of which a great number of men have created
essential duties, but too commonly absorb all moral duties; for if the
devotees are over-religious, it is rare to find them virtuous. Content
with doing what religion requires, they trouble themselves very little
about other matters. They believe themselves the favored of God, and
that it is a proof of this if they are detested by men, whose good
opinion they are seldom anxious to deserve. The whole life of a
devotee is spent in fulfilling, with scrupulous exactitude, duties
indifferent to God, unnecessary to himself, and useless to others. He
fancies he is virtuous when he has performed the rites which his
religion prescribes; when he has meditated on mysteries of which he
understands nothing; when he has struggled with sadness to do things
in which a man of sense can perceive no advantage; in fine, when he
has endeavored to practise, as much as in him lies, the Evangelical or
Christian virtues, in which he thinks all morality essentially
consists.

I shall proceed in my next letter to examine these virtues, and to
prove to you that they are contrary to the ideas we ought to form of
God, useless to ourselves, and often dangerous to others. In the mean
time, I am, &c.

LETTER VIII.

Of Evangelical Virtues and Christian Perfection.

If we believe the priests, we shall be persuaded, that the Christian
religion, by the beauty of its morals, excels philosophy and all the
other religious systems in the world. According to them, the
unassisted reason of the human mind could never have conceived sounder
doctrines of morality, more heroical virtues, or precepts more
beneficial to society. But this is not all; the virtues known or
practised among the heathens are considered as _false virtues_; far
from deserving our esteem, and the favor of the Almighty, they are
entitled to nothing but contempt; and, indeed, are _flagrant sins_ in
the sight of God. In short, the priests labor to convince us, that the
Christian ethics are purely divine, and the lessons inculcated so
sublime, that they could proceed from nothing less than the Deity.

If, indeed, we call that divine which men can neither conceive nor
perform; if by divine virtues we are to understand virtues to which
the mind of man cannot possibly attach the least idea of utility; if
by divine perfections are meant those qualities which are not only
foreign to the nature of man, but which are irreconcilably repugnant
t