CTS, WHO DAMN EACH
OTHER, WHO ACCUSE EACH OTHER, WITH REASON, OF SUPERSTITION AND IMPIETY.

God has spoken differently to each nation of the globe which we inhabit.
The Indian does not believe one word of what He said to the Chinaman;
the Mohammedan considers what He has told to the Christian as fables;
the Jew considers the Mohammedan and the Christian as sacrilegious
corruptors of the Holy Law, which his God has given to his fathers. The
Christian, proud of his more modern revelation, equally damns the Indian
and the Chinaman, the Mohammedan, and even the Jew, whose holy books he
holds. Who is wrong or right? Each one exclaims: "It is I!" Every one
claims the same proofs; each one speaks of his miracles, his saints, his
prophets, his martyrs. Sensible men answer, that they are all delirious;
that God has not spoken, if it is true that He is a Spirit who has
neither mouth nor tongue; that the God of the Universe could, without
borrowing mortal organism, inspire His creatures with what He desired
them to learn, and that, as they are all equally ignorant of what they
ought to think about God, it is evident that God did not want to
instruct them. The adherents of the different forms of worship which we
see established in this world, accuse each other of superstition and of
ungodliness. The Christians abhor the superstition of the heathen, of
the Chinese, of the Mohammedans. The Roman Catholics treat the
Protestant Christians as impious; the latter incessantly declaim against
Roman superstition. They are all right. To be impious, is to have unjust
opinions about the God who is adored; to be superstitious, is to have
false ideas of Him. In accusing each other of superstition, the
different religionists resemble humpbacks who taunt each other with
their malformation.

CXXVIII.--OBSCURE AND SUSPICIOUS ORIGIN OF ORACLES.

The oracles which the Deity has revealed to the nations through His
different mediums, are they clear? Alas! there are not two men who
understand them alike. Those who explain them to others do not agree
among themselves; in order to make them clear, they have recourse to
interpretations, to commentaries, to allegories, to parables, in which
is found a mystical sense very different from the literal one. Men are
needed everywhere to explain the wishes of God, who could not or would
not explain Himself clearly to those whom He desired to enlighten. God
always prefers to use as mediums men who can be sus