Reason cannot approve virtues which are destructive to ourselves, nor admit a God who is delighted when mankind render themselves miserable, and voluntarily submit to torments. Reason and experience, without the aid of superstition, are sufficient to prove, that passions and pleasures, pushed to excess, destroy us; and that the abuse of the best things becomes a real evil. Nature herself inculcates upon us the privation of things which prove injurious to us. A being, solicitous for his own preservation, must restrain irregular propensities, and fly whatever tends to his destruction. It is plain, that by the Christian religion, suicide is, at least, indirectly authorised. It was in consequence of these fanatical ideas that, in the earliest ages of Christianity, the forests and deserts were peopled with perfect Christians, who by flying from the world, left their families destitute of support, and their country of citizens, to abandon themselves to an idle and contemplative life. Hence those legions of monks and cenobites, who, under the standards of different enthusiasts, have enrolled themselves into a militia, burthensome and injurious to society. They thought to merit heaven, by burying talents, which might be serviceable to their fellow-citizens, and vowing a life of indolence and celibacy. Thus, in nations which are the most faithful to Christianity, a multitude of men render themselves useless and wretched all their lives. What heart is so hard as to refuse a tear to the lot of the hapless victims taken from that enchanting sex which was destined to give happiness to our own! Unfortunate dupes of youthful enthusiasm, or sacrificed to the ambitious views of imperious families, they are for ever exiled from the world! They are bound by rash oaths to unending slavery and misery. Engagements, contradicted by every precept of nature, force them to perpetual virginity. It is in vain that riper feelings, sooner or later, warm their breasts, and make them groan under the weight of their imprudent vows. They regret their voluntary sterility, and find themselves forgotten in society. Cut off from their families, and subjected to troublesome and despotic gaolers, they sink into a life of disgust, of bitterness, and tears. In fine, thus exiled from society, thus unrelated and unbeloved, there only remains for them the shocking consolation of seducing other victims to share with them the torments of their solitude and mortifications.