You now know, Madam, what you ought to attach to the mysteries and
ceremonies of that religion you propose to meditate on, and adore in
silence. I proceed how to examine some of those practices to which the
priests tell us the Deity attaches his complaisance and his favors.
In consequence of the false, sinister, contradictory, and incompatible
ideas, which all revealed religions give us of the Deity, the priests
have invented a crowd of unreasonable usages, but which are conformable
to these erroneous notions that they have framed of this Being. God
is always regarded as a man full of passion, sensible to presents,
to flatteries, and marks of submission; or rather as a fantastic and
punctilious sovereign, who is very seriously angry when we neglect
to show him that respect and obeisance which the vanity of earthly
potentates exacts from their vassals.
It is after these notions so little agreeable to the Deity, that the
priests have conjured up a crowd of practices and strange inventions,
ridiculous, inconvenient, and often cruel; but by which they inform
us we shall merit the good favor of God, or disarm the wrath of the
Universal Lord. With some, all consists in prayers, offerings, and
sacrifices, with which they fancy God is well pleased. They forget that
a God who is good, who knows all things, has no need to be solicited;
that a God who is the author of all things has no need to be presented
with any part of his workmanship; that a God who knows his power has no
need of either flatteries or submissions, to remind him of his grandeur,
his power, or his rights; that a God who is Lord of all has no need of
offerings which belong to himself; that a God who has no need of any
thing cannot be won by presents, nor grudge to his creatures the goods
which they have received from his divine bounty.
For the want of making these reflections, simple as they are, all the
religions in the world are filled with an infinite number of frivolous
practices, by which men have long strove to render themselves acceptable
to the Deity. The priests who are always declared to be the ministers,
the favorites, the interpreters of God's will, have discovered how they
might most easily profit by the errors of mankind, and the presents
which they offer to the Deity. They are thence interested to enter into
the false ideas of the people, and even to redouble the darkness of
their minds. They have invented means to please unknown powers who
dispose of their fate--to excite their devotion and their zeal for
those invisible beings of whom they were themselves the visible
representatives. These priests soon perceived that in laboring for the
Gods they labored for themselves, and that they could appropriate the
major part of the presents, sacrifices, and offerings, which were made
to beings who never showed themselves in order to claim what their
devotees intended for them.
You thus perceive, Madam, how the priests have made common cause with
the Divinity. Their policy thence obliged them to favor and increase
the errors of the human kind. They talk of this ineffable Being as of
an interested monarch, jealous, full of vanity, who gives that it may
be restored to him again; who exacts continual signs of submission and
respect; who desires, without ceasing, that men may reiterate their
marks of respect for him; who wishes to be solicited; who bestows no
grace unless it be accorded to importunity for the purpose of making
it more valuable; and, above all, who allows himself to be appeased
and propitiated by gifts from which his ministers derive the greatest
advantage.
It is evident that it is upon these ideas borrowed from monarchical
courts here below that are founded all the practices, ceremonies, and
rites that we see established in all the religions of the earth. Each
sect has endeavored to make its God a monarch the most redoubtable, the
greatest, the most despotic, and the most selfish. The people acquainted
simply with human opinions, and lull of debasement, have adopted without
examination the inventions which the Deity has shown them as the fittest
to obtain his favor and soften his wrath. The priests fail not to
adapt these practices, which they have invented, to their own system of
religion and personal interest; and the ignorant and vulgar have allowed
themselves to be blindly led by these guides. Habit has familiarized
them with things upon which they never reason, and they make a duty of
the routine which has been transmitted to them from age to age, and from
father to child.
The infant, as soon as it can be made to understand any thing, is taught
mechanically to join its little hands in prayer. His tongue is forced
to lisp a formula which it does not comprehend, addressed to a God which
its understanding can never conceive.
In the arms of its nurse it is carried into the temple or church, where
its eyes are habituated to contemplate spectacles, ceremonies, and
pretended mysteries, of which, even when it shall have arrived at mature
age, it will still understand nothing. If at this latter period any one
should ask the reason of his conduct, or desire to know why he made
this conduct a sacred and important duty, he could give no explanation,
except that he was instructed in his tender years to respectfully
observe certain usages, which he must regard as sacred, as they were
unintelligible to him. If an attempt was made to undeceive him in regard
to these habitual futilities, either he would not listen, or he would
be irritated against whoever denied the notions rooted in his brain. Any
man who wished to lead him to good sense, and who reasoned against the
habits he had contracted, would be regarded by him as ridiculous and
extravagant, or he would repulse him as an infidel and blasphemer,
because his instructions lead him thus to designate every man who fails
to pursue the same routine as himself, or who does not attach the same
ideas as the devotee to things which the latter has never examined.
What horror does it not fill the Christian devotee with if you tell him
that his priest is unnecessary! What would be his surprise if you
were to prove to him, even on the principles of his religion, that the
prayers which in his infancy he had been taught to consider as the most
agreeable to his God, are unworthy and unnecessary to this Deity! For
if God knows all, what need is there to remind him of the wants of
his creatures whom he loves? If God is a father full of tenderness and
goodness, is it necessary to ask him to "give us day by day our daily
bread"? If this God, so good, foresaw the wants of his children, and
knew much better than they what they could not know of themselves,
whence is it he bids them importune him to grant them their requests? If
this God is immutable and wise, how can his creatures change the fixed
resolution of the Deity? If this God is just and good, how can he injure
us, or place us in a situation to require the use of that prayer which
entreats the Deity _not to lead us into temptation?_
You see by this, Madam, that there is but a very small portion of what
the Christians pretend they understand and consider absolutely necessary
that accords at all with what they tell us has been dictated by God
himself. You see that the Lord's prayer itself contains many absurdities
and ideas totally contrary to those which every Christian ought to have
of his God. If you ask a Christian why he repeats without ceasing this
vain formula, on which he never reflects, he can assign little other
reason than that he was taught in his infancy to clasp his hands, repeat
words the meaning of which his priest, not himself, is alone bound to
understand. He may probably add that he has ever been taught to consider
this formula requisite, as it was the most sacred and the most proper to
merit the favor of Heaven.
We should, without doubt, form the same judgment of that multitude of
prayers which our teachers recommend to us daily. And if we believe
them, man, to please God, ought to pass a large portion of his existence
in supplicating Heaven to pour down its blessings on him. But if God is
good, if he cherishes his creatures, if he knows their wants, it seems
superfluous to pray to him. If God changes not, he has never promised to
alter his secret decrees, or, if he has, he is variable in his fancies,
like man; to what purpose are all our petitions to him? If God is
offended with us, will he not reject prayers which insult his goodness,
his justice, and infinite wisdom?
What motives, then, have our priests to inculcate constantly the
necessity of prayer? It is that they may thereby hold the minds of
mankind in opinions more advantageous to themselves. They represent God
to us under the traits of a monarch difficult of access, who cannot be
easily pacified, but of whom they are the ministers, the favorites, and
servants. They become intercessors between this invisible Sovereign
and his subjects of this nether world. They sell to the ignorant their
intercession with the All-powerful; they pray for the people, and by
society they are recompensed with real advantages, with riches, honors,
and ease. It is on the necessity of prayer that our priests, our monks,
and all religious men establish their lazy existence; that they profess
to win a place in heaven for their followers and paymasters, who,
without this intercession, could neither obtain the favor of God, nor
avert his chastisements and the calamities the world is so often visited
with. The prayers of the priests are regarded as a universal remedy
for all evils. All the misfortunes of nations are laid before these
spiritual guides, who generally find public calamities a source of
profit to themselves, as it is then they are amply paid for their
supposed mediation between the Deity and his suffering creatures. They
never teach the people that these things spring from the course of
nature and of laws they cannot control. O, no. They make the world
believe they are the judgments of an angry God. The evils for which they
can find no remedy are pronounced marks of the divine wrath; they are
supernatural, and the priests must be applied to. God, whom they call
so good, appears sometimes obstinately deaf to their entreaties. Their
common Parent, so tender, appears to derange the order of nature to
manifest his anger. The God who is so just, sometimes punishes men who
cannot divine the cause of his vengeance. Then, in their distress,
they flee to the priests, who never fail to find motives for the divine
wrath. They tell them that God has been offended; that he has been
neglected; that he exacts prayers, offerings, and sacrifices; that he
requires, in order to be appeased, that his ministers should receive
more consideration, should be heard more attentively, and should be more
enriched. Without this, they announce to the vulgar that their harvests
will fail, that their fields will be inundated, that pestilence, famine,
war, and contagion will visit the earth; and when these misfortunes have
arrived, they declare they may be removed by means of prayers.
If fear and terror permitted men to reason, they would discover that
all the evils, as well as the good things of this life, are necessary
consequences of the order of nature. They would perceive that a wise
God, immutable in his conduct, cannot allow any thing to transpire but
according to those laws of which he is regarded as the author. They
would discover that the calamities, sterility, maladies, contagions,
and even death itself are effects as necessary as happiness, abundance,
health, and life itself. They would find that wars, wants, and famine
are often the effects of human imprudence; that they would submit to
accidents which they could not prevent, and guard against those they
could foresee; they would remedy by simple and natural means those
against which they possessed resources; and they would undeceive
themselves in regard to those supernatural means and those useless
prayers of which the experience of so many ages ought to have disabused
men, if they were capable of correcting their religious prejudices.
This would not, indeed, redound to the advantage of the priests, since
they would become useless if men perceived the inefficacy of their
prayers, the futility of their practices, and the absence of all
rational foundation for those exercises of piety which place the human
race upon their knees. They compel their votaries always to run down
those who discredit their pretensions. They terrify the weak minded by
frightful ideas which they hold out to them of the Deity. They forbid
them to reason; they make them deaf to reason, by conforming them to
ordinances the most out of the way, the most unreasonable, and the most
contradictory to the very principles on which they pretend to establish
them. They change practices, arbitrary in themselves, or, at most,
indifferent and useless, into important duties, which they proclaim the
most essential of all duties, and the most sacred and moral. They know
that man ceases to reason in proportion as he suffers or is wretched.
Hence, if he experiences real misfortunes, the priests make sure of him;
if he is not unfortunate they menace him; they create imaginary fears
and troubles.
In fine, Madam, when you wish to examine with your own eyes, and not by
the help of the pretensions set up and imposed on you by the ministers
of religion, you will be compelled to acknowledge the things we have
been considering as useful to the priests alone; they are useless to the
Deity, and to society they are often very obviously pernicious. Of what
utility can it be in any family to behold an excess of devotion in the
mother of that family? One would suppose it is not necessary for a lady
to pass all her time in prayers and in meditations, to the neglect
of other duties. Much less is it the part of a Catholic mother to be
closeted in mystic conversation with her priest. Will her husband, her
children, and her friends applaud her who loses most of her time in
prayers, and meditations, and practices, which can tend only to render
her sour, unhappy, and discontented? Would it not be much better that a
father or a mother of a family should be occupied with what belonged to
their domestic affairs than to spend their time in masses, in hearing
sermons, in meditating on mysterious and unintelligible dogmas, or
boasting about exercises of piety that tend to nothing?
Madam, do you not find in the country you inhabit a great many devotees
who are sunk in debt, whose fortune is squandered away on priests, and
who are incapable of retrieving it? Content to put their conscience to
rights on religious matters, they neither trouble themselves about the
education of their children, nor the arrangement of their fortune, nor
the discharge of their debts. Such men as would be thrown into despair
did they omit one mass, will consent to leave their creditors without
their money, ruined by their negligence as much as by their principles.
In truth, Madam, on what side soever you survey this religion, you will
find it good for nothing.
What shall we say of those fetes which are so multiplied amongst us? Are
they not evidently pernicious to society? Are not all days the same to
the Eternal? Are there _gala_ days in heaven? Can God be honored by the
business of an artisan or a merchant, who, in place of earning bread on
which his family may subsist, squanders away his time in the church, and
afterwards goes to spend his money in the public house? It is necessary,
the priests will tell you, for man to have repose. But will he not seek
repose when he is fatigued by the labor of his hands? Is it not more
necessary that every man should labor in his vocation than go to a
temple to chant over a service which benefits only the priests, or hear
a sermon of which he can understand nothing? And do not such as find
great scruple in doing a necessary labor on Sunday frequently sit down
and get drunk on that day, consuming in a few hours the receipts of
their week's labor? But it is for the interest of the clergy that all
other shops should be shut when theirs are open. We may thence easily
discover why fetes are necessary.
Is it not contrary to all the notions which we can form of the goodness
and wisdom of the Divinity, that religion should form into duties both
abstinence and privations, or that penitences and austerities should be
the sole proofs of virtue? What should be said of a father who should
place his children at a table loaded with the fruits of the earth, but
who, nevertheless, should debar them from touching certain of them,
though both nature and reason dictated their use and nutriment? Can we,
then, suppose that a Deity wise and good interdicts to his creatures
the enjoyment of innocent pleasures, which may contribute to render life
agreeable, or that a God who has created all things, every object the
most desirable to the nourishment and health of man, should nevertheless
forbid him their use? The Christian religion appears to doom
its votaries to the punishment of Tantalus. The most part of the
superstitions in the world have made of God a capricious and jealous
sovereign, who amuses himself by tempting the passions and exciting the
desires of his slaves, without permitting them the gratification of
the one or the enjoyment of the other. We see among all sects the
portraiture of a chagrined Deity, the enemy of innocent amusements, and
offended at the well being of his creatures. We see in all countries
many men so foolish as to imagine they will merit heaven by fighting
against their nature, refusing the goods of fortune, and tormenting
themselves under an idea that they will thereby render themselves
agreeable to God. Especially do they believe that they will by these
means disarm the fury of God, and prevent the inflictions of his
chastisements, if they immolate themselves to a being who always
requires victims.
We find these atrocious, fanatical, and senseless ideas in the Christian
religion, which supposes its God as cruel to exact sufferings from men
as death from his only Son. If a God exempt from all sin is himself also
the sufferer for the sins of all, which is the doctrine of those who
maintain universal redemption, it is not surprising to see men that are
sinners making it a duty to assemble in large meetings, and invent
the means of rendering themselves miserable. These gloomy notions have
banished men to the desert They have fanatically renounced society and
the pleasures of life, to be buried alive, believing they would merit
heaven if they afflicted themselves with stripes and passed their
existence in mummical ceremonies, as injurious to their health as
useless to then-country. And these are the false ideas by which the
Divinity is transformed into a tyrant as barbarous as insensible, who,
agreeably to _priestcraft_, has prescribed how both men and women might
live in ennui, penitence, sorrow, and tears; for the perfection of
monastic institutions consists in the ingenious art of self-torture.
But sacerdotal pride finds its account in these austerities. Rigid monks
glory in barbarous rules, the observance of which attracts the respect
of the credulous, who imagine that men who torment themselves are indeed
the favorites of heaven. But these monks, who follow these austere
rules, are fanatics, who sacrifice themselves to the pride of the
clergy who live in luxury and in wealth, although their duped, imbecile
brethren have been known to make it a point of honor to die of famine.
How often, Madam, has your attention not been aroused when you recalled
to mind the fate of the poor religious men of the desert, whom an
unnecessary vow has condemned, as it were voluntarily, to a life as
rigorous as if spent in a prison! Seduced by the enthusiasm of youth, or
forced by the orders of inhuman parents, they have been obliged to carry
to the tomb the chains of their captivity. They have been obliged to
submit without appeal to a stern superior, who finds no consolation in
the discharge of his slavish task but in making his empire more hard
to those beneath him. You have seen unfortunate young ladies obliged
to renounce their rank in society, the innocent pleasures of youth, the
joys of their sex, to groan forever under a rigorous despotism, to which
indiscreet vows had bound them. All monasteries present to us an odious
group of fanatics, who have separated themselves from society to pass
the remainder of their lives in unhappiness. The society of these
devotees is calculated solely to render their lives mutually more
unsupportable. But it seems strange that men should expect to merit
heaven by suffering the torments of hell on earth; yet so it is,
and reason has too often proved insufficient to convince them of the
contrary.
If this religion does not call all Christians to these sublime
perfections, it nevertheless enjoins on all its votaries suffering and
mortifying of the body. The church prescribes privations to all her
children, and abstinences and fasts; these things they practise among
us as duties; and the devotees imagine they render themselves very
agreeable to the Divinity when they have scrupulously fulfilled those
minute and puerile practices, by which they tell us that the priests
have proof whether their patience and obedience be such as are dictated
by and acceptable to Heaven. What a ridiculous idea is it, for example,
to make of the Deity a trio of persons; to teach the faithful that this
Deity takes notice of what kinds of food his people eat; that he is
displeased if they eat beef or mutton, but that he is delighted if they
eat beans and fish! In good sooth, Madam, our priests, who sometimes
give us very lofty ideas of God, please themselves but too often with
making him strangely contemptible!
The life of a good Christian or of a devotee is crowded with a host of
useless practices, which would be at least pardonable if they procured
any good for society. But it is not for that purpose that our priests
make so much ado about them; they only wish to have submissive slaves,
sufficiently blind to respect their caprices as the orders of a wise
God; sufficiently stupid to regard all their practices as divine duties,
and they who scrupulously observe them as the real favorites of the
Omnipotent. What good can there result to the world from the abstinence
of meats, so much enjoined on some Christians, especially when other
Christians judge this injunction a very ridiculous law, and contrary
to reason and the order of things established in nature? It is not
difficult to perceive amongst us that this injunction, openly violated
by the rich, is an oppression on the poor, who are compelled to pay
dearly for an indifferent, often an unwholesome diet, that injures
rather than repairs the natural strength of their constitution. Besides,
do not the priests sell this permission to the rich, to transgress an
injunction the poor must not violate with impunity? In fine, they seem
to have multiplied our practices, our duties, and our tortures, to have
the advantage of multiplying our faults, and making a good bargain out
of our pretended crimes.
The more we examine religion the more reason shall we have to be
convinced that it is beneficial to the _priests alone_. Every part of
this religion conspires to render us submissive to the fantasies of our
spiritual guides, to labor for their grandeur, to contribute to
their riches. They appoint us to perform disadvantageous duties; they
prescribe impossible perfections, purposely that we may transgress; they
have thereby engendered in pious minds scruples and difficulties which
they condescendingly appease for money. A devotee is obliged to observe,
without ceasing, the useless and frivolous rules of his priest, and even
then he is subject to continual reproaches; he is perpetually in want
of his priest to expiate his pretended faults with which he charges
himself, and the omission of duties that he regards as the most
important acts of his life, but which are rarely such as interest
society or benefit it by their performance. By a train of religious
prejudices with which the priests infect the mind of their weak
devotees, these believe themselves infinitely more culpable when they
have omitted some useless practice, than if they had committed some
great injustice or atrocious sin against humanity. It is commonly
sufficient for the devotees to be on good terms with God, whether they
be consistent in their actions with man, or in the practice of those
duties they owe to their fellow beings.
Besides, Madam, what real advantage does society derive from repeated
prayers, abstinences, privations, seclusions, meditations, and
austerities, to which religion attaches so much value? Do all the
mysterious practices of the priests produce any real good? Are they
capable of calming the passions, of correcting vices, and of giving
virtue to those who most scrupulously observe them? Do we not daily see
persons who believe themselves damned if they forget a mass, if they eat
a fowl on Friday, if they neglect a confession, though they are guilty
at the same time of great dereliction to society? Do they not hold the
conduct of those very unjust, and very cruel, who happen to have the
misfortune of not thinking and doing as they think and act? These
practices, out of which a great number of men have created essential
duties, but too commonly absorb all moral duties; for if the devotees
are over-religious, it is rare to find them virtuous. Content with doing
what religion requires, they trouble themselves very little about other
matters. They believe themselves the favored of God, and that it is a
proof of this if they are detested by men, whose good opinion they
are seldom anxious to deserve. The whole life of a devotee is spent
in fulfilling, with scrupulous exactitude, duties indifferent to God,
unnecessary to himself, and useless to others. He fancies he is virtuous
when he has performed the rites which his religion prescribes; when he
has meditated on mysteries of which he understands nothing; when he has
struggled with sadness to do things in which a man of sense can perceive
no advantage; in fine, when he has endeavored to practise, as much as in
him lies, the Evangelical or Christian virtues, in which he thinks all
morality essentially consists.
I shall proceed in my next letter to examine these virtues, and to prove
to you that they are contrary to the ideas we ought to form of God,
useless to ourselves, and often dangerous to others. In the mean time, I
am, &c.