Letters to Eugenia; Or, A Preservative Against Religious PrejudicesHolbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Religion
Letters to Eugenia; Or, A Preservative Against Religious Prejudices
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Christianity -- Controversial literature
Time must prove whether God be more constant and faithful in
fulfilling his engagements with the Christians than he has been to
fulfil those he made with Abraham and his posterity. I confess, Madam,
that his past conduct alarms me as to what he may finally perform. If
he himself acknowledged by the mouth of Ezekiel that the laws he had
given to the Jews _were not good_, he may very possibly, some day or
other, find fault with those which he has given to Christians.
Our priests themselves seem to partake of my suspicions, and to fear
that God will be wearied of that protection which he has so long
granted to his church. The inquietudes which they evince, the efforts
which they make to hinder the civilization of the world, the
persecutions which they raise against all those who contradict them,
seem to prove that they mistrust the promises of Jesus Christ, and
that they are not certainly convinced of the eternal durability of a
religion which does not appear to them divine, but because it gives
them the right to command like gods over their fellow-citizens. They
would undoubtedly consider the destruction of their empire a very
grievous thing; but yet if the sovereigns of the earth and their
people should once grow weary of the sacerdotal yoke, we may be sure
the Sovereign of heaven would not require a longer time to become
equally disgusted.
However this may be, Madam, I venture to hope the perusal of this
letter will fully undeceive you of a blind veneration for books which
are called _divine_, although they appear as if invented to degrade
and destroy the God who is asserted to be their author. My first
letter, I feel confident, enabled you to perceive that the dogmas
established by these same books, or subsequently fabricated to justify
the ideas thus given of God, are not less contrary to all notions of a
Deity infinitely perfect. A system which in the outset is based upon
false principles can never become any thing else than a mass of
falsehoods.
I am, &c.
LETTER IV.
Of the fundamental Dogmas of the Christian Religion.
You are aware, Madam, that our theological doctors pretend these
revealed books, which I summarily examined in my preceding letter, do
not include a single word that was not inspired by the Spirit of God.
What I have already said to you is sufficient to show that in setting
out with this supposition, the Divinity has formed a work the most
shapeless, imperfect, contradictory, and unintelligible which ever
existed; a work, in a word, of which any man of sense would blush with
shame to be the author. If any prophecy hath verified itself for the
Christians, it is that of Isaiah, which saith, "Hearing ye shall hear,
but shall not understand." But in this case we reply that it was
sufficiently useless to speak not to be comprehended; to reveal _that_
which cannot be comprehended is to reveal _nothing_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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