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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