What has been said is sufficient to shew what we ought to think of
Christian morality. If we examine the virtues recommended in the
Christian religion, we find them but ill calculated for mankind.
They lift him above his sphere, are useless to society, and often of
dangerous consequence. In the boasted precepts, which Jesus Christ came
to give mankind, we find little but extravagant maxims, the practice
of which is impossible, and rules which, literally followed, must prove
injurious to society. In those of his precepts that are practicable,
we find nothing which was not as well or better known to the sages of
antiquity, without the aid of Revelation.
According to the Messiah, the whole duty of man consists in loving God
above all things, and his neighbour as himself. Is it possible to obey
this precept? Can man love a God above all things, who is represented
as wrathful, capricious, unjust, and implacable? who is said to be cruel
enough to damn his creatures eternally? Can man love, above all things,
an object the most dreadful that human imagination could ever conceive?
Can such an object excite in the human heart a sentiment of love? How
can we love that which we dread? How can we delight in the God under
whose rod we tremble? Do we not deceive ourselves, when we think we love
a being so terrible, and so calculated to excite nothing but horror?1
1 Seneca says, with much truth, that a man of sense cannot
fear the Gods, because no man can love what he fears. De
Benef. 4. The Bible says, the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom. I think it rather the beginning of
folly.
Is it even practicable for mankind to love their neighbours as
themselves? Every man naturally loves himself in preference to all
others. He loves his fellow-creatures only in proportion as they
contribute to his happiness. He exercises virtue in doing good to his
neighbour. He acts generously when he sacrifices his self love to his
love for another. Yet he will never love his fellow creatures but for
the useful qualities he finds in them. He can love them no farther than
they are known to him, and his love for them must ever be governed by
the good he receives from them.
To love one's enemies is then impossible. A man may abstain from doing
evil to the person by whom he is injured; but love is an affection
which can be excited in our hearts only by an object which we supposed
friendly to us. Politic nations, who have enacted just and wise
laws, have always forbidden individual to revenge, or do justice to
themselves, A sentiment of generosity, of greatness of soul, or heroism,
may induce mankind to do good to those from whom they suffer injuries.
By such means they exalt themselves above their enemies, and may even
change the disposition of their hearts. Thus, without having recourse
to a supernatural morality, we feel that it is our interest to stifle
in our hearts the lust of revenge. Christians may, therefore, cease to
boast the forgiveness of injuries, as a precept that could be given
only by their God, and which proves the divine origin of their morality.
Pythagoras, long before the time of Christ, had said, let men revenge
themselves upon their enemies, only by labouring to convert them into
friends. Socrates taught that it was not lawful for a man, who had
received an injury, to revenge it by doing another injury.
Christ must have forgotten that he spoke to men, when, in order
to conduct them to perfection, he commanded them to abandon their
possessions to the avidity of the first who should demand them; to turn
the other cheek to receive a new insult; to oppose no resistance to
the most outrageous violence; to renounce the perishable riches of this
world; to forsake houses, possessions, relations, and friends to follow
him; and to reject even the most innocent pleasures. Who does not see,
in these sublime precepts, the language of enthusiasm and hyperbole? Are
not they calculated to discourage man, and throw him into despair? If
literally practised, would they not prove ruinous to society?
What shall we say of the morality, which commands the human heart to
detach itself from objects which reason commands it to love? When
we refuse the blessings offered us by nature, do we not despise the
benefactions of the One Supreme? What real good can result to society
from the melancholy and ferocious virtues which Christians consider
indispensible?
Can a man continue useful to society, when his mind is perpetually
agitated with imaginary terrors, gloomy ideas, and black inquietudes,
which incapacitate him for the performance of his duties to his family,
his country, and mankind? If the Christian adhere strictly to
the gloomy principles of his religion, must he not become equally
insupportable to himself, and those by whom he is surrounded?
It cannot be said, that, in general, fanaticism and enthusiasm are the
bases of the morality of Christ. The virtues which he recommends tend to
render men unsocial, to plunge them into melancholy, and often to render
them injurious to their fellow-creatures. Among human beings, human
virtues are necessary; Christian virtues are not calculated on the scale
of real life. Society has need of real virtues, from which it may derive
energy, activity, and support. Vigilance, labour, and affection, are
necessary to families. A desire of enjoying lawful pleasures, and
augmenting the sum of their happiness, is necessary to all mankind.
The Christian religion is perpetually busied in degrading mankind
by threatening them with dismaying terrors, or diverting them with
frivolous hopes; sentiments equally proper to turn them from their true
duties. If the Christian literally obey the precepts of his legislator,
he will ever be either an useless or injurious member of society.1
1 Notwithstanding the eulogies lavished by Christians on the
precepts of their divine master, some of them are wholly
contrary to equity and right reason. When Jesus says, make
to yourselves friends in heaven with the mammon of
unrighteousness, does he not plainly insinuate, that we may
take from others wherewithal to give alms to the poor?
Divines will say that he spoke in parables; these parables
are, however, easily unfolded. In the mean time, this
precept is but too well followed. Many Christians cheat and
swindle during all their lives, to have the pleasure of
making donations at their death to churches, monasteries,
&c. The Messiah, at another time, treated his mother, who
with parental solicitude was seeking him, extremely ill. He
commands his disciples to steal an ass. He drowns an herd of
swine, &c. It must be confessed, these things do not agree
extremely well with good morality.
What real advantage can mankind derive from those ideal virtues, which
Christians style evangelic, divine, &c. and which they prefer to the
social, humane, and substantial virtues, and without which they pretend
no man can please God, or enter into his glory? Let us examine those
boasted virtues in detail. Let us see of what utility they are to
society, and whether they truly merit the preference which is given
them, to those which are pointed out by reason as necessary to the
welfare of mankind.
The first of the Christian virtues is faith, which serves as a
foundation for all the others. It consists in an impossible conviction
of the revealed doctrines and absurd fables which the Christian religion
commands its disciples to believe. Hence it appears that this virtue
exacts a total renunciation of reason, and impracticable assent to
improbable facts; and a blind submission to the authority of priests,
who are the only guarantees of the truth of the doctrines and miracles
that every Christian must believe under penalty of damnation.
This virtue, although necessary to all mankind, is nevertheless, a gift
of Heaven, and the effect of a special grace. It forbids all doubt and
enquiry; and it deprives man of the liberty of exercising his reason
and reflection. It reduces him to the passive acquiescence of beasts in
matters which he is, at the same time, told are of all things the most
important to his happiness. Hence it is plain, that faith is a virtue
invented by men, who, shrinking from the light of reason, deceived their
fellow-creatures, to subject them to their own authority, and degraded
them that they might exercise an empire over them. If faith be a virtue,
it is certainly useful only to the spiritual guides of the Christians,
for they alone gather its fruits. It cannot but be injurious to other
men, who are taught by it to despise that reason, which distinguishes
them from brutes, and is their only faithful guide in this world.
Christians, however, represent this reason as perverted, and as
unfaithful guide; by which they seem to intimate that it was not made
for reasonable beings. May we not, however, ask them how far this
renunciation of reason ought to be carried? Do not they themselves, in
certain cases, have recourse to reason? Do they not appeal to reason,
when they endeavour to prove the existence of their God?
Be this as it may, it is an absurdity to say we believe that of which
we have no conception. What, then, are the motives of the Christian, for
pretending to such a belief? His confidence in his spiritual guides. But
what is the foundation of this confidence? Revelation. On what, then, is
Revelation itself founded? On the authority of spiritual guides. Such
is the manner in which Christians reason. Their arguments in favour of
faith are comprised in the following sentence. To believe our religion
it is necessary to have faith, and to have faith you must believe in our
religion. Or, it is necessary to have faith already, in order to believe
in the necessity of faith.1
1 Many divines have maintained, that faith without works is
sufficient for salvation. This is the virtue which is, in
general, most cried up by them. It is, at least, the one
most necessary to their existence. It is not, therefore,
surprising that they have endeavoured to establish it by
fire and sword, it was for the support of faith that the
Inquisition burned heretics and Jews. Kings and priests
persecute for the establishment of faith. Christians have
destroyed those who were destitute of faith, in order to
demonstrate to them their error. O wondrous virtue, and
worthy of the God of mercies! His ministers punish mankind,
when he refuses them his grace!!!
The phantom Faith vanishes at the approach of the sun of Reason. It
can never sustain a calm examination. Hence it arises, that certain
Christian divines are so much at enmity with science. The founder of
their religion declared, that his law was made for ignorant men and
children. Faith is the effect of a grace which God seldom grants to
enlightened persons, who are accustomed to consult their reason. It
is adapted only to the minds of men who are incapable of reflection,
tendered insane by enthusiasm, or invincibly attached to the prejudices
of Childhood. Science must ever be at enmity with this religion; for in
proportion as either of them gains ground, the other must lose.
Another Christian virtue, proceeding from the former, is Hope. Founded
on the flattering promises given by this religion to those who render
themselves wretched in this life, it feeds their enthusiasm. It
induces them firmly to believe that God will reward, in heaven, their
gloominess, inutility, indolence, prayers, and detestation of pleasures
on earth. How can a man, who, being intoxicated with these pompous
hopes, becomes indifferent to his own happiness, concern himself with
that of his fellow-creatures? The Christian believes that he pleases his
God by rendering himself miserable in this life; and however flattering
his hopes may be for the future, they are here empoisoned by the idea of
a jealous God, who commands him to work out his own salvation with fear
and trembling, and who will plunge him into eternal torture, if he for
a moment has the weakness to be a man. Another of the Christian virtues
is Charity. It consists in loving God and our neighbour. We have always
seen how difficult, not to say impossible, it is to feel sentiments of
tenderness for any being whom we fear. It will, undoubtedly, be said,
that the fear of Christians is a filial fear. But words cannot change
the essence of things. Fear is a passion totally opposite to love. A
son, who fears the anger, and dreads the caprices of a father, can never
love him sincerely. The love, therefore, of a Christian to his God can
never be true. In vain he endeavours to feel sentiments of tenderness
for a rigorous master, at whose idea his heart shrinks back in terror.
He can never love him but as a tyrant, to whom his mouth renders the
homage that his heart refuses. The devotee is not honest to himself,
when he pretends to love his God. His affection is a dissembled homage,
like that which men are forced to render to certain inhuman despots,
who, while they tread their subjects in the dust, demand from them the
exterior marks of attachment.
If some tender minds, by force of illusion, feel sentiments of divine
love, it is then a mystic and romantic passion, produced by a warm
temperament, and an ardent imagination, which present their God to them
dressed in smiles, with all his imputed faults concealed.1 The love of
God is not the least incomprehensible mystery of this religion.
1 It is an ardent and tender temperament that produces
mystic devotion. Hysterical women are those who commonly
love God with most vivacity, they love him to distraction,
as they would love a man. In monasteries, particularly Ste.
Therese, Madeleine de Pazzy, Marie a la Coque, most of the
devotees are of this description. Their imagination grows
wild, and they give to their God, whom they paint in the
most captivating colours, that tenderness which they are not
permitted to bestow on beings of their own species. It
requires a strong imagination to be smitten with an object
unknown.
Charity, considered as the love of mankind, is a virtuous and necessary
disposition. It then becomes no more than that tender humanity which
attaches us to our fellows, and inclines us to love and assist them. But
how shall we reconcile this attachment with the commands of a jealous
God, who would have us to love none but himself, and who came to
separate the friend from the friend, and the son from the father?
According to the precepts of the gospel, it would be criminal to offer
God a heart shared by an earthly object. It would be idolatry thus
to confound the creature with the Creator. And further, how can the
Christian love beings who continually offend his God? Beings who would
continually betray himself into offence? How can he love sinners?
Experience, teaches us that the devout, obliged by principle to hate
themselves, have very little more affection for others. If this be not
the case, they have not arrived, at the perfection of divine love. We do
not find that those who are supposed to love the Creator most ardently,
shew much affection for his creatures. On the contrary, we see them fill
with bitterness all who surround them; they criticise with severity the
faults of others, and make it a crime to speak of human frailty with
indulgence.1 A sincere love for God must be accompanied with zeal. A
true Christian must be enraged when he sees his God offended. He must
aim himself with a just and holy severity to repress the offenders. He
must have an ardent desire to extend the empire of his religion. A zeal,
originating in this divine love, has been the source of the terrible
persecutions of which Christians have so often been guilty. Zeal
produces murderers as well as martyrs. It is this zeal that prompts
intolerant man to wrest the thunder from the hand of the Most High to
avenge him of his enemies. It is this zeal that causes members of the
same state, and the same family, to detest and torment each other for
opinions, and puerile ceremonies, which they are led to esteem as of
the last importance. It is this zeal that has a thousand times, kindled
those religious wars so remarkable for their atrocity. Finally, it is
this zeal for religion which justifies calumny, treason, carnage,
and, in short, the disorders most fatal to society. It has always
been considered as lawful to employ artifice, falsehood, and force, in
support of the cause of God. The most choleric and corrupted men are
commonly the most zealous. They hope that, for the sake of their
zeal, Heaven will pardon the depravity of their manners, be it ever so
excessive.
1 Devotees are generally considered as scourges of society.
A devout woman has seldom the talent of conciliating the
love of her husband and his domestics. A gloomy and
melancholy religion cannot render its disciples very
amiable. A sad and sullen monarch must have sad and sullen
subjects: Christians have judiciously remarked, that Jesus
Christ wept, but never smiled.
It is from an effect of the same zeal that enthusiastic Christians fly
over every sea, and Continent to extend the empire of their God and make
new proselytes. Stimulated by this zeal, missionaries go to trouble
the repose of what they call heathen nations, whilst they would
be astonished and enraged to find missionaries from those nations
endeavouring to propagate a new religion in their country.1
When these propagators of the faith have had power in their hands,
they have excited the most horrid rebellions; and have, in conquered
countries, exercised cruelties calculated only to render the God
detestable whom they pretended to serve. They have thought that men who
have so long been strangers to their God could be little better than
beasts; and, therefore, judged it lawful to exercise every kind of
violence over them. In the eyes of a Christian, an infidel is seldom
worthier than a dog.
It is apparently in imitation of the Jews that Christian nations
have usurped the possessions of the inhabitants of the new world.
The Castilians and Portuguese had the same right to the possession of
America and Africa, that the Hebrews had to make themselves masters of
the land of Canaan, and exterminate its inhabitants, or reduce them
to slavery. Have not Popes arrogated the right of disposing of distant
empires to their favourite Monarchs in Europe? These manifest violations
of the law of nature and of nations appeared just to those Christian
Princes, in favour of whom religion sanctified avarice, cruelty, and
usurpation.2
1 Kambi, Emperor of China, asked the Jesuit missionaries at
Pekin, what they would say, if he should send missionaries
to their nation. The revolts excited by the Jesuits in Japan
and Ethiopia are well known. A holy missionary has been
heard to say, that without muskets, missionaries could never
make proselytes.
2 St. Augustin says, that of right divine, all things belong
to the just. A maxim which is founded on a passage in the
Psalms, which says, the just shall eat the fruit of the
labour of the unrighteous. It is known that the Pope, by a
bull given in favour of the kings of Castile, Arragon, and
Portugal, fixed the line of demarcation which was to rule
the conquests which each had gained over the infidels. After
such principles, is not the whole earth to become a prey to
Christian rapacity?
Humility is, also, considered by Christians as a sublime virtue, and of
inestimable value. No super-natural and divine revelations are necessary
to teach us that pride does not become man, and that it renders him
disagreeable to others. All must be convinced, on a moment's reflection,
that arrogance, presumption, and vanity, are disgusting and contemptible
qualities.
But Christian humility is carried to a more refined extreme. The
Christian must renounce his reason, mistrust his virtues, refuse to do
justice to his own good actions, and repress all self-esteem, however
well merited. Whence it appears, that this pretended virtue only
degrades and debases man in his own eyes, deprives him of all energy,
and stifles in him every desire of rendering himself useful to society.
To forbid mankind to esteem themselves and merit the esteem of others,
is to break the only powerful string that inclines them to study,
industry, and noble actions. This Christian virtue is calculated only
to render them abject slaves, wholly useless to the world, and make
all virtue give place in them, to a blind submission to their spiritual
guides.
Let us not be surprised, that a religion which boasts of being
supernatural should endeavour to unnaturalize man. This religion, in
the delirium of its enthusiasm, forbids mankind to love themselves. It
commands them to hate pleasures and court grief. It makes a merit of
all voluntary evils they do unto themselves. Hence those austerities
and penances so destructive to health; those extravagant mortifications,
cruel privations, and gradual suicides, by which fanatic Christians
think they merit heaven. It must be confessed, all Christians do not
feel themselves capable of such marvellous perfections, but all believe
themselves more or less obliged to mortify the flesh, and renounce
the blessings prepared for them by a bounteous God, who, they suppose,
offers his good things only that they may be refused, and would be
offended should his creatures presume to touch them.
Reason cannot approve virtues which are destructive to ourselves, nor
admit a God who is delighted when mankind render themselves miserable,
and voluntarily submit to torments. Reason and experience, without
the aid of superstition, are sufficient to prove, that passions and
pleasures, pushed to excess, destroy us; and that the abuse of the
best things becomes a real evil. Nature herself inculcates upon us the
privation of things which prove injurious to us. A being, solicitous
for his own preservation, must restrain irregular propensities, and fly
whatever tends to his destruction. It is plain, that by the Christian
religion, suicide is, at least, indirectly authorised.
It was in consequence of these fanatical ideas that, in the earliest
ages of Christianity, the forests and deserts were peopled with perfect
Christians, who by flying from the world, left their families destitute
of support, and their country of citizens, to abandon themselves to an
idle and contemplative life. Hence those legions of monks and cenobites,
who, under the standards of different enthusiasts, have enrolled
themselves into a militia, burthensome and injurious to society. They
thought to merit heaven, by burying talents, which might be serviceable
to their fellow-citizens, and vowing a life of indolence and celibacy.
Thus, in nations which are the most faithful to Christianity, a
multitude of men render themselves useless and wretched all their lives.
What heart is so hard as to refuse a tear to the lot of the hapless
victims taken from that enchanting sex which was destined to give
happiness to our own! Unfortunate dupes of youthful enthusiasm, or
sacrificed to the ambitious views of imperious families, they are for
ever exiled from the world! They are bound by rash oaths to unending
slavery and misery. Engagements, contradicted by every precept of
nature, force them to perpetual virginity. It is in vain that riper
feelings, sooner or later, warm their breasts, and make them groan
under the weight of their imprudent vows. They regret their voluntary
sterility, and find themselves forgotten in society. Cut off from their
families, and subjected to troublesome and despotic gaolers, they sink
into a life of disgust, of bitterness, and tears. In fine, thus exiled
from society, thus unrelated and unbeloved, there only remains for them
the shocking consolation of seducing other victims to share with them
the torments of their solitude and mortifications.
The Christian religion seems to have undertaken to combat nature and
reason in every thing. If it admits some virtues, approved by reason,
it always carries them to a vicious excess. It never observes that
just mean, which is the point of perfection. All illicit and shameful
pleasures will be avoided by every man, who is desirous of his own
preservation, and the esteem of his fellow-creatures. The heathens knew
and taught this truth, notwithstanding the depravity of morals with
which they are reproached by Christians.1 The church even recommends
celibacy as a state of perfection, and considers the natural tie of
marriage as an approach to sin. God, however, declares in Genesis,
that it is not good for man to be alone. He also formally commanded all
creatures to increase and multiply. His Son, in the gospel, comes
to annul those laws. He teaches that, to attain to perfection, it is
necessary to avoid marriage, and resist the strongest desire with which
the breast of man is inspired--that of perpetuating his existence by a
posterity, and providing supports for his old age and infirmities.
1 Aristotle and Epictetus recommend chastity of speech.
Menander said, that a good man could never consent to
debauch a virgin or commit adultery. Tibullus said, casta
placent superis. Mark Anthony thanks the Gods, that he had
preserved his chastity in his youth. The Romans made laws
against adultery. Father Tachard informs us, that the
Siamans forbid not only dishonest actions, but also impure
thoughts and desires. Whence it appears, that chastity and
purity of manners were esteemed even before the Christian
religion existed.
If we consult reason, we find, that the pleasures of love are always
injurious when taken in excess; and that they are always criminal when
they prove injurious. We shall perceive, that to debauch a woman is
to condemn her to distress and infamy, and annihilate to her all the
advantages of society; that adultery is destructive to the greatest
felicity of human life, conjugal union. Hence we shall be convinced,
that marriage, being the only means of satisfying our desire of
increasing the species and providing filial supports, is a state far
more respectable and sacred, than the destructive celibacy and voluntary
castration recommended as a virtue by the Christian religion.
Nature, or its author, invites man, by the attraction of pleasure,
to multiply himself. He has unequivocally declared, that women are
necessary to men. Experience shews, that they are formed for society,
not solely for the purpose of a transient pleasure, but to give mutual
assistance in the misfortunes of life, to produce and educate children,
form them into citizens, and provide in them support for themselves in
old age. In giving man superior strength, nature has pointed out his
duty of labouring for the support of his family; the weaker organs
of his companion are destined to functions less violent, but not less
necessary. In giving her a soul more soft and sensible, nature has, by
a tender sentiment, attached her more particularly to her children. Such
are the sure bands which the Christian religion would tear asunder. Such
the blessings it would wrest from man, while it substitutes in their
place an unnatural celibacy, which renders man selfish and useless,
depopulates society, and which can be advantageous only to the
odious policy of some Christian priests, who, separating from their
fellow-citizens, have formed a destructive body, which eternalizes
itself without posterity. _Gens oterna in qua nemo nascitur._
If this religion has permitted marriage to some sects, who have not the
temerity to soar to the highest pinnacle of perfection, it seems to
have sufficiently punished them for this indulgence, by the unnatural
shackles it has fixed on the connubial state. Thus, among them, we see
divorce forbidden, and the most wretched unions indissoluble. Persons
once married, are forced to groan under the weight of wedlock, even
when affection and esteem are dead, and the place of these essentials
to conjugal happiness is supplied by hatred and contempt. Temporal laws
also conspiring with religion, forbid the wretched prisoners to break
their chains. It seems as if the Christian religion exerted all its
powers to make us view marriage with disgust, and give the preference to
a celibacy which is pregnant with debauchery, adultery, and dissolution.
Yet the God of the Hebrews made divorce lawful, and I know not by
what right his Son, who came to accomplish the law of Moses, revoked an
indulgence so reasonable.
Such are the perfections which Christianity inculcates on her children,
and such the virtues she prefers to those which are contemptuously
styled human virtues. She even rejects these, and calls them false and
sinful, because their possessors are, forsooth, not filled with faith.
What! the virtues of Greece and Rome, so amiable, and so heroic, were
they not true virtues? If justice, humanity, generosity, temperance,
and patience be not virtues, to what can the name be given? And are
the virtues less because professed by heathens? Are not the virtues of
Socrates, Cato, Epictetus, and Antonine, real and preferable to the zeal
of the Cyrills, the obstinacy of Athanasius, the uselessness of Anthony,
the rebellion of Chrysostom, the ferocity of Dominic, and the meanness
of Francis?
All the virtues admitted by Christians, are either overstrained and
fanatic, tending to render man useless, abject, and miserable; or
obstinate, haughty, cruel, and destructive to society. Such are the
effects of a religion, which contemning the earth, hesitates not to
overwhelm it with trouble, provided it thereby heightens the triumph of
its God over his enemies. No true morality can ever be compatible with
such a religion.