espect and obeisance which the vanity of
earthly potentates exacts from their vassals.

It is after these notions so little agreeable to the Deity, that the
priests have conjured up a crowd of practices and strange inventions,
ridiculous, inconvenient, and often cruel; but by which they inform us
we shall merit the good favor of God, or disarm the wrath of the
Universal Lord. With some, all consists in prayers, offerings, and
sacrifices, with which they fancy God is well pleased. They forget
that a God who is good, who knows all things, has no need to be
solicited; that a God who is the author of all things has no need to
be presented with any part of his workmanship; that a God who knows
his power has no need of either flatteries or submissions, to remind
him of his grandeur, his power, or his rights; that a God who is Lord
of all has no need of offerings which belong to himself; that a God
who has no need of any thing cannot be won by presents, nor grudge to
his creatures the goods which they have received from his divine
bounty.

For the want of making these reflections, simple as they are, all the
religions in the world are filled with an infinite number of frivolous
practices, by which men have long strove to render themselves
acceptable to the Deity. The priests who are always declared to be the
ministers, the favorites, the interpreters of God's will, have
discovered how they might most easily profit by the errors of mankind,
and the presents which they offer to the Deity. They are thence
interested to enter into the false ideas of the people, and even to
redouble the darkness of their minds. They have invented means to
please unknown powers who dispose of their fate--to excite their
devotion and their zeal for those invisible beings of whom they were
themselves the visible representatives. These priests soon perceived
that in laboring for the Gods they labored for themselves, and that
they could appropriate the major part of the presents, sacrifices, and
offerings, which were made to beings who never showed themselves in
order to claim what their devotees intended for them.

You thus perceive, Madam, how the priests have made common cause with
the Divinity. Their policy thence obliged them to favor and increase
the errors of the human kind. They talk of this ineffable Being as of
an interested monarch, jealous, full of vanity, who gives that it may
be restored to him again; who exacts continual signs of submi