ere involved in his fall, and,
having been hardened by the divine pleasure in their foolish
dispositions, they have no other occupation assigned them in the
universe than to tempt mankind, and endeavor to augment the number of
the enemies of God, and the victims of his wrath.

It is by the assistance of this fable that the Christian doctors
perceive the fall of Adam, prepared by the Almighty himself anterior
to the creation of the world. Was it necessary that the Divinity
should entertain a great desire that man might sin, since he would
thereby have an opportunity of providing the means of making him
sinful? In effect, it was the Devil who, in process of time, covered
with the skin of a serpent, solicited the mother of the human race to
disobey God, and involve her husband in her rebellion. But the
difficulty is not removed by these inventions. If Satan, in the time
he was an angel, lived in innocence, and merited the good will of his
Maker, how came God to suffer him to entertain ideas of pride,
ambition, and rebellion? How came this angel of light so blind as not
to see the folly of such an enterprise? Did he not know that his
Creator was all-powerful? Who was it that tempted Satan? What reason
had the Divinity for selecting him to be the object of his fury, the
destroyer of his projects, the enemy of his power? If pride be a sin,
if the idea itself of rebellion is the greatest of crimes, _sin was,
then, anterior to sin_, and Lucifer offended God, even in his state of
purity; for, in fine, a being pure, innocent, agreeable to his God,
who had all the perfections of which a creature could be susceptible,
ought to be exempt from ambition, pride, and folly. We ought, also, to
say as much for our first parent, who, notwithstanding his wisdom, his
innocence, and the knowledge infused into him by God himself, could
not prevent himself from falling into the temptation of a demon.

Hence, in every shift, the priests invariably make God the author of
sin. It was God who tempted Lucifer before the creation of the world;
Lucifer, in his turn, became the tempter of man and the cause of all
the evil our race suffers. It appears, therefore, that God created
both angels and men to give them an opportunity of sinning.

It is easy to perceive the absurdity of this system, to save which the
theologians have invented another still more absurd, that it might
become the foundation of all their religious revelations, and by means
of wh