Do you not see, in fact, the excesses to which fanaticism and zeal drive the wisest and best meaning men? Princes, magistrates, and judges become inhuman and pitiless as soon as there is a question of the interests of religion. Men of the gentlest disposition, the most indulgent, and the most equitable, upon every other matter, religion transforms to ferocious beasts. The most feeling and compassionate persons believe themselves in conscience obliged to harden their hearts, to do violence to their better instincts, and to stifle nature, in order to show themselves cruel to those who are denounced as enemies to their own manner of thinking. Recall to your mind, Madam, the cruelties of nations and governments in alternate persecutions of Catholics or Protestants, as either happened to be in the ascendant. Can you find reason, equity, or humanity in the vexations, imprisonments, and exiles that in our days are inflicted upon the Jansenists? And these last, if ever they should attain in their turn the power requisite for persecution, would not probably treat their adversaries with more moderation or justice. Do you not daily see individuals who pique themselves upon their sensibility unblushingly express the joy they would feel at the extermination of persons to whom they believe they owe neither benevolence nor indulgence, and whose only crime is a disdain for prejudices that the vulgar regard as sacred, or that an erroneous and false policy considers useful to the state? Superstition has so greatly stifled all sense of humanity in many persons otherwise truly estimable, that they have no compunctions at sacrificing the most enlightened men of the nation because they could not be the most credulous or the most submissive to the authority of the priests.
In a word, devotion is only calculated to fill the heart with a bitter rancor, that banishes peace and harmony from society. In the matter of religion, every one believes himself obliged to show more or less ardor and zeal. Have I not often seen you uncertain yourself whether you ought to sigh or smile at the self-depreciation of devotees ridiculously inflamed by that religious vanity which grows out of sectarian conventionalities? You also see them participating in theological quarrels, in which, without comprehending their nature or purport, they believe themselves conscientiously obliged to mingle. I have a hundred times seen you astounded with their clamors, indignant at their animosity, scandalized at their cabals, and filled with disdain at their obstinate ignorance. Yet nothing is more natural than these outbreaks; ignorance has always been the mother of devotion. To be a devotee has always been synonymous to having an imbecile confidence in priests. It is to receive all impulsions from them; it is to think and act only according to them; it is blindly to adopt their passions and prejudices; it is faithfully to fulfil practices which their caprice imposes.
