any
imposter might make and call the word of God? As for morality, the
knowledge of it exists in every man's conscience.

Here we are. The existence of an Almighty power is sufficiently
demonstrated to us, though we cannot conceive, as it is impossible we
should, the nature and manner of its existence. We cannot conceive how
we came here ourselves, and yet we know for a fact that we are here.
We must know also, that the power that called us into being, can if he
please, and when he plea