Chapter IV · TRUTHS EVIDENT AND OBVIOUS TO THE SENSES.
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§ 1.
Moses, Jesus Christ, and Mahomet, being such as we have represented them, it is evident that it would be useless to search in their writings for a new idea of the Divinity. The conferences of Moses and Mahomet with the Deity, and the miraculous conception of Jesus Christ, are the greatest impostures that have ever met the face of day, and you must shun their contemplation as you love the truth.
§ 2.
God, as we have seen, being only Nature, or in other words the combination of all beings, all properties, and all energies, is necessarily the cause from which emanates every thing, and of course not distinct or different from its effects. He cannot be termed good, nor evil, nor just, nor merciful nor jealous: these attributes belong only to mankind. The Deity therefore can neither punish nor reward. The opposite idea may lead aside the ignorant, who, conceiving the Divinity to be an uncompounded essence, represent him to themselves under images altogether unsuited to his nature. Those alone who exercise their judgment without confounding its operations with those of their imaginative faculty, and who have sufficient strength of mind to cast away the prejudices of infancy, can form a clear and distinct conception of the subject. They regard him as the author of every being, producing them without distinction, and giving no preference to one over another, and whose power is such that he created man with as much ease as he did the meanest worm, or the humblest plant.
§ 3.
§ 4.
Thus, therefore, no rational man can believe in God, nor in hell, nor in spirits, nor in devils, in the sense in which the terms are generally understood. These big words have only been coined to intimidate and blind the vulgar. Those who wish to convince themselves of this truth would do well to devote particular attention to what follows, and accustom themselves to suspend their judgment until after mature reflection.
§ 5.
The infinity of stars which we see above us has not escaped the fictions of presumptive credulity. Amongst the glittering hosts, there is one said to have been set apart for the celestial court, where God holds regal state in the midst of his courtiers. This place is the residence of the blessed, wither the souls of the virtuous are conveyed after leaving the body. We need not dwell upon an opinion so frivolous and so contradictory to common sense. It is well enough ascertained that what we denominate the heavens is merely a continuation of the air which surrounds us—a fluid through which the other planets move, like the earth which we inhabit, unsustained and unconnected with any solid mass whatever.
§ 6.
The priests having, like the pagans with their Gods and goddesses, invented a heaven, where God and the blessed might dwell; after the same example next they contrived a hell, or subterranean place, to which, they assure us, the spirits of wicked men go down for the purpose of being everlastingly tormented. Now, the word hell, in its original sense, imports no more than a place dark and deep; and the poets invented it as the opposite to the residence of the blessed, which they represented as high and bright. This is the exact signification of the Latin terms inferus and inferi, and the Greek hades; any dark place such as a sepulchre, or whatever was fearful from its depth and obscurity. The whole sprung from the imagination of the poet and the knavery of the priests—the former knowing how to make an impression in this way, on weak, timid, and melancholy minds; and the latter having rather more substantial reasons for continuing the delusion.