and love, revenge and pity, benevolence and fury. His conduct is continually destitute of that uniformity which characterises wisdom. Partial in his affections, he makes it the duty of his favourite people to commit deliberately the most atrocious crimes. He commands them to violate good faith, and contemn the rights of nations. He enjoins upon them the commission of robbery and murder. On other occasions, we see him forbidding the same crimes, ordaining justice, and prescribing to mankind abstinence from whatever disturbs the good order of society. This God, who is in turn styled the God of Vengeance, the God of Mercies, the God of Arms, and the God of Peace, is ever at variance with himself. His subjects are consequently each one at liberty to copy that part of his conduct which he finds most congenial to his humour. Hence their morality becomes arbitrary. It is surprising, that Christians have never yet been able to agree amongst themselves, whether it would be most pleasing to their God to tolerate the various opinions of mankind, or to exterminate all who differ from themselves. It is, in fact, a problem with them, whether it be most expedient to persecute and assassinate those who think not as they do, or to treat them with humanity, and suffer them to live in peace.

Christians, however, do not fail to justify the strange and often iniquitous conduct attributed to their God in the Scriptures. This God, say they, being of right the absolute master of his creatures, can dispose of them at his pleasure, and for this no one can accuse him of injustice, or demand an account of his conduct. His justice is not the justice of mankind, and they have no right to censure any of his actions. It is easy to perceive the insufficiency of this answer. Mankind

in making justice an attribute of their God, can have no idea of this virtue, but by supposing that it resembles the justice of their fellow-creatures. If God have a justice, which in its essence differs from that of man, we know not what it is, and we attribute to him

a quality of which we have no idea. If it be said, that God owes nothing to his creatures, he is supposed to be a tyrant, whose conduct has no rule but his own caprice, and who cannot continue to be a model for us, having no longer any relation with us, seeing all relations must be reciprocal. If nothing be due from God to his creatures, how can any thing be due from them to him? If, as we are continually told, men are to God, as the clay in the hands of the potter, no moral relation can exist between them. It is, nevertheless, upon those relations that all religion is founded. Therefore, to say that God has no duty towards his creatures, and that his justice is different from that of mankind, is to sap the foundations of all religion and justice, which necessarily suppose that God ought to reward mankind for doing good, and punish them for doing evil.

In fine, how can the followers of the Christian system reconcile that barbarous conduct, and those sanguinary commands, attributed to him in the Scriptures, with his goodness or his wisdom? And how can goodness be an attribute of a God, who has created most of the human race only to damn them eternally?

Here we shall be told that the conduct of God is, to us, an impenetrable mystery, that we have no right to scrutinize it, and that our feeble reason must be lost whenever it attempts to sound the depth of divine wisdom. We are informed that we must adore in silence, and tremblingly submit to the oracles of a God, who has himself sufficiently made known his will in his holy Scriptures. This is what they call revelation, to which we proceed in the next chapter.

CHAP. V.

OF REVELATION.

How can we know, without the aid of reason, that God hath spoken? But, on the other side, is not reason proscribed by the Christian religion? Is not the use of reason forbidden, in the examination of the marvellous dogmas with which we are presented by this religion? Does it not continually exclaim against a profane reason, which it accuses of insufficiency, and often regards as rebellious to heaven? In order to be capable of judging of divine revelation, we must have a just idea of the Divinity. But seeing human reason is too weak and grovelling to exalt itself to an acquaintance with the Supreme Being, from what source shall we derive that idea, beside revelation itself? Thus revelation itself is to become the proof of the authority of revelation.

Let us pass on from this conjuror's circle, and open the sacred books, destined to enlighten mankind, and before which reason must fall prostrate. Do they exhibit any precise ideas of the God, whose oracles they announce? Can we draw from them any just conceptions of its attributes? Is not this God Is not this God represented as a mass of extraordinary qualities, which form an inexplicable enigma? If this revelation be, as is supposed, an emanation from God himself, who can confide in him? Does he not paint himself as false, unjust, deceitful, and cruel; as setting snares for mankind; seducing, hardening, and leading them astray

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By the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church, God is always represented as a seducer. He permits Eve to be seduced by a serpent. He hardens the heart of Pharaoh. Christ himself is a stone of stumbling. Such are the points of view under which the Divinity is exhibited to us.

Thus the man, desirous of being assured of the truth of Christian revelation, finds himself, at the first step of enquiry, plunged into distrust and perplexity, which is increased by the indeterminable disputes of his sacred guides, who have never been able to agree upon the manner of understanding the oracles of a Divinity which they say has revealed itself.

The hesitation and fear of the man who honestly examines the revelation adopted by Christians, must redouble, when he sees their God represented as revealing himself only to a few favourites of the human race, while he carefully conceals himself from the remainder, to whom, notwithstanding this, revelation is equally necessary. He must be uncertain whether or not he is of the number, to whom this partial God deigns to make himself known.

Must not his heart be troubled at the sight of å God, who vouchsafes to discover himself, and announce his decrees, only to a number of men, inconsiderable in comparison with the whole human race? Is he not tempted to accuse this God of a malevolence too dark, when he finds that for want of revealing himself to so many millions of mankind, he has caused their inevitable misery through an endless succession of ages? What ideas must he form to himself of a God who inflicts this punishment upon them for their ignorance of secret laws, which he has published by stealth in an obscure and unknown corner of Asia?

Thus Christians, even when they consult the Scriptures, find all things conspiring to put them on their guard against the God exhibited therein. Every thing inspires distrust of his moral character. All things float in an uncertainty. This God, in concert with the pretended interpreters of his will, seems to have formed the design of redoubling the darkness of his ignorance. He is, however, told, in order to appease his doubts, that the revealed will of God consists of mysteries; that is to say, things inaccessible to human understanding. In this case what need was there of

having spoken? Ought a God to reveal himself to mankind for the sole purpose of not being comprehended? Is not such conduct as ridiculous as it is unreasonable? To say that God has revealed himself only to announce mysteries, is to say that he has revealed himself in order to remain unknown, to conceal from us his views, embarrass our understandings, and augment our ignorance and uncertainty.

A true revelation, proceeding from a just and good God, and necessary to all mankind, ought to be clear enough to be understood by all the human race. But will the revelation, upon which Judaism and Christianity are founded, bear the test of this criterion? The Elements of Euclid are intelligible to all who endeavour to understand them. This work excites no dispute among geometricians. Is it so with the Bible? and do its revealed truths occasion no disputes among divines? By what fatality have writings revealed by God himself still need of commentaries? and why do they demand additional lights from on high, before they can be believed or understood? Is it not astonishing, that what was intended as a guide for mankind, should be wholly above their comprehending? Is it not

cruel, that what is of most importance to them should be least known? All is mystery, darkness, uncertainty, and matter of dispute, in a religion intended by the Most High to enlighten the human race.

Far from contenting themselves with the pretended mysteries contained in the Scriptures, the priests of the Christian religion have, from age to age, invented new ones, which, though never mentioned by their God, their disciples are forced to believe. No Christian can entertain a doubt concerning the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the efficacy of sacraments; and yet Christ never explained these subjects. Among Christians every thing seems to be abandoned to the imagination, caprice, and arbitrary decision of priests, who arrogate to themselves the right of fabricating mysteries and articles of faith, as their interests