ut immolating a victim so precious and so
innocent? What would you think of that sovereign who, in the event of
his subjects rebelling against him, should forgive them all, or a
select number of them, by putting to death his only and beloved son,
who had not rebelled?

The priests tell us that it was out of tenderness for the human kind
that God wished to accomplish this sacrifice. But I still ask if it
would not have been more simple, more conformable to all our ideas of
Deity, for God to pardon the iniquities of the human race, or to have
prevented them committing transgressions, by placing them in a
condition in which, by their own will, they should never have sinned?
According to the entire system of the Christian religion, it is
evident that God did only create the world to have an opportunity of
immolating his Son for the rebellious beings he might have formed and
preserved immaculate. The fall of the rebellious angels had no visible
end to serve but to effect and hasten the fall of Adam. It appears
from this system that God permitted the first man to sin that he might
have the pleasure of showing his goodness in sacrificing his "only
begotten Son" to reclaim men from the thraldom of Satan. He intrusted
to Satan as much power as might enable him to work the ruin of our
race, with the view of afterwards changing the projects of the great
mass of mankind, by making one God to die, and thereby destroy the
power of the Devil on the earth.

But has God succeeded in these projects to the end he proposed? Are
men entirely rescued from the dominion of Satan? Are they not still
the slaves of sin? Do they find themselves in the happy impossibility
of kindling the divine wrath? Has the blood of the Son of God washed
away the sins of the whole world? Do those who are reclaimed, those to
whom he has made himself known, those who believe, offend not against
heaven? Has the Deity, who ought, without doubt, to be perfectly
satisfied with so memorable a sacrifice, remitted to them the
punishment of sin? Is it not necessary to do something more for them?
And since the death of his Son, do we find the Christians exempt from
disease and from death? Nothing of all this has happened. The measures
taken from all eternity by the wisdom and prescience of a God who
should find against his plans no obstacles have been overthrown. The
death of God himself has been of no utility to the world. All the
divine projects have militated against t