paths of ignorance? how long will you mistake the true principles of morality and religion?  Come and learn its lessons from nations truly pious and learned, in civilized countries.  They will inform you how, to gratify God, you must in certain months of the year, languish the whole day with hunger and thirst; how you may shed your neighbor’s blood, and purify yourself from it by professions of faith and methodical ablutions; how you may steal his property and be absolved on sharing it with certain persons, who devote themselves to its consumption.

Sovereign and invisible power of the universe! mysterious mover of nature! universal soul of beings! thou who art unknown, yet revered by mortals under so many names! being incomprehensible and infinite!  God, who in the immensity of the heavens directest the movement of worlds, and peoplest the abyss of space with millions of suns! say what do these human insects, which my sight no longer discerns on the earth, appear in thy eyes?  To thee, who art guiding stars in their orbits, what are those wormlings writhing themselves in the dust?  Of what import to thy immensity, their distinctions of parties and sects?  And of what concern the subtleties with which their folly torments itself?

And you, credulous men, show me the effect of your practices!  In so many centuries, during which you have been following or altering them, what changes have your prescriptions wrought in the laws of nature?  Is the sun brighter?  Is the course of the seasons varied?  Is the earth more fruitful, or its inhabitants more happy?  If God be good, can your penances please him?  If infinite, can your homage add to his glory?  If his decrees have been formed on foresight of every circumstance, can your prayers change them?  Answer, O inconsistent mortals!

Ye conquerors of the earth, who pretend you serve God! doth he need your aid?  If he wishes to punish, hath he not earthquakes, volcanoes, and thunder?  And cannot a merciful God correct without extermination?

Ye Mussulmans, if God chastiseth you for violating the five precepts, how hath he raised up the Franks who ridicule them?  If he governeth the earth by the Koran, by what did he govern it before the days of the prophet, when it was covered with so many nations who drank wine, ate pork, and went not to Mecca, whom he nevertheless permitted to raise powerful empires?  How did he judge the Sabeans of Nineveh and of Babylon; the Persian, worshipper of fire; the Greek and Roman idolators; the ancient kingdoms of the Nile; and your own ancestors, the Arabians and Tartars?  How doth he yet judge so many nations who deny, or know not your worship—­the numerous castes of Indians, the vast empire of the Chinese, the sable race of Africa, the islanders of the ocean, the tribes of America?