The world is a necessary agent; all the beings which compose it are united to each other, and can not do otherwise than they do, so long as they are moved by the same causes and possessed of the same qualities.  If they lose these qualities, they will act necessarily in a different way.  God Himself (admitting His existence a moment) can not be regarded as a free agent; if there existed a God, His manner of acting would necessarily be determined by the qualities inherent in His nature; nothing would be able to alter or to oppose His wishes.  This considered, neither our actions nor our prayers nor our sacrifices could suspend or change His invariable progress and His immutable designs, from which we are compelled to conclude that all religion would be entirely useless.

LXXXV.—­EVEN ACCORDING TO THEOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES, MAN IS NOT FREE ONE INSTANT.

If theologians were not constantly contradicting each other, they would know, from their own hypotheses, that man can not be called free for an instant.  Is not man supposed to be in a continual dependence upon God?  Is one free, when one could not have existed or can not live without God, and when one ceases to exist at the pleasure of His supreme will?  If God created man of nothing, if the preservation of man is a continual creation, if God can not lose sight of His creature for an instant, if all that happens to him is a result of the Divine will, if man is nothing of himself, if all the events which he experiences are the effects of Divine decrees, if he can not do any good without assistance from above, how can it be pretended that man enjoys liberty during one moment of his life?  If God did not save him in the moment when he sins, how could man sin?  If God preserves him, God, therefore, forces him to live in order to sin.

LXXXVI.—­ALL EVIL, ALL DISORDER, ALL SIN, CAN BE ATTRIBUTED BUT TO GOD; AND CONSEQUENTLY, HE HAS NO RIGHT TO PUNISH OR REWARD.

Divinity is continually compared to a king, the majority of whose subjects revolt against Him and it is pretended that He has the right to reward His faithful subjects, and to punish those who revolt against Him.  This comparison is not just in any of its parts.  God presides over a machine, of which He has made all the springs; these springs act according to the way in which God has formed them; it is the fault of His inaptitude if these springs do not contribute to the harmony of the machine in which the workman desired to place them.  God is a creating King, who created all kinds of subjects for Himself; who formed them according to His pleasure, and whose wishes can never find any resistance.  If God in His empire has rebellious subjects, it is God who resolved to have rebellious subjects.  If the sins of men disturb the order of the world, it is God who desired this order to be disturbed.  Nobody dares to doubt Divine justice; however, under the empire of a just God, we find nothing but injustice and violence.  Power decides the fate of nations.  Equity seems to be banished from the earth; a small number of men enjoy with impunity the repose, the fortunes, the liberty, and the life of all the others.  Everything is in disorder in a world governed by a God of whom it is said that disorder displeases Him exceedingly.