heaven with unjust complaint? How long, with
vain clamors, will he accuse Fate as the author of his calamities? Will
he forever shut his eyes to the light, and his heart to the admonitions
of truth and reason? The light of truth meets him everywhere; yet he
sees it not! The voice of reason strikes his ear; and he hears it
not! Unjust man! if for a moment thou canst suspend the delusion which
fascinates thy senses, if thy heart can comprehend the language of
reason, interrogate these ruins! Read the lessons which they present to
thee! And you, evidences of twenty centuries, holy temples! venerable
tombs! walls once so glorious, appear in the cause of nature herself!
Approach the tribunal of sound reason, and bear testimony against unjust
accusations! Come and confound the declamations of a false wisdom or
hypocritical piety, and avenge the heavens and the earth of man who
calumniates them both!

What is that blind fatality, which without order and without law,
sports with the destiny of mortals? What is that unjust necessity, which
confounds the effect of actions, whether of wisdom or of folly? In what
consist the anathemas of heaven over this land? Where is that divine
malediction which perpetuates the abandonment of these fields? Say,
monuments of past ages! have the heavens changed their laws and the
earth its motion? Are the fires of the sun extinct in the regions of
space? Do the seas no longer emit their vapors? Are the rains and the
dews suspended in the air? Do the mountains withhold their springs? Are
the streams dried up? And do the plants no longer bear fruit and seed?
Answer, generation of falsehood and iniquity, hath God deranged the
primitive and settled order of things which he himself assigned to
nature? Hath heaven denied to earth, and earth to its inhabitants,
the blessings they formerly dispensed? If nothing hath changed in the
creation, if the same means now exist which before existed, why then are
not the present what former generations were? Ah! it is falsely that you
accuse fate and heaven! it is unjustly that you accuse God as the cause
of your evils! Say, perverse and hypocritical race! if these places are
desolate, if these powerful cities are reduced to solitude, is it God
who has caused their ruin? Is it his hand which has overthrown these
walls, destroyed these temples, mutilated these columns, or is it the
hand of man? Is it the arm of God which has carried the sword into your
cities, and fi