they represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit himself
on a cross in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his
new transgression, the story would have been less absurd, less
contradictory. But, instead of this they make the transgressor triumph,
and the Almighty fall.

That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived very good
lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime) is what I have no
doubt of. In the first place, they were educated to believe it, and they
would have believed anything else in the same manner. There are also
many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they conceived
to be the infinite love of God to man, in making a sacrifice of himself,
that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred them from
examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the story. The more
unnatural anything is, the more is it capable of becoming the object
of dismal admiration. [NOTE: The French work has "blind and" preceding
dismal.--Editor.]

CHAPTER VI - OF THE TRUE THEOLOGY.

BUT if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not
present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation
prepared to receive us the instant we are born--a world furnished to our
hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour
down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep
or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these
things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can
our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and
suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that
nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator?

I know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it would be
paying too great a compliment to their credulity to forbear it on that
account. The times and the subject demand it to be done. The suspicion
that the theory of what is called the Christian church is fabulous, is
becoming very extensive in all countries; and it will be a consolation
to men staggering under that suspicion, and doubting what to believe and
what to disbelieve, to see the subject freely investigated. I therefore
pass on to an examination of the books called the Old and the New
Testament.

CHAPTER VII - EXAMINATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

THESE books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelations, (which,
by the bye