ived of inestimable advantages and invisible but saving
grace, which they have supposed to be attached by the Divinity himself
to some movements of the body. Priests the most adroit have
overcharged religion with ceremonies, and practices, and mysteries.
They fancied that all these were so many cords to bind the people to
their interest, to allure them by enthusiasm, and render them
necessary to their idle and luxurious existence, which is not spent
without much money extracted from the hard earnings of the people, and
much of that respect which is but the homage of slaves to spiritual
tyrants.

You cannot any longer, I persuade myself, Madam, be made the dupe of
these holy jugglers, who impose on the vulgar by their marvellous
tales. You must now be convinced that the things which I have touched
upon as mysteries are profound absurdities, of which their inventors
can render no reasonable account either to themselves or to others.
You must now be certified that the movements of the body and other
religious ceremonies must be matters perfectly indifferent to the wise
Being whom they describe to us as the great mover of all things. You
conclude, then, that all these marvellous rites, in which our priests
announce so much mystery, and in which the people are taught to
consider the whole of religion as consisting, are nothing more than
puerilities, to which people of understanding ought never to submit.
That they are usages calculated principally to alarm the minds of the
weak, and keep in bondage those who have not the courage to throw off
the yoke of priests. I am, &c.

LETTER VII.

Of the pious Rites, Prayers, and Austerities of Christianity.

You now know, Madam, what you ought to attach to the mysteries and
ceremonies of that religion you propose to meditate on, and adore in
silence. I proceed now to examine some of those practices to which the
priests tell us the Deity attaches his complaisance and his favors. In
consequence of the false, sinister, contradictory, and incompatible
ideas, which all revealed religions give us of the Deity, the priests
have invented a crowd of unreasonable usages, but which are
conformable to these erroneous notions that they have framed of this
Being. God is always regarded as a man full of passion, sensible to
presents, to flatteries, and marks of submission; or rather as a
fantastic and punctilious sovereign, who is very seriously angry when
we neglect to show him that r