ion, vengeance, cruelty, anger, calumny,
envy, and persecution, covered by the deceptive name of zeal, cause
the greatest ravages, range without bounds, and even delude those who
are transported by these dangerous passions. Religion does not
annihilate these violent agitations of the mind in the hearts of its
devotees, but often excites and justifies them; and experience proves
that the most rigid Christians are very far from being the best of
men, and that they have no right to reproach the incredulous either
concerning the pretended consequences of their principles, or for the
passions which are falsely alleged to spring from unbelief.

Indeed, the charity of the peaceful ministers of religion and of their
pious adherents does not prevent their blackening their adversaries
with a view of rendering them odious, and of drawing down upon their
heads the malevolence of a superstitious community, and the
persecution of tyrannical and oppressive laws; their zeal for God's
glory permits them to employ indifferently all kinds of weapons; and
calumny, especially, furnishes them always a most powerful aid.
According to them, there are no irregularities of the heart which are
not produced by incredulity; to renounce religion, say they, is to
give a free course to unbridled passions, and he who does not believe
surely indicates a corrupt heart, depraved manners, and frightful
libertinism. In a word, they declare that every man who refuses to
admit their reveries or their marvellous morality, has no motives to
do good, and very powerful ones to commit evil.

It is thus that our charitable divines caricature and misrepresent the
opponents of their supremacy, and describe them as dangerous
brigands, whom society, for its own interest, ought to proscribe and
destroy. It results from these imputations that those who renounce
prejudices and consult reason are considered the most unreasonable of
men; that they who condemn religion on account of the crimes it has
produced upon the earth, and for which it has served as an eternal
pretext, are regarded as bad citizens; that they who complain of the
troubles that turbulent priests have so often excited, are set down as
perturbators of the repose of nations; and that they who are shocked
at the contemplation of the inhuman and unjust persecutions which have
been excited by priestly ambition and rascality, are men who have no
idea of justice, and in whose bosoms the sentiments of humanity ar