have the people's leeches brought oppressed citizens to the point of
revolting against their king!

Men fattened on our substance cry to us: "Be persuaded that a she-ass
has spoken; believe that a fish has swallowed a man and has given him up
at the end of three days safe and sound on the shore; have no doubt that
the God of the universe ordered one Jewish prophet to eat excrement
(Ezekiel), and another prophet to buy two whores and to make with them
sons of whoredom (Hosea). These are the very words that the God of truth
and purity has been made to utter; believe a hundred things either
visibly abominable or mathematically impossible; unless you do, the God
of pity will burn you, not only during millions of thousands of millions
of centuries in the fire of hell, but through all eternity, whether you
have a body, whether you have not."

These inconceivable absurdities revolt weak and rash minds, as well as
wise and resolute minds. They say: "Our masters paint God to us as the
most insensate and the most barbarous of all beings; therefore there is
no God;" but they should say: therefore our masters attribute to God
their absurdities and their furies, therefore God is the contrary of
what they proclaim, therefore God is as wise and as good as they make
him out mad and wicked. It is thus that wise men account for things. But
if a bigot hears them, he denounces them to a magistrate who is a
watchdog of the priests; and this watchdog has them burned over a slow
fire, in the belief that he is avenging and imitating the divine majesty
he outrages.


FOOTNOTES: