conciling it with faith, which
is visibly only a blind submission to priests, whose authority seems to
many persons more weighty than evidence itself, and preferable to the
testimony of the senses.

"Sacrifice your reason; renounce experience; mistrust the testimony of
your senses; submit without enquiry to what we announce to you in the name
of heaven." Such is the uniform language of priests throughout the world;
they agree upon no point, except upon the necessity of never reasoning
upon the principles which they present to us as most important to our
felicity!

I will _not_ sacrifice my reason; because this reason alone enables me
to distinguish good from evil, truth from falsehood. If, as you say, my
reason comes from God, I shall never believe that a God, whom you call
good, has given me reason, as a snare, to lead me to perdition. Priests!
do you not see, that, by decrying reason, you calumniate your God, from
whom you declare it to be a gift.

I will _not_ renounce experience; because it is a guide much more sure
than the imagination or authority of spiritual guides. Experience
teaches me, that enthusiasm and interest may blind and lead them astray
themselves; and that the authority of experience ought to have much more
influence upon my mind, than the suspicious testimony of many men, who I
know are either very liable to be deceived themselves, or otherwise are
very much interested in deceiving others.

I _will_ mistrust my senses; because I am sensible they sometimes mislead
me. But, on the other hand, I know that they will not always deceive me.
I well know, that the eye shews me the sun much smaller than it really
is; but experience, which is only the repeated application of the senses,
informs me, that objects always appear to diminish, as their distance
increases; thus I attain to a certainty, that the sun is much larger than
the earth; thus my senses suffice to rectify the hasty judgments, which
they themselves had caused.

In warning us to mistrust the testimony of our senses, the priests
annihilate the proofs of all religion. If men may be dupes of their
imagination; if their senses are deceitful, how shall we believe the
miracles, which struck the treacherous senses of our ancestors? If my
senses are unfaithful guides, I ought not to credit even the miracles
wrought before my eyes.

136.

You incessantly repeat that _the truths of religion are above reason_. If
so, do you not perceive, th