res, if he knows their
wants, it seems superfluous to pray to him. If God changes not, he has
never promised to alter his secret decrees, or, if he has, he is
variable in his fancies, like man; to what purpose are all our
petitions to him? If God is offended with us, will he not reject
prayers which insult his goodness, his justice, and infinite wisdom?

What motives, then, have our priests to inculcate constantly the
necessity of prayer? It is that they may thereby hold the minds of
mankind in opinions more advantageous to themselves. They represent
God to us under the traits of a monarch difficult of access, who
cannot be easily pacified, but of whom they are the ministers, the
favorites, and servants. They become intercessors between this
invisible Sovereign and his subjects of this nether world. They sell
to the ignorant their intercession with the All-powerful; they pray
for the people, and by society they are recompensed with real
advantages, with riches, honors, and ease. It is on the necessity of
prayer that our priests, our monks, and all religious men establish
their lazy existence; that they profess to win a place in heaven for
their followers and paymasters, who, without this intercession, could
neither obtain the favor of God, nor avert his chastisements and the
calamities the world is so often visited with. The prayers of the
priests are regarded as a universal remedy for all evils. All the
misfortunes of nations are laid before these spiritual guides, who
generally find public calamities a source of profit to themselves, as
it is then they are amply paid for their supposed mediation between
the Deity and his suffering creatures. They never teach the people
that these things spring from the course of nature and of laws they
cannot control. O, no. They make the world believe they are the
judgments of an angry God. The evils for which they can find no
remedy are pronounced marks of the divine wrath; they are
supernatural, and the priests must be applied to. God, whom they call
so good, appears sometimes obstinately deaf to their entreaties. Their
common Parent, so tender, appears to derange the order of nature to
manifest his anger. The God who is so just, sometimes punishes men who
cannot divine the cause of his vengeance. Then, in their distress,
they flee to the priests, who never fail to find motives for the
divine wrath. They tell them that God has been offended; that he has
been neglected; that he exa