lves from regarding as
iniquitous and vicious a sovereign who, being both able and willing to
occupy himself with the happiness of his subjects, should plunge the
greatest number of them into misfortune, and reserve his kindness for
those to whom his whims have given the preference.

With respect to telling us that _God owes nothing to his creatures_,
such an atrocious principle is destructive of every idea of justice
and goodness, and tends visibly to sap the foundation of all religion.
A God that is just and good owes happiness to every being to whom he
has given existence; he ceases to be just and good if he produce them
only to render them miserable; and he would be destitute of both
wisdom and reason were he to give them birth only to be the victims of
his caprice. What should we think of a father bringing children into
the world for the sole purpose of putting their eyes out and
tormenting them at his ease?

On the other hand, all religions are entirely founded upon the
reciprocal engagements which are supposed to exist between God and his
creatures. If God owes nothing to the latter, if he is not under an
obligation to fulfil his engagements to them when they have fulfilled
theirs to him, of what use is religion? What motives can men have to
offer their homage and worship to the Divinity? Why should they feel
much desire to love or serve a master who can absolve himself of all
duty towards those who entered his service with an expectation of the
recompense promised under such circumstances?

It is easy to see that the destructive ideas of divine justice which
are inculcated are only founded upon a fatal prejudice prevalent among
the generality of men, leading them to suppose that unlimited power
must inevitably exempt its possessor from an accordance with the laws
of equity; that force can confer the right of committing bad actions;
and that no one could properly demand an account of his conduct of a
man sufficiently powerful to carry out all his caprices. These ideas
are evidently borrowed from the conduct of tyrants, who no sooner
find themselves possessed of absolute power than they cease to
recognize any other rules than their own fantasies, and imagine that
justice has no claims upon potentates like them.

It is upon this frightful model that theologians have formed that God
whom they, notwithstanding, assert to be a just being, while, if the
conduct they attribute to him was true, we should be constrain