ort them, evidently
proposed to separate the nations, whom they taught, from the other
nations; they wished to separate their own flock by distinguishing marks;
they gave their followers gods, who were hostile to the other gods; they
taught them modes of worship, dogmas and ceremonies apart; and above
all, they persuaded them, that the religion of others was impious and
abominable. By this unworthy artifice, the ambitious knaves established,
their usurpation over the minds of their followers, rendered them
unsociable, and made them regard with an evil eye all persons who had not
the same mode of worship and the same ideas as they had. Thus it is, that
Religion has shut up the heart and for ever banished from it the affection
that man ought to have for his fellow-creature. Sociability, indulgence,
humanity, those first virtues of all morality, are totally incompatible
with religious prejudices.

157.

Every national religion is calculated to make man vain, unsociable, and
wicked; the first step towards humanity is to permit every one peaceably
to embrace the mode of worship and opinions, which he judges to be right.
But this conduct cannot be pleasing to the ministers of religion, who wish
to have the right of tyrannizing over men even in their thoughts.

Blind and bigoted princes! You hate and persecute heretics, and order them
to execution, because you are told, that these wretches displease God. But
do you not say, that your God is full of goodness? How then can you expect
to please him by acts of barbarity, which he must necessarily disapprove?
Besides, who has informed you, that their opinions displease your God?
Your priests? But, who assures you, that your priests are not themselves
deceived or wish to deceive you? The same priests? Princes! It is
then upon the hazardous word of your priests, that you commit the most
atrocious crimes, under the idea of pleasing the Divinity!

158.

Pascal says, "that man never does evil so fully and cheerfully, as when he
acts from a false principle of conscience." Nothing is more dangerous than
a religion, which lets loose the ferocity of the multitude, and justifies
their blackest crimes. They will set no bounds to their wickedness, when
they think it authorized by their God, whose interests, they are told, can
make every action legitimate. Is religion in danger?--the most civilized
people immediately becomes true savages, and think nothing forbidden. The
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