“These thoughts did not come to me to begin with.  Carried away by the prejudices of my education, and by that dangerous vanity which always strives to lift man out of his proper sphere, when I could not raise my feeble thoughts up to the great Being, I tried to bring him down to my own level.  I tried to reduce the distance he has placed between his nature and mine.  I desired more immediate relations, more individual instruction; not content to make God in the image of man that I might be favoured above my fellows, I desired supernatural knowledge; I required a special form of worship; I wanted God to tell me what he had not told others, or what others had not understood like myself.

“Considering the point I had now reached as the common centre from which all believers set out on the quest for a more enlightened form of religion, I merely found in natural religion the elements of all religion.  I beheld the multitude of diverse sects which hold sway upon earth, each of which accuses the other of falsehood and error; which of these, I asked, is the right?  Every one replied, ‘My own;’ every one said, ’I alone and those who agree with me think rightly, all the others are mistaken.’  And how do you know that your sect is in the right?  Because God said so.  And how do you know God said so? [Footnote:  “All men,” said a wise and good priest, “maintain that they hold and believe their religion (and all use the same jargon), not of man, nor of any creature, but of God.  But to speak truly, without pretence or flattery, none of them do so; whatever they may say, religions are taught by human hands and means; take, for example, the way in which religions have been received by the world, the way in which they are still received every day by individuals; the nation, the country, the locality gives the religion; we belong to the religion of the place where we are born and brought up; we are baptised or circumcised, we are Christians, Jews, Mohametans before we know that we are men; we do not pick and choose our religion for see how ill the life and conduct agree with the religion, see for what slight and human causes men go against the teaching of their religion.”—­Charron, De la Sagesse.—­It seems clear that the honest creed of the holy theologian of Condom would not have differed greatly from that of the Savoyard priest.] And who told you that God said it?  My pastor, who knows all about it.  My pastor tells me what to believe and I believe it; he assures me that any one who says anything else is mistaken, and I give not heed to them.

“What! thought I, is not truth one; can that which is true for me be false for you?  If those who follow the right path and those who go astray have the same method, what merit or what blame can be assigned to one more than to the other?  Their choice is the result of chance; it is unjust to hold them responsible for it, to reward or punish them for being born in one country or another.  To dare to say that God judges us in this manner is an outrage on his justice.