suffers or is wretched. Hence, if he experiences real misfortunes, the
priests make sure of him; if he is not unfortunate they menace him;
they create imaginary fears and troubles.

In fine, Madam, when you wish to examine with your own eyes, and not
by the help of the pretensions set up and imposed on you by the
ministers of religion, you will be compelled to acknowledge the things
we have been considering as useful to the priests alone; they are
useless to the Deity, and to society they are often very obviously
pernicious. Of what utility can it be in any family to behold an
excess of devotion in the mother of that family? One would suppose it
is not necessary for a lady to pass all her time in prayers and in
meditations, to the neglect of other duties. Much less is it the part
of a Catholic mother to be closeted in mystic conversation with her
priest. Will her husband, her children, and her friends applaud her
who loses most of her time in prayers, and meditations, and practices,
which can tend only to render her sour, unhappy, and discontented?
Would it not be much better that a father or a mother of a family
should be occupied with what belonged to their domestic affairs than
to spend their time in masses, in hearing sermons, in meditating on
mysterious and unintelligible dogmas, or boasting about exercises of
piety that tend to nothing?

Madam, do you not find in the country you inhabit a great many
devotees who are sunk in debt, whose fortune is squandered away on
priests, and who are incapable of retrieving it? Content to put their
conscience to rights on religious matters, they neither trouble
themselves about the education of their children, nor the arrangement
of their fortune, nor the discharge of their debts. Such men as would
be thrown into despair did they omit one mass, will consent to leave
their creditors without their money, ruined by their negligence as
much as by their principles. In truth, Madam, on what side soever you
survey this religion, you will find it good for nothing.

What shall we say of those fetes which are so multiplied amongst us?
Are they not evidently pernicious to society? Are not all days the
same to the Eternal? Are there _gala_ days in heaven? Can God be
honored by the business of an artisan or a merchant, who, in place of
earning bread on which his family may subsist, squanders away his time
in the church, and afterwards goes to spend his money in the public
house? It is ne