What God Is.
I.
Until now we have fought the popular idea concerning the Divinity,
but we have not yet said what God is, and if we were asked, we should
say that the word represents to us an Infinite Being, of whom one
of his attributes is to be a substance of extent and consequently
eternal and infinite. The extent or the quantity not being finite or
divisible, it may be imagined that the matter was everywhere the same,
our understanding not distinguishing parts. For example, water, as
much as water is imagined, is divisible, and its parts separable from
one another, though as much as a corporeal substance it is neither
separable nor divisible. [22] Thus neither matter or quantity have
anything unworthy of God, for if all is God, and all comes surely
from his essence, it follows quite absolutely that He is all that
he contains, since it is incomprehensible that Beings quite material
should be contained in a Being who is not. That we may not think that
this is a new opinion, Tertullian, one of the foremost men among
the Christians, has pronounced against Apelles, that, "that which
is not matter is nothing," and against Praxias, that "all substance
is matter," without having this doctrine condemned in the four first
Councils of the Christian Church, oecumenical and general. [23]
II.
These sentiments are plain and the only ones that good and sound
judgment can form of God. However, there are but few who are satisfied
with such simplicity. Boorish people, who are accustomed to adulation
of opinion, demand a God who resembles earthly kings. The pomp and
circumstance surrounding them so fascinates, that to take away all
hope of going after death to increase the number of heavenly courtiers
enjoying the same pleasure which attaches to the Court of Kings,
is to take away the consolation and the only things which prevent
them from going to despair over the miseries of life. They want a
just and avenging God, who rewards and punishes after the manner of
kings, a God susceptible of all human passions and weaknesses. They
give him feet, hands, and ears, and yet they do not regard a God
so constituted as material. They say that man is his masterpiece,
and even his own image, but do not allow that the copy is like the
original. In a word, the God of the people of today is subject to as
many forms as Jupiter of the Pagans, and what is still more strange,
these follies contradict each other and shock good sense. The vulgar
reverence them because they firmly believe what the Prophets have
said, although these visionaries among the Hebrews, were the same
as the augurs and the diviners among the pagans. [24] They consult
the Bible as if God or nature was therein expounded to them in a
special manner, however this book is only a rhapsody of fragments,
gathered at various times, selected by several persons, and given
to the people according to the fancy of the Rabbins, who did not
publish them until after approving some, and rejecting others, and
seeing if they were conformable or opposed to the Law of Moses. [25]
Yes, such is the malice and stupidity of men that they prefer to
pass their lives disputing with one another, and worshipping a book
received from ignorant people; a book with little order or method,
which everyone admits as confused and badly conceived, only serving
to foment divisions.
Christians would rather adore this phantom than listen to the law
of Nature which God--that is to say, Nature, which is the active
principle--has written in the heart of man. All other laws are but
human fictions, and pure illusions forged, not by Demons or evil
spirits, which are fanciful ideas, but by the skill of Princes and
Ecclesiastics to give the former more warrant for their authority,
and to enrich the latter by the traffic in an infinity of chimeras
which sell to the ignorant at a good price.
All other laws are not supported save on the authority of the Bible,
in the original of which appear a thousand instances of extraordinary
and impossible things, [26] and which speaks only of recompenses or
punishments for good or bad actions, but which are wisely deferred
for a future life, relying that the trick will not be discovered in
this, no one having returned from the other to tell the news. Thus,
men kept ever wavering between hope and fear, are held to their duty
by the belief they aver that God has created man only to render him
eternally happy or unhappy, and which has given rise to the infinity
of religions which we are about to discuss.