Such are the ideas that Christianity gives us of the Divinity. Let us now see whether they accord with the other notions presented to us by this religious system, and which it pretends were revealed by God himself; or, in other words, that these truths were received directly from the Deity, who concealed them from the remainder of mankind, and deprived them of a knowledge of his essence. Thus the Christian religion is founded upon a special revelation. And to whom was the revelation made? At first to Abraham, and then to his posterity. The God of the universe, then, the Father of all men, was only willing to be known to the descendants of a Chaldean, who for a long series of years were the exclusive possessors of the knowledge of the true God. By an effect of his special kindness, the Jewish people was for a long time the only race favored with a revelation equally necessary for all men. This was the only people which understood the relations between man and the Supreme Being. All other nations wandered in darkness, or possessed no ideas of the Sovereign of nature but such as were crude, ridiculous, or criminal. Thus, at the very first step, do we not see that Christianity impairs the goodness and justice of its God? A revelation to a particular people only announces a partial God, who favors a portion of his children, to the prejudice of all the others; who consults only his caprice, and not real merit; who, incapable of conferring happiness upon all men, shows his tenderness solely to some individuals, who have, however, no titles upon his consideration not possessed by the others. What would you say of a father who, placed at the head of a numerous family, had no eyes but for a single one of his children, and who never allowed himself to be seen by any of them except that favored one? What would you say if he was displeased with the rest for not being acquainted with his features, notwithstanding he would never allow them to approach his person? Would you not accuse such a father of caprice, cruelty, folly, and a want of reason, if he visited with his anger the children whom he had himself excluded from his presence? Would you not impute to him an injustice of which none but the most brutal of our species could be guilty if he actually punished them for not having executed orders which he was never pleased to give them?