parable from their nature? If God is good, as we are
assured, notwithstanding the cruelties of which the priests suppose
him capable, is it not more consonant to all our ideas of a being
perfectly good, to believe that he did not create them to sport with
them in a state of eternal damnation, which they had not the power of
choosing, or of rejecting and shunning? Has not God treated the beasts
of the field more favorably than he has treated man, since he has
exempted them from sin, and by consequence has not exposed them to
suffer an eternal unhappiness?

The dogma of the immortality of the soul, or of a future life,
presents nothing consoling in the Christian religion. On the contrary,
it is calculated expressly to fill the heart of the Christian,
following out his principles, with bitterness and continual alarm. I
appeal to yourself, Madam, whether these sublime notions have any
thing consoling in them? Whenever this uncertain idea has presented
itself to your mind, has it not filled you with a cold and secret
horror? Has the consciousness of a life so virtuous and so spotless as
yours, secured you against those fears which are inspired by the idea
of a being jealous, severe, capricious, whose eternal disgrace the
least fault is sure of incurring, and in whose eyes the smallest
weakness, or freedom the most involuntary, is sufficient to cancel
years of strict observance of all the rules of religion?

I know very well what you will advance to support yourself in your
prejudices. The ministers of religion possess the secret of tempering
the alarms which they have the art to excite. They strive to inspire
confidence in those minds which they discover accessible to fear. They
balance, thus, one passion against another. They hold in suspense the
minds of their slaves, in the apprehension that too much confidence
would only render them less pliable, or that despair would force them
to throw off the yoke. To persons terribly frightened about their
state after death, they speak only of the hopes which we may entertain
of the goodness of God. To those who have too much confidence, they
preach up the terrors of the Lord, and the judgments of a severe God.
By this chicanery they contrive to subject or retain under their yoke
all those who are weak enough to be led by the contradictory doctrines
of these blind guides.

They tell you, besides, that the sentiment of the immortality of the
soul is inherent in man; that the soul i