s.

Every religion, which supposes a God easily provoked, jealous, revengeful,
punctilious about his rights or the etiquette with which he is treated;--a
God little enough to be hurt by the opinions which men can form of him;--a
God unjust enough to require that we have uniform notions of his conduct;
a religion which supposes such a God necessarily becomes restless,
unsociable, and sanguinary; the worshippers of such a God would never
think, that they could, without offence, forbear hating and even
destroying every one, who is pointed out to them, as an adversary of
this God; they would think, that it would be to betray the cause of
their celestial Monarch, to live in friendly intercourse with rebellious
fellow-citizens. If we love what God hates, do we not expose ourselves to
his implacable hatred?

Infamous persecutors, and devout men-haters! Will you never discern the
folly and injustice of your intolerant disposition? Do you not see, that
man is no more master of his religious opinions, his belief or unbelief,
than of the language, which he learns from infancy? To punish a man for
his errors, is it not to punish him for having been educated differently
from you? If I am an unbeliever, is it possible for me to banish from my
mind the reasons that have shaken my faith? If your God gives men leave
to be damned, what have you to meddle with? Are you more prudent and wise,
than this God, whose rights you would avenge?

156.

There is no devotee, who does not, according to his temperament, hate,
despise, or pity the adherents of a sect, different from his own.
The _established_ religion, which is never any other than that of the
sovereign and the armies, always makes its superiority felt in a very
cruel and injurious manner by the weaker sects. As yet there is no true
toleration upon earth; men every where adore a jealous God, of whom each
nation believes itself the friend, to the exclusion of all others.

Every sect boasts of adoring alone the true God, the universal God, the
Sovereign of all nature. But when we come to examine this Monarch of the
world, we find that every society, sect, party, or religious cabal, makes
of this powerful God only a pitiful sovereign, whose care and goodness
extend only to a small number of his subjects, who pretend that they
alone have the happiness to enjoy his favours, and that he is not at all
concerned about the others.

The founders of religions, and the priests who supp