m, and who, to
render their opinions the more sacred, have pretended that he is
grievously offended when we do not admit implicitly the ideas they
promulgate of God. In the books of Moses God defines himself, _I am
that I am_; yet does this inspired writer detail the history of this
God as a tyrant who tempts men, and who punishes them for being
tempted; who exterminated all the human kind by a deluge, except a few
of one family, because one man had fallen; in a word, who, in all his
conduct, behaves as a despot, whose power dispenses with all the rules
of justice, reason, and goodness.

Have the successors of Moses transmitted to us ideas more clear, more
sensible, more comprehensible of the Divinity? Has the Son of God made
his Father perfectly known to us? Has the church, perpetually boasting
of the light she diffuses among men, become more fixed and certain,
to do away our uncertainty? Alas! in spite of all these supernatural
succors, we know nothing in nature beyond the grave; the ideas which
are communicated to us, the recitals of our infallible teachers, are
calculated only to confound our judgment, and reduce our reason to
silence. They make of God a pure spirit; that is to say, a being who
has nothing in common with matter, and who, nevertheless, has created
matter, which he has produced from his own fiat--his essence or
substance. They have made him the mirror of the universe, and the soul
of the universe. They have made him an infinite being, who fills all
space by his immensity, although the material world occupies some part
in space. They have made him a being all powerful, but whose projects
are incessantly varying, who neither can nor will maintain man in good
order, nor permit the freedom of action necessary for rational beings,
and who is alternately pleased and displeased with the same beings and
their actions. They make him an infinite good Father, but who avenges
himself without measure. They make of him a monarch infinitely just,
but who confounds the innocent with the guilty, who has mingled
injustice and cruelty, in causing his own Son to be put to death to
expiate the crimes of the human kind; though they are incessantly
sinning and repenting for pardon. They make of him a being full of
wisdom and foresight, yet insensible to the folly and shortsightedness
of mortals. They make him a reasonable being who becomes angry at the
thoughts of his creatures, though involuntary, and consequently
necessa