support, or propagate the impertinent conjectures of some enthusiasts,
or to give validity to the cheats of impostors, in the name of a being,
who exists only in their imagination, and who has made himself known
only by the ravages, disputes, and follies, he has caused.

Savage and furious nations, perpetually at war, adore, under divers names,
some God, conformable to their ideas, that is to say, cruel, carnivorous,
selfish, blood-thirsty. We find, in all the religions, "a God of armies,"
a "jealous God," an "avenging God," a "destroying God," a "God," who
is pleased with carnage, and whom his worshippers consider it a duty
to serve. Lambs, bulls, children, men, and women, are sacrificed to him.
Zealous servants of this barbarous God think themselves obliged even
to offer up themselves as a sacrifice to him. Madmen may everywhere
be seen, who, after meditating upon their terrible God, imagine that to
please him they must inflict on themselves, the most exquisite torments.
The gloomy ideas formed of the deity, far from consoling them, have
every where disquieted their minds, and prejudiced follies destructive
to happiness.

How could the human mind progress, while tormented with frightful phantoms,
and guided by men, interested in perpetuating its ignorance and fears?
Man has been forced to vegetate in his primitive stupidity: he has
been taught stories about invisible powers upon whom his happiness was
supposed to depend. Occupied solely by his fears, and by unintelligible
reveries, he has always been at the mercy of priests, who have reserved
to themselves the right of thinking for him, and of directing his actions.

Thus, man has remained a slave without courage, fearing to reason,
and unable to extricate himself from the labyrinth, in which he has
been wandering. He believes himself forced under the yoke of his gods,