Religion has in every age kept the human mind in darkness and held it in
ignorance of its true relations, of its real duties and its true
interests. It is but in removing its clouds and phantoms that we may
find the sources of truth, reason, morality, and the actual motives
which inspire virtue. This religion puts us on the wrong track for the
causes of our evils, and the natural remedies which we can apply. Far
from curing them, it can but multiply them and render them more durable.
Let us, then, say, with the celebrated Lord Bolingbroke, in his
posthumous works: "Theology is the Box of Pandora; and if it is
impossible to close it, it is at least useful to give warning that this
fatal box is open."
*****
I believe, my dear friends, that I have given you a sufficient
preventative against all these follies. Your reason will do more than my
discourses, and I sincerely wish that we had only to complain of being
deceived! But human blood has flowed since the time of Constantine for
the establishment of these horrible impositions. The Roman, the Greek,
and the Protestant churches by vain, ambitious, and hypocritical
disputes have ravaged Europe, Asia, and Africa. Add to these men, whom
these quarrels murdered, the multitudes of monks and of nuns, who became
sterile by their profession, and you will perceive that the Christian
religion has destroyed half of the human race.
I conclude with the desire that we may return to Nature, whose declared
enemy the Christian religion is, and which necessarily instructs us to
do unto others as we would wish them to do unto us. Then the universe
will be composed of good citizens, just fathers, obedient children,
tender friends. Nature has given us this Religion, in giving us Reason.
May fanaticism pervert it no more! I die filled with these desires more
than with hope.