means of negations and abstractions, they think they have composed
a real and perfect being. Mind is that, which is _not_ body. An
infinite being is a being, who is _not_ finite. A perfect being
is a being, who is _not_ imperfect. Indeed, is there any one, who
can form real ideas of such a mass of absence of ideas? That, which
excludes all idea, can it be any thing but nothing?

To pretend, that the divine attributes are beyond the reach of human
conception, is to grant, that God is not made for man. To assure us,
that, in God, all is infinite, is to own that there can be nothing
common to him and his creatures. If there be nothing common to God
and his creatures, God is annihilated for man, or, at least, rendered
useless to him. "God," they say, "has made man intelligent, but he
has not made him omniscient;" hence it is inferred, that he has not
been able to give him faculties sufficiently enlarged to know his
divine essence. In this case, it is evident, that God has not been
able nor willing to be known by his creatures. By what right then
would God be angry with beings, who were naturally incapable of knowing
the divine essence? God would be evidently the most unjust and
capricious of tyrants, if he should punish an Atheist for not having
known, what, by his nature, it was impossible he should know.


30. To the generality of men, nothing renders an argument more
convincing than fear. It is therefore, that theologians assure us,
_we must take the safest part_; that nothing is so criminal as
incredulity; that God will punish without pity every one who has
the temerity to doubt his existence; that his severity is just,
since madness or perversity only can make us deny the existence of
an enraged monarch, who without mercy avenges himself on Atheists.