ion to the
rich, to transgress an injunction the poor must not violate with
impunity? In fine, they seem to have multiplied our practices, our
duties, and our tortures, to have the advantage of multiplying our
faults, and making a good bargain out of our pretended crimes.

The more we examine religion the more reason shall we have to be
convinced that it is beneficial to the _priests alone_. Every part of
this religion conspires to render us submissive to the fantasies of
our spiritual guides, to labor for their grandeur, to contribute to
their riches. They appoint us to perform disadvantageous duties; they
prescribe impossible perfections, purposely that we may transgress;
they have thereby engendered in pious minds scruples and difficulties
which they condescendingly appease for money. A devotee is obliged to
observe, without ceasing, the useless and frivolous rules of his
priest, and even then he is subject to continual reproaches; he is
perpetually in want of his priest to expiate his pretended faults with
which he charges himself, and the omission of duties that he regards
as the most important acts of his life, but which are rarely such as
interest society or benefit it by their performance. By a train of
religious prejudices with which the priests infect the mind of their
weak devotees, these believe themselves infinitely more culpable when
they have omitted some useless practice, than if they had committed
some great injustice or atrocious sin against humanity. It is commonly
sufficient for the devotees to be on good terms with God, whether they
be consistent in their actions with man, or in the practice of those
duties they owe to their fellow beings.

Besides, Madam, what real advantage does society derive from repeated
prayers, abstinences, privations, seclusions, meditations, and
austerities, to which religion attaches so much value? Do all the
mysterious practices of the priests produce any real good? Are they
capable of calming the passions, of correcting vices, and of giving
virtue to those who most scrupulously observe them? Do we not daily
see persons who believe themselves damned if they forget a mass, if
they eat a fowl on Friday, if they neglect a confession, though they
are guilty at the same time of great dereliction to society? Do they
not hold the conduct of those very unjust, and very cruel, who happen
to have the misfortune of not thinking and doing as they think and
act? These practices, out