s, has borrowed from Egypt the fantastic
notions with which we see it filled. Thus the extravagances invented by
frauds or idolatrous visionists, are still regarded as sacred opinions
by the Christians!

If we but look at history, we see striking resemblances in all
religions. Everywhere on earth we find religious ideas periodically
afflicting and rejoicing the people; everywhere we see rites, practices
often abominable, and formidable mysteries occupying the mind, and
becoming objects of meditation. We see the different superstitions
borrowing from each other their abstract reveries and their ceremonies.
Religions are generally unformed rhapsodies combined by new Doctors of
Divinity, who, in composing them, have used the materials of their
predecessors, reserving the right of adding or subtracting what suits or
does not suit their present views. The religion of Egypt served
evidently as a basis for the religion of Moses, who expunged from it the
worship of idols. Moses was but an Egyptian schismatic, Christianity is
but a reformed Judaism. Mohammedanism is composed of Judaism, of
Christianity, and of the ancient religion of Arabia.

CCI.--THEOLOGY HAS ALWAYS TURNED PHILOSOPHY FROM ITS TRUE COURSE.

From the most remote period theology alone regulated the march of
philosophy. What aid has it lent it? It changed it into an
unintelligible jargon, which only had a tendency to render the clearest
truth uncertain; it converted the art of reasoning into a science of
words; it threw the human mind into the aerial regions of metaphysics,
where it unsuccessfully occupied itself in sounding useless and
dangerous abysses. For physical and simple causes, this philosophy
substituted supernatural causes, or, rather, causes truly occult; it
explained difficult phenomena by agents more inconceivable than these
phenomena; it filled discourse with words void of sense, incapable of
giving the reason of things, better suited to obscure than to enlighten,
and which seem invented but to discourage man, to guard him against the
powers of his own mind, to make him distrust the principles of reason
and evidence, and to surround the truth with an insurmountable barrier.

CCII.---THEOLOGY NEITHER EXPLAINS NOR ENLIGHTENS ANYTHING IN THE WORLD OR
IN NATURE.

If we would believe the adherents of religion, nothing could be
explicable in the world without it; nature would be a continual enigma;
it would be impossible for man to compre