ses, call us to account for the manner in which
we have lived here; and therefore without seeking any other motive
for the belief, it is rational to believe that he will, for we know
beforehand that he can. The probability or even possibility of the thing
is all that we ought to know; for if we knew it as a fact, we should be
the mere slaves of terror; our belief would have no merit, and our best
actions no virtue.

Deism then teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived, all
that is necessary or proper to be known. The creation is the Bible of
the deist. He there reads, in the hand-writing of the Creator himself,
the certainty of his existence, and the immutability of his power; and
all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries. The probability
that we may be called to account hereafter, will, to reflecting minds,
have the influence of belief; for it is not our belief or disbelief that
can make or unmake the fact. As this is the state we are in, and which
it is proper we should be in, as free agents, it is the fool only, and
not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will live as if
there were no God.

But the belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the strange
fable of the Christian creed, and with the wild adventures related in
the Bible, and the obscurity and obscene nonsense of the Testament, that
the mind of man is bewildered as in a fog. Viewing all these things in
a confused mass, he confounds fact with fable; and as he cannot believe
all, he feels a disposition to reject all. But the belief of a God is
a belief distinct from all other things, and ought not to be confounded
with any. The notion of a Trinity of Gods has enfeebled the belief of
one God. A multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief; and
in proportion as anything is divided, it is weakened.

Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form instead of fact; of
notion instead of principle: morality is banished to make room for
an imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its origin in a
supposed debauchery; a man is preached instead of a God; an execution is
an object for gratitude; the preachers daub themselves with the blood,
like a troop of assassins, and pretend to admire the brilliancy it gives
them; they preach a humdrum sermon on the merits of the execution; then
praise Jesus Christ for being executed, and condemn the Jews for doing
it.

A man, by hearing all this nonsense lumped and pr