other church than where the section or the club hold their meetings,
&c.

"The propagation of the rights of man ought to be presented to the
astonished world pure and without stain. It is not by offering
strange gods to our neighbours that we shall operate their
conversion. We can never raise them from their abject state by
erecting one altar in opposition to another. A trifling heresy is
infinitely more revolting than having no religion at all. Nature,
like the sun, diffuses her light without the assistance of priests
and vestals. While we were constitutional heretics, we maintained
an army of an hundred thousand priests, who waged war equally with
the Pope and the disciples of Calvin. We crushed the old priesthood
by means of the new, and while we compelled every sect to contribute
to the payment of a pretended national religion, we became at once
the abhorrence of all the Catholics and Protestants in Europe. The
repulsion of our religious belief counteracted the attraction of our
political principles.--But truth is at length triumphant, and all
the ill-intentioned shall no more be able to detach our neighbours
from the dominion of the rights of man, under pretext of a religious
dominion which no longer exists.--The purpose of religion is no how
so well answered as by presenting carte blanche to the abused world.
Every one will then be at liberty to form his spiritual regimen to
his own taste, till in the end the invincible ascendant of reason
shall teach him that the Supreme Being, the Eternal Being, is no
other than Nature uncreated and uncreatable; and that the only
Providence is the association of mankind in freedom and equality!--
This sovereign providence affords comfort to the afflicted, rewards
the good, and punishes the wicked. It exercises no unjust
partialities, like the providence of knaves and fools. Man, when