Not content with having enveloped their God in mysterious clouds and
Judaic fables, the teachers of Christianity seen to be still busied
in the multiplication of mysteries, and embarrassing more and more the
reason of their disciples. Religion, designed to enlighten mankind,
is only a tissue of enigmas; a labyrinth which sound sense can never
explore. That which ancient superstitions found most incomprehensible,
seems not unaptly to be interwoven with a religious system, which
imposes eternal silence on reason. The fatalism of the Grecians has been
transformed, in the hands of Christian priests, into predestination.
According to this tyrannic dogma, the God of mercies has destined the
greatest part of mankind to eternal torments. He places them in this
world that they, by the abuse of their faculties and liberty, may render
themselves worthy of the implacable wrath of their Creator. A benevolent
and prescient God gives to mankind a free will, of which he knows they
will make so perverse an use, as to merit eternal damnation. Thus,
instead of furnishing them with the propensities necessary to their
happiness, he permits them to act, only that he may have the pleasure of
plunging them into hell. Nothing can be more horrid than the description
given us by Christians of this place, destined to be the future
residence of almost all mankind. There a merciful God will, throughout
an eternity, bathe himself in the tears of wretches, whom he created for
misery. Sinners, shut up in this awful dungeon, will be delivered up for
ever to devouring flames. There shall be heard weeping, and wailing,
and gnashing of teeth. The torments of this place shall, at the end of
millions of years, have only begun.
The consoling hope of a distant mitigation of pain shall be unknown. In
one word, God, by an act of his omnipotence, shall render man capable of
miseries uninterrupted, and interminable. His justice will punish finite
crimes, the effects of which are limited by time, by torments infinite
in degree and duration. Such is the idea a Christian forms of the God
that demands his love. This tyrant, creates him only to render him
miserable; he gives him reason to deceive him, and propensities to lead
him astray. He gives him liberty, that he may incur eternal ruin. He
gives him advantages above the beasts, that he may be subjected to
torments, which beasts, like inanimate substances, are incapable of
suffering. The dogma of predestination represents the lot of man as
worse than that of brutes and stones.1
1 The doctrine of predestination was also a tenet of the
Jews. In the writings of Moses, a God is exhibited, who, in
his decrees, is partially fond of a chosen people, and
unjust to all others. The theology and history of the Greeks
represent men as punished for necessary crimes, foretold by
oracles. Of this Orestes, Oedipus, Ajax, &c. are examples.
Mankind have always described God as the most unjust of all
beings. According to the Jansenists, God bestows his grace
on whom he pleases, without any regard to merit. This is
much more conformable to the Christian, Pagan, and Jewish
fatalism, than the doctrine of the Molinists, who say that
God grants his grace to all who ask and deserve it. It is
certain that Christians in general are true fatalists. They
evade this accusation, by declaring that the designs of God
are mysteries. If so, why do they eternally dispute about
them?
It is true, the Christian religion promises a blissful residence to
those whom God shall have chosen to be objects of his love. But this
place is reserved only for a small number of elect, who, without any
merit in themselves, shall, nevertheless, have unbounded claims upon the
grace of God.
Thus, the Tartarus and Elysium of the heathen mythology, invented by
impostors to awe and seduce mankind, have been transplanted into the
system of the Christians, who have given them the new appellation of
Heaven and Hell.
The followers of the Christian religion believe in a race of invisible
beings, different from man and subordinate to God, part of whom is
employed in executing the wrath of God upon offenders; and part in
watching over his works, and particularly the preservation of man. The
former, being malevolent spirits, are called devils, demons, &c. the
latter, being benevolent spirits, are called angels. They are supposed
to have the faculty of rendering themselves sensible, and taking the
human form. Good angels are, in the imagination of Christians, what the
Nymphs, Lares, and Penates, were imagined to be by the heathens, and
what the Fairies were with writers of romances. The sacred books of the
Jews and Christians are replete with these marvellous beings, whom God
has sent to his favourites to be their guides, protectors, and tutelar
deities.
Devils are considered as the enemies and seducers of the human race, and
perpetually busied in drawing them into sin. A power is attributed to
them of performing miracles, similar to those wrought by the Most High;
and, above, a power that counteracts his, and renders all his projects
abortive. In fact, the Christian religion does not formally allow
the same power to the devil as to God; nevertheless, it supposes that
malevolent being prevents mankind from entering into the enjoyment of
the felicity destined them by the goodness of God, and leads most of
them into eternal perdition. Christians, however, do virtually attribute
to the devil an empire much more extensive than that of the Supreme
Being. The latter, with difficulty, saves a few elect; while the former
carries off, in spite of him, the greater part of mankind, who listen to
his destructive temptations, rather than the absolute commands of God.
This Satan, the cause of so much terror to Christians, was evidently
borrowed from the doctrine of two principles, formerly admitted in Egypt
and all the East. The Osyris and Typhon of the Egyptians, the Orosmades
and Aharimanes of the Persians and Chaldeans, have undoubtedly given
birth to the continual war between the God of Christians and his
formidable adversary. By this system mankind have endeavoured to account
for all the good and evil with which life is chequered. An Almighty
Devil serves to justify the Supreme Being with respect to all necessary
and unremitted evils which afflict the human race.
Such are the dreadful and mysterious doctrines upon which Christians
in general are agreed. There are many others which are peculiar
to different sects. Thus, a numerous sect of Christians admit an
intermediate state between heaven and hell, where souls, too sinful for
the former and too innocent for the latter, are subjected for a time, in
order to expiate by their sufferings the sin they commit in this life;
after undergoing this punishment, they are received into the abodes
of eternal felicity. This doctrine, which was evidently drawn from
the reveries of Plato, has, in the hands of the Roman priests, been
converted into an inexhaustible source of riches. They have arrogated
to themselves the power of opening the gates of purgatory, and pretend
that, by their prayers, they can mitigate the rigour of the divine
decrees, and abridge the torments of the souls, condemned to this place
by a just God.1
1 It is evident that the Roman Catholics are indebted to
Plato for their purgatory. That great philosopher divided
souls into three classes: the pure, the curable, and the
incurable. The first returned, by refusion, to the universal
soul of the world, or the divinity, from which they had
emanated; the second went to hell, where they passed in
review every year before the judges of that dark empire, who
suffered them to return to light when they had sufficiently
expiated their faults; the incurables remained in Tartarus,
where they were to suffer eternal torment. Plato, as well
as, Christian casuists, described the crimes, faults, &c.
which merit those different degrees of punishment.
Protestant divines, jealous probably of the riches of the Catholic
clergy, have imprudently rejected the doctrine of a purgatory, whereby
they have much diminished their own credit. It would, perhaps, have been
wiser to have rejected the doctrine of an hell, whence souls can never
be released, than that of purgatory, which is more reasonable, and from
which the clergy can deliver souls by means of that all-powerful agent,
money.
The preceding remarks shew, that the Christian religion has been often
inculcated and spread by dint of terror. By striking mankind with
horror they render them submissive, and remove all his dependence on his
reason.1
1 Mahomet perceived, as well as Christian divines, the
necessity of frightening mankind, in order to govern them.
"Those," says the Koran, "who do not believe, shall be
clothed in a garment of fire; boiling water shall be poured
on their heads; their skins and their entrails shall be
smitten with rods of iron. Whenever they shall strive to
escape from hell, and avoid its torments, they shall be
thrust again into it; and the devils say unto them, 'taste
the pain of burning'." See Alcoran, ch. viii.