What accents of madness strike my ear? What blind and perverse delirium
disorders the spirits of the nations? Sacrilegious prayers rise not from
the earth! and you, oh Heavens, reject their homicidal vows and impious
thanksgivings! Deluded mortals! is it thus you revere the Divinity?
Say then; how should he, whom you style your common father, receive the
homage of his children murdering one another? Ye victors! with what eye
should he view your hands reeking in the blood he hath created? And,
what do you expect, oh vanquished, from useless groans? Hath God
the heart of a mortal, with passions ever changing? Is he, like you,
agitated with vengeance or compassion, with wrath or repentance? What
base conception of the most sublime of beings! According to them, it
would seem, that God whimsical and capricious, is angered or appeased as
a man: that he loves and hates alternately; that he punishes or favors;
that, weak or wicked, he broods over his hatred; that, contradictory
or perfidious, he lays snares to entrap; that he punishes the evils he
permits; that he foresees but hinders not crimes; that, like a corrupt
judge, he is bribed by offerings; like an ignorant despot, he makes
laws and revokes them; that, like a savage tyrant, he grants or resumes
favors without reason, and can only be appeased by servility. Ah! now
I know the lying spirit of man! Contemplating the picture which he hath
drawn of the Divinity: No, said I, it is not God who hath made man after
the image of God; but man hath made God after the image of man; he hath
given him his own mind, clothed him with his own propensities;
ascribed to him his own judgments. And when in this medley he finds
the contradiction of his own principles, with hypocritical humility,
he imputes weakness to his reason, and names the absurdities of his own
mind the mysteries of God.

He hath said, God is immutable, yet he offers prayers to change him;
he hath pronounced him incomprehensible, yet he interprets him without