than those of Error; and I had rather place my dependence on her law than in the inventions of men.” Others again unhappily go still greater lengths; they perceive that imposture has put a bridle in their mouths, and therefore will not submit even to the necessary curb of truth; they incline towards atheism, and run into depravity because others have been impostors and persecutors.
Such are undeniably the consequences of pious frauds and superstitious fopperies. Mankind in general reason but by halves: it is certainly a very vicious way of arguing to say, that because the golden legend of Voraginus, and the “Flower of Saints” of the Jesuit Ribadeneira, abound in nothing but absurdities, therefore there is no God: that the Catholics have massacred a great number of Huguenots, and the Huguenots in their turn have murdered a great number of Catholics, therefore there is no God: that certain bad men have made use of confession, the holy communion, and all the other sacraments, as a means for perpetrating the most atrocious crimes, and therefore there is no God. For my part, I, on the contrary, should conclude from thence that there is a God, who after this transitory life, in which we have wandered so far from the true knowledge of Him, and have seen so many crimes committed under the sanction of His holy name, will at length deign to comfort us for the many dreadful calamities we have suffered in this life; for if we consider the many religious wars, and the forty papal schisms, which have almost all of them been bloody; if we reflect upon the multitude of impostures, which have almost all proved fatal; the irreconcilable animosities excited by differences in opinions, and the numberless evils occasioned by false zeal, I cannot but believe that men have for a long time had their hell in this world.
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