d to announce truths to the world, is sure
of incurring the hatred of the ministers of Religion, who loudly call to
their aid secular powers; and want the assistance of laws to support both
their arguments and their gods. Their clamours expose too evidently the
weakness of their cause.

"None call for aid but those who feel distressed."

In Religion, man is not permitted to err. In general, those who err are
pitied, and some kindness is shewn to persons who discover new truths;
but, when Religion is thought to be interested either in the errors or
the discoveries, a holy zeal is kindled, the populace become frantic, and
nations are in an uproar.

Can any thing be more afflicting, than to see public and private felicity
depending upon a futile system, which is destitute if principles, founded
only on a distempered imagination, and incapable of presenting any thing
but words void of sense? In what consists the so much boasted utility of
a Religion, which nobody can comprehend, which continually torments those
who are weak enough to meddle with it, which is incapable of rendering men
better, and which often makes them consider it meritorious to be unjust
and wicked? Is there a folly more deplorable, and more justly to be
combated, than that, which far from doing any service to the human race,
only makes them blind, delirious, and miserable, by depriving them of
Truth, the sole cure for their wretchedness.

206.

Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in
ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is only by dispelling
the clouds and phantoms of Religion, that we shall discover Truth, Reason,
and Morality. Religion diverts us from the causes of evils, and from the
remedies which nature prescribes; far from curing, it only aggravates,
multiplies, and perpetuates them. Let us observe with the celebrated
Lord Bolingbroke, that "_theology is the box of Pandora; and if it is
impossible to shut it, it is at least useful to inform men, that this
fatal box is open_."

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's Good Sense, by Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach

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