honour and probity chimeras; incests, parricides, and the blackest villanies, pastimes of nature, and names which the policy of legislators has invented.
Behold, to what the sublime philosophy of the freethinker amounts! Behold that force of argument, that reason, and that wisdom, which they are continually vaunting to us! Agree to their maxims, and the entire universe sinks back to a frightful chaos; all is overturned on the earth; all ideas of virtue and vice are reversed, and the most inviolable laws of society vanish; the institution of morals perishes: the government of states and empires is without direction; all harmony in the body politic falls. The human species is only an assemblage of fools, barbarians, voluptuaries, madmen, and villains, who own no law but force; no other check than their passions and the terror of authority; no other bond than impiety and independence; and no other God than themselves. Behold the world of the freethinker! and if this hideous plan of a republic pleases you, constitute, if you can, a society of these monsters. The only thing that remains for us to say, is, that you are fully qualified to occupy a place in it.
How worthy, then, of man to look forward to an eternal destiny, to regulate his manners by the law, and to live as having one day to render account of his actions before Him who shall weigh us all in the balance.
The uncertainty of the believer is then suspicious in its principle, foolish in its proofs, and horrible in its consequences. But, after having shown you that nothing can be more repugnant to sound reason than the doubt which he entertains of a future state, let us completely confound his pretexts, and prove that nothing is more opposite to the idea of a wise God and to the opinion of his own conscience.
Part II. — It is no doubt astonishing that the freethinker should seek, even in the greatness of God, a shelter to his crimes; and that, finding nothing within himself to justify the horrors of his soul, he can expect to find in the awful Majesty of the Supreme Being an indulgence which he cannot find even in the corruption of his own heart.
Indeed, says the unbeliever, is it worthy the greatness of God to pay attention to what passes among men, — to calculate their virtues or vices, — to study even their thoughts, and their trifling and endless desires? Men, worms of the earth, who sink into nothing before the majesty of his looks, are they worthy his attentive inspection? And is it not degrading a God, whom we are taught to believe so great, to give him an employment by which even man would be dishonoured?
But, before I make you sensible of the whole absurdity of this blasphemy, I beg you will observe, that it is the freethinker himself who thus degrades the majesty of God, and brings him to a level with man: for, has the Almighty occasion narrowly to observe men, in order to know every thought and deed? Are cares and
