NCEDING TO THIS GOD THE RIGHT OF THE STRONGEST, THAT IS TO
SAY, THE VIOLATION OF ALL RIGHTS, OR IN COMMANDING FROM MEN A STUPID
DEVOTION.

I hear a multitude of theologians tell me on all sides, that God is
infinitely just, but that His justice is not that of men! Of what kind,
or of what nature is this Divine justice then? What idea can I form of a
justice which so often resembles human injustice? Is it not confounding
all our ideas of justice and of injustice, to tell us that what is
equitable in God is iniquitous in His creatures? How can we take as a
model a being whose Divine perfections are precisely contrary to human
perfections? God, you say, is the sovereign arbiter of our destinies;
His supreme power, that nothing can limit, authorizes Him to do as He
pleases with His works; a worm, such as man, has not the right to murmur
against Him. This arrogant tone is literally borrowed from the language
which the ministers of tyrants hold, when they silence those who suffer
by their violences; it can not, then, be the language of the ministers
of a God of whose equity they boast. It can not impose upon a being who
reasons. Ministers of a just God! I tell you then, that the greatest
power is not able to confer even upon your God Himself the right to be
unjust to the vilest of His creatures. A despot is not a God. A God who
arrogates to Himself the right to do evil, is a tyrant; a tyrant is not
a model for men. He ought to be an execrable object in their eyes. Is it
not strange that, in order to justify Divinity, they made of Him the
most unjust of beings? As soon as we complain of His conduct, they think
to silence us by claiming that God is the Master; which signifies that
God, being the strongest, He is not subjected to ordinary rules. But the
right of the strongest is the violation of all rights; it can pass as a
right but in the eyes of a savage conqueror, who, in the intoxication of
his fury, imagines he has the right to do as he pleases with the
unfortunate ones whom he has conquered; this barbarous right can appear
legitimate only to slaves, who are blind enough to think that everything
is allowed to tyrants, who are too strong for them to resist.

By a foolish simplicity, or rather by a plain contradiction of terms, do
we not see devotees exclaim, amidst the greatest calamities, that the
good Lord is the Master? Well, illogical reasoners, you believe in good
faith that the good Lord sends you the pestilence; that