the horrors of their life and the infamy of their passions; that all finished with them; and that, beyond the grave, there were no supreme and eternal Judge, the punisher of vice and the rewarder of virtue: they wish it; they destroy as much as they can, through the impious wishes of their heart, but they cannot efface from the foundation of their being, the idea of his power and the dread of his punishments.
In effect, it would be too vulgar for a man, vain and plunged in debauchery, inwardly to say to himself, I am still too weak, and too much abandoned to pleasure, to quit it, or to lead a more regular and Christian life. That pretext would still leave all his remorses. It is much sooner done to say to himself, It is needless to live otherwise, for there is nothing after this life. This pretext is far more convenient, for it puts an end to every thing; it is the most favourable to indolence, for it estranges us from the sacraments, and from all the other slaveries of religion. It is much shorter to say to himself, " There is nothing/5 and to live as if he were in effect persuaded of it; it is at once throwing off every yoke and all restraint; it puts an end to all the irksome measures which sinners of another description still guard with religion and with the conscience. This pretext of unbelief, by persuading us that we actually doubt, leaves us in a certain state of indolence on every thing regarding religion, which prevents us from searching into ourselves and from making too melancholy reflections on our passions. We meanly allow ourselves to be swept away by the fatal course, upon the general prepossession that we believe nothing; we have few remorses, for we think ourselves unbelievers, and because that supposition leaves us almost the same security as impiety: at least, it is a diversion which dulls and suspends the sensibility of the conscience; and, by operating so as to make us always take ourselves for what we are not, it induces us to live as if we actually were what we wish to be.
That is to say, that the greatest part of these pretended freethinkers, and of these debauched and licentious unbelievers, ought to be considered as weak and dissolute men, who, not having the force to live Christianly, nor even the hardiness to be atheists, remain in that state of estrangement from religion, as the most convenient to indolence; and, as they never try to quit it, they fancy that they actually hold to it; it is a kind of neutrality between faith and irreligion, contrived by indolence for its own ease; for it requires exertion to adopt a side; and, in order to remain neuter, nothing more is required than not to think, and to live by habit; thus they never fathom, nor take any resolution upon themselves. Hardened and avowed impiety hath something I know not what, which strikes with horror: religion on the other hand, presents objects which alarm and are by no means convenient to the passions. What is to be done in these two extremities, of which the one shocks reason and the other the senses? They rest wavering and undecided; in the mean time they enjoy the calm which is left by that state of indecision and indifference: they live without wishing to
