Superstition In All Ages (1732) | Page 6

of their master, for
his ways are impenetrable, and his views and his qualities are totally
incomprehensible; moreover, his ministers disagree among themselves
in regard to the orders which they pretend emanated from the sovereign
whose organs they claim to be; they announce them diversely in each
province of the empire; they discredit and treat each other as impostors
and liars; the decrees and ordinances which they promulgate are
obscure; they are enigmas, made not to be understood or divined by the
subjects for whose instruction they were intended. The laws of the
invisible monarch need interpreters, but those who explain them are
always quarreling among themselves about the true way of
understanding them; more than this, they do not agree among
themselves; all which they relate of their hidden prince is but a tissue of
contradictions, scarcely a single word that is not contradicted at once.
He is called supremely good, nevertheless not a person but complains
of his decrees. He is supposed to be infinitely wise, and in his
administration everything seems contrary to reason and good sense.
They boast of his justice, and the best of his subjects are generally the
least favored. We are assured that he sees everything, yet his presence

remedies nothing. It is said that he is the friend of order, and everything
in his universe is in a state of confusion and disorder; all is created by
him, yet events rarely happen according to his projects. He foresees
everything, but his foresight prevents nothing. He is impatient if any
offend him; at the same time he puts every one in the way of offending
him. His knowledge is admired in the perfection of his works, but his
works are full of imperfections, and of little permanence. He is
continually occupied in creating and destroying, then repairing what he
has done, never appearing to be satisfied with his work. In all his
enterprises he seeks but his own glory, but he does not succeed in being
glorified. He works but for the good of his subjects, and most of them
lack the necessities of life. Those whom he seems to favor, are
generally those who are the least satisfied with their fate; we see them
all continually revolting against a master whose greatness they admire,
whose wisdom they extol, whose goodness they worship, and whose
justice they fear, revering orders which they never follow. This empire
is the world; its monarch is God; His ministers are the priests; their
subjects are men.

II.--WHAT IS THEOLOGY?
There is a science which has for its object only incomprehensible
things. Unlike all others, it occupies itself but with things unseen.
Hobbes calls it "the kingdom of darkness." In this land all obey laws
opposed to those which men acknowledge in the world they inhabit. In
this marvelous region light is but darkness, evidence becomes doubtful
or false, the impossible becomes credible, reason is an unfaithful guide,
and common sense changed into delirium. This science is named
Theology, and this Theology is a continual insult to human reason.

III.
By frequent repetition of if, but, and perhaps, we succeed in forming an
imperfect and broken system which perplexes men's minds to the extent
of making them forget the clearest notions, and to render uncertain the

most palpable truths. By the aid of this systematic nonsense, all nature
has become an inexplicable enigma for man; the visible world has
disappeared to give place to invisible regions; reason is obliged to give
place to imagination, which can lead us only to the land of chimeras
which she herself has invented.

IV.--MAN BORN NEITHER RELIGIOUS NOR DEISTICAL.
All religious principles are founded upon the idea of a God, but it is
impossible for men to have true ideas of a being who does not act upon
any one of their senses. All our ideas are but pictures of objects which
strike us. What can the idea of God represent to us when it is evidently
an idea without an object? Is not such an idea as impossible as an effect
without a cause? An idea without a prototype, is it anything but a
chimera? Some theologians, however, assure us that the idea of God is
innate, or that men have this idea from the time of their birth. Every
principle is a judgment; all judgment is the effect of experience;
experience is not acquired but by the exercise of the senses: from which
it follows that religious principles are drawn from nothing, and are not
innate.

V.--IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO BELIEVE IN A GOD, AND THE
MOST REASONABLE THING IS NOT TO THINK OF HIM.
No religious system can be founded otherwise than upon the nature of
God and of men, and upon the relations they bear