the power nor the wish to be known by men. By what right
could this God become angry with beings whose own essence makes it
impossible to have any idea of the divine essence? God would evidently
be the most unjust and the most unaccountable of tyrants if He should
punish an atheist for not knowing that which his nature made it
impossible for him to know.

XXX.--IT IS NEITHER LESS NOR MORE CRIMINAL TO BELIEVE IN GOD THAN NOT TO
BELIEVE IN HIM.

For the generality of men nothing renders an argument more convincing
than fear. In consequence of this fact, theologians tell us that the
safest side must be taken; that nothing is more criminal than
incredulity; that God will punish without mercy all those who have the
temerity to doubt His existence; that His severity is just; since it is
only madness or perversity which questions the existence of an angry
monarch who revenges himself cruelly upon atheists. If we examine these
menaces calmly, we shall find that they assume always the thing in
question. They must commence by proving to our satisfaction the
existence of a God, before telling us that it is safer to believe, and
that it is horrible to doubt or to deny it. Then they must prove that it
is possible for a just God to punish men cruelly for having been in a
state of madness, which prevented them from believing in the existence
of a being whom their enlightened reason could not comprehend. In a
word, they must prove that a God that is said to be full of equity,
could punish beyond measure the invincible and necessary ignorance of
man, caused by his relation to the divine essence. Is not the
theologians' manner of reasoning very singular? They create phantoms,
they fill them with contradictions, and finally assure us that the
safest way is not to doubt the existence of those phantoms, which they
have themselves invented. By following out this method, there is no
absurdity which it would not be safer to believe than not to believe.

All children are atheists--they have no idea of God; are they, then,
criminal on account of this ignorance? At what age do they begin to be
obliged to believe in God? It is, you say, at the age of reason. At what
time does this age begin? Besides, if the most profound theologians lose
themselves in the divine essence, which they boast of not comprehending,
what ideas can common people have?--women, mechanics, and, in short,
those who compose the mass of the human race?

XXXI.--T