of themselves. Thus Christian nations are deprived of the first law
of nature, which orders man to resist evil, and to disarm whoever is
preparing to destroy him! If the ministers of the church have often
permitted the people to revolt for the interest of heaven, they have never
permitted them to revolt for their own deliverance from real evils or
known violences.

From heaven came the chains, that were used for fettering the minds of
mortals. Why is the Mahometan every where a slave? Because his prophet
enslaved him in the name of the Deity, as Moses had before subdued the
Jews. In all parts of the earth, we see, that the first legislators were
the first sovereigns and the first priests of the savages, to whom they
gave laws.

Religion seems invented solely to exalt princes above their nations, and
rivet the fetters of slavery. As soon as the people are too unhappy here
below, priests are ready to silence them by threatening them with the
anger of God. They are made to fix their eyes upon heaven, lest they
should perceive the true causes of their misfortunes, and apply the
remedies which nature presents.

147.

By dint of repeating to men, that the earth is not their true country;
that the present life is only a passage; that they are not made to be
happy in this world; that their sovereigns hold their authority from God
alone, and are accountable only to him for the abuse of it; that it is not
lawful to resist them, etc., priests have eternized the misgovernment of
kings and the misery of the people; the interests of nations have been
basely sacrificed to their chiefs. The more we consider the dogmas and
principles of religion, the more we shall be convinced, that their sole
object is the advantage of tyrants and priests, without regard to that of
societies.

To mask the impotence of its deaf gods, religion has persuaded mortals,
that iniquities always kindle the wrath of heaven. People impute to
themselves alone the disasters that daily befal them. If nations sometimes
feel the strokes of convulsed nature, their bad governments are but
too often the immediate and permanent causes, from whence proceed
the continual calamities which they are forced to endure. Are not
the ambition, negligence, vices, and oppressions of kings and nobles,
generally the causes of scarcity, beggary, wars, pestilences, corrupt
morals, and all the multiplied scourges which desolate the earth?

In fixing men's eyes continually upo