that our theologians have imagined expedients
to support their ruinous suppositions. You have often heard mention
made of _predestination_ and _grace_--terrible words, which constantly
excite disputes among us, for which reason would be forced to blush if
Christians did not make it a duty to renounce reason, and which
contests are attended with consequences very dangerous to society. But
let not this surprise you; these false and obscure principles have
even among the theologians produced dissensions; and their quarrels
would be indifferent if they did not attach more importance to them
than they really deserve.

But to proceed. The system of predestination supposes that God, in his
eternal secrets, has resolved that some men should be elected, and,
being thus his favorites, receive special grace. By this grace they
are supposed to be made agreeable to God, and meet for eternal
happiness. But then an infinite number of others are destined to
perdition, and receive not the grace necessary to eternal salvation.
These contradictory and opposite propositions make it pretty evident
that the system is absurd. It makes God, a being infinitely perfect
and good, a partial tyrant, who has created a vast number of human
beings to be the sport of his caprice and the victims of his
vengeance. It supposes that God will punish his creatures for not
having received that grace which he did not deign to give them; it
presents this God to us under traits so revolting that the theologians
are forced to avow that the whole is a profound mystery, into which
the human mind cannot penetrate. But if man is not made to lift his
inquisitive eye on this frightful mystery, that is to say, on this
astonishing absurdity, which our teachers have idly endeavored to
square to their views of Deity, or to reconcile the atrocious
injustice of their God with his infinite goodness, by what right do
they wish us to adore this mystery which they would compel us to
believe, and to subscribe to an opinion that saps the divine goodness
to its very foundation? How do they reason upon a dogma, and quarrel
with acrimony about a system of which even themselves can comprehend
nothing?

The more you examine religion, the more occasion you will have to be
convinced that those things which our divines call _mysteries_ are
nothing else but the difficulties with which they are themselves
embarrassed, when they are unable to avoid the absurdities into which
their own fal