.--ACCORDING TO ALL THE RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS OF THE EARTH, GOD WOULD BE
THE MOST CAPRICIOUS AND THE MOST INSENSATE OF BEINGS.

Nothing could be more extravagant than the role which in every country
theology makes Divinity play. If the thing was real, we would be obliged
to see in it the most capricious and the most insane of beings; one
would be obliged to believe that God made the world to be the theater of
dishonoring wars with His creatures; that He created angels, men,
demons, wicked spirits, but as adversaries, against whom He could
exercise His power. He gives them liberty to offend Him, makes them
wicked enough to upset His projects, obstinate enough to never give up:
all for the pleasure of getting angry, and being appeased, of
reconciling Himself, and of repairing the confusion they have made. Had
Divinity formed at once His creatures such as they ought to be in order
to please Him, what trouble He might have spared Himself! or, at least,
how much embarrassment He might have saved to His theologians! According
to all the religious systems of the earth, God seems to be occupied but
in doing Himself injury; He does it as those charlatans do who wound
themselves, in order to have occasion to show the public the value of
their ointments. We do not see, however, that so far Divinity has been
able to radically cure itself of the evil which is caused by men.

LXXII.--IT IS ABSURD TO SAY THAT EVIL DOES NOT COME FROM GOD.

God is the author of all; still we are assured that evil does not come
from God. Whence, then, does it come? From men? But who has made men? It
is God: then that evil comes from God. If He had not made men as they
are, moral evil or sin would not exist in the world. We must blame God,
then, that man is so perverse. If man has the power to do wrong or to
offend God, we must conclude that God wishes to be offended; that God,
who has created man, resolved that evil should be done by him: without
this, man would be an effect contrary to the cause from which he derives
his being.

LXXIII.--THE FORESIGHT ATTRIBUTED TO GOD, WOULD GIVE TO GUILTY MEN WHOM
HE PUNISHES, THE RIGHT TO COMPLAIN OF HIS CRUELTY.

The faculty of foresight, or the ability to know in advance all which is
to happen in the world, is attributed to God. But this foresight can
scarcely belong to His glory, nor spare Him the reproaches which men
could legitimately heap upon Him. If God had the foresight of the
future, did He not