The notion of a tyrant God can create but abject, angry, quarrelsome, intolerant slaves.  Every religion which supposes a God easily irritated, jealous, vindictive, punctilious about His rights or His title, a God small enough to be offended at opinions which we have of Him, a God unjust enough to exact uniform ideas in regard to Him, such a religion becomes necessarily turbulent, unsocial, sanguinary; the worshipers of such a God never believe they can, without crime, dispense with hating and even destroying all those whom they designate as adversaries of this God; they would believe themselves traitors to the cause of their celestial Monarch, if they should live on good terms with rebellious fellow-citizens.  To love what God hates, would it not be exposing one’s self to His implacable hatred?  Infamous persecutors, and you, religious cannibals! will you never feel the folly and injustice of your intolerant disposition?  Do you not see that man is no more the master of his religious opinions, of his credulity or incredulity, than of the language which he learns in childhood, and which he can not change?  To tell men to think as you do, is it not asking a foreigner to express his thoughts in your language?  To punish a man for his erroneous opinions, is it not punishing him for having been educated differently from yourself?  If I am incredulous, is it possible for me to banish from my mind the reasons which have unsettled my faith?  If God allows men the freedom to damn themselves, is it your business?  Are you wiser and more prudent than this God whose rights you wish to avenge?

CLVI.—­EVERY RELIGION IS INTOLERANT, AND CONSEQUENTLY DESTRUCTIVE OF BENEFICENCE.

There is no religious person who, according to his temperament, does not hate, despise, or pity the adherents of a sect different from his own.  The dominant religion (which is never but that of the sovereign and the armies) always makes its superiority felt in a very cruel and injurious manner toward the weaker sects.  There does not exist yet upon earth a true tolerance; everywhere a jealous God is worshiped, and each nation believes itself His friend to the exclusion of all others.

Every nation boasts itself of worshiping the true God, the universal God, the Sovereign of Nature; but when we come to examine this Monarch of the world, we perceive that each organization, each sect, each religious party, makes of this powerful God but an inferior sovereign, whose cares and kindness extend themselves but over a small number of His subjects who pretend to have the exclusive advantage of His favors, and that He does not trouble Himself about the others.