inducement but to avoid the penalties and the disdain that society
decrees against those who trouble its well-being, and who refuse to
contribute to its welfare.

It appears evident that every man who consults his understanding
should be more reasonable than one who only consults his imagination.
It is evident that he who consults his own nature and that of the
beings who surround him, ought to have truer ideas of good and evil,
of justice and injustice, and of honesty and dishonesty, than he who,
to regulate his conduct, consults only the records of a concealed God,
whom his priests picture as wicked, unjust, changeable, contradicting
himself, and who has sometimes ordered actions the most contrary to
morality and to all the ideas that we have of virtue. It is evident
that he who regulates his conduct upon sacerdotal morality will only
follow the caprice and passions of the priests, and will be a very
dangerous man, while believing himself very virtuous. In fine, it is
evident that while conforming himself to the precepts and counsels of
religion, a man may be extremely pious without possessing the shadow
of a virtue. Experience has proved that it is quite possible to adhere
to all the unintelligible dogmas of the priests, to observe most
scrupulously all the forms, and ceremonies, and services they
recommend, and orally to profess all the Christian virtues, without
having any of the qualities necessary to his own happiness, and to
that of the beings with whom he lives. The saints, indeed, who are
proposed to us as models, were useless members of society. We see them
to have been either gloomy fanatics, who sacrificed themselves to the
desolating ideas of their religion, or excited fanatics, who, under
pretext of serving religion, have perpetually disturbed the repose of
nations, or enthusiastic theologians, who from their own dreams have
deduced systems exactly calculated to infuriate the brains of their
adherents. A saint, when he is tranquil, proposes nothing whose
accomplishment will benefit mankind, and only aims to keep himself
safe and secluded in his retreat. A saint, when he is active, only
appears to promulgate reveries dangerous to the world, and to uphold
the interests of the church, that he confounds with the interest of
God.

In a word, Madam, I cannot too often repeat it, every system of
religion appears to be designed for the utility of the priests; the
morality of Christianity has in view only the