who have had neither your
virtues, your understanding, nor your sensibility.

According to his principles, a Christian must always live in fear; he
can never know with certainty whether he pleases or displeases God;
the least movement of pride or of covetousness, the least desire, will
suffice to merit the divine anger, and lose in one moment the fruits
of years of devotion. It is not surprising that, with these frightful
principles before them, many Christians should endeavor to find in
solitude employment for their lugubrious reflections, where they may
avoid the occasions that solicit them to do wrong, and embrace such
means as are most likely, according to their notions of the likelihood
of the thing, to expiate the faults which they fancy might incur the
eternal vengeance of God.

Thus the dark notions of a future life leave those only in peace who
think slightly upon it; and they are very disconsolate to all those
whose temperament determines them to contemplate it. They are but the
atrocious ideas, however, which the priests study to give us of the
Deity, and by which they have compelled so many worthy people to throw
themselves into the arms of incredulity. If some libertines, incapable
of reasoning, abjure a religion troublesome to their passions, or
which abridges their pleasures, there are very many who have maturely
examined it, that have been disgusted with it, because they could not
consent to live in the fears it engendered, nor to nourish the despair
it created. They have then abjured this religion, fit only to fill the
soul with inquietudes, that they might find in the bosom of reason the
repose which it insures to good sense.

Times of the greatest crimes are always times of the greatest
ignorance. It is in these times, or usually so, that the greatest
noise is made about religion. Men then follow mechanically, and
without examination, the tenets which their priests impose on them,
without ever diving to the bottom of their doctrines. In proportion as
mankind become enlightened, great crimes become more rare, the manners
of men are more polished, the sciences are cultivated, and the
religion which they have coolly and carefully examined loses sensibly
its credit. It is thus that we see so many incredulous people in the
bosom of society become more agreeable and complacent now than
formerly, when it depended on the caprice of a priest to involve them
in troubles, and to invite the people to crimes in