of the
Christians, like the Janus of Roman mythology, has two faces;
sometimes he is represented with the benign features of mercy and
goodness; sometimes murder, revenge, and fury issue from his nostrils.
And what is the consequence of this double aspect but that the
Christians are much more easily terrified at his frightful lineaments
than they are recovered from their fears by his aspect of mercy!
Having been taught to view him as a capricious being, they are
naturally mistrustful of him, and imagine that the safest part they
can act for themselves is to set about the work of vengeance with
great zeal; they conclude that a cruel master cannot find fault with
cruel imitators, and that his servants cannot render themselves more
acceptable than by extirpating all his enemies.

The preceding remarks show very clearly, Madam, the highly pernicious
consequences which result from the zeal engendered by the love of God.
If this love is a virtue, its benefits are confined to the priests,
who arrogate to themselves the exclusive privilege of declaring when
God is offended; who absorb all the offerings and monopolize all the
homage of the devout; who decide upon the opinions that please or
displease him; who undertake to inform mankind of the duties this
virtue requires from them, and of the proper time and manner of
performing them; who are interested in rendering those duties cruel
and intimidating in order to frighten mankind into a profitable
subjection; who convert it into the instrument of gratifying their own
malignant passions, by inspiring men with a spirit of headlong and
raging intolerance, which, in its furious course of indiscriminate
destruction, holds nothing sacred, and which has inflicted incredible
ravages upon all Christian countries.

In conformity with such abominable principles, a Christian is bound to
detest and destroy all whom the church may point out as the enemies of
God. Having admitted the paramount duty of yielding their entire
affections to a rigorous master, quick to resent, and offended even
with the involuntary thoughts and opinions of his creatures, they of
course feel themselves bound, by entering with zeal into his quarrels,
to obtain for him a vengeance worthy of a God--that is to say, a
vengeance that knows no bounds. A conduct like this is the natural
offspring of those revolting ideas which our priests give us of the
Deity. A good Christian is therefore necessarily intolerant. It is
t