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
Thus, Madam, the invention of the Devil does not remedy the evil; on
the contrary, it but entangles the priests more and more. By placing
to Satan's account all the evil which he commits in the world, they
exculpate the Deity of nothing; all the power with which they have
supposed the Devil invested is taken from that assigned to the
Divinity; and you know very well that according to the notions of the
Christian religion, the Devil has more adherents than God himself;
they are always stirring their fellow-creatures up to revolt against
God; without ceasing, in despite of God, Satan leads them into
perdition, except one man only, who refused to follow him, and who
found grace in the eyes of the Lord. You are not ignorant that the
millions that follow the standard of Beelzebub are to be plunged with
him into eternal misery.
But then has Satan himself incurred the disgrace of the All-powerful?
By what forfeit has he merited becoming the eternal object of the
anger of that God who created him? The Christian religion will explain
all. It informs us that the Devil was in his origin an angel; that is
to say, a pure spirit, full of perfections, created by the Divinity to
occupy a distinguishing situation in the celestial court, destined,
like the other ministers of the Eternal, to receive his orders, and to
enjoy perpetual blessedness. But he lost himself through ambition; his
pride blinded him, and he dared to revolt against his Creator; he
engaged other spirits, as pure as himself, in the same senseless
enterprise; in consequence of his rashness, he was hurled headlong out
of heaven, his miserable adherents were involved in his fall, and,
having been hardened by the divine pleasure in their foolish
dispositions, they have no other occupation assigned them in the
universe than to tempt mankind, and endeavor to augment the number of
the enemies of God, and the victims of his wrath.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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