be no God who may listen to thy prayers and be touched by thy groanings? If nothing thyself, why belie the nothingness of thy being, and why tremble upon the sequel of thy destiny? Whence come, in this last moment, these feelings of dread and of respect for the Supreme Being? Is it not, that they have ever been in thee, that thou hast imposed upon the public by a false ostentation of impiety, and that death only unfolds those dispositions of faith and of religion, which, though dormant, have never ceased during life?"
Yes, my brethren, could the passions be destroyed, all unbelievers would soon be recalled; and a final reason, which fully proves it, is that, if they seem to rise up against the incomprehensibility of our mysteries, it is solely for the purpose of combating what touches them, and of attacking the truths which interest the passions; that is to say, the truth of a future state, and the eternity of future punishments; this is always the favourite conclusion and fruit of their doubts.
In effect, if religion, without adding maxims and truths which restrain the passions, proposed only mysteries which exceed reason, we may boldly say, that unbelievers would be rare; almost no one is interested in those abstruse truths or errors, which it is indifferent to believe or to deny. You will find few real votaries of truth who become partisans and zealots in support of merely speculative and unimportant points, because they believe them to be true. The abstruse truths of mathematics have found, in our days, some zealous and estimable followers, who have devoted themselves to the elucidation of what is held as most impenetrable in the infinite secrets and profound obscurities of that science; but these are rare and singular men; the infection was little to be dreaded, nor, in truth, has it spread; they are admired, but few would wish to follow their example. If religion proposed only truths equally abstruse, equally indifferent to the felicity of the senses, equally uninteresting to the passions and to self-love, the atheists would be still more rare than the mathematicians. The truths of religion are objected to, merely because they threaten us; no objections are made to the others, because their truth or their falsity is alike indifferent.
And tell us not that it is not through self-interest, but the sole love of truth, that the unbeliever rejects mysteries which reason rejects. This, I well know, is the boast of the pretended unbeliever, and he would wish us to think so; but of what consequence is the truth to men, who, so far from either seeking, loving, or knowing it, wish even to conceal it from themselves? What matters to them a truth beyond their reach, and to which they have never devoted a single serious moment; which, having nothing flattering to the passions, can never be interesting to these men of flesh and blood, plunged in a voluptuous life? Their object is to gratify their irregular desires, and yet have nothing to dread after this life; this is the only truth which interests them; give up that point, and the obscurity of all the other mysteries will not occupy
