Christianity Unveiled. baron d' Paul Henri Thiry Holbach
of a remedy; being either ignorant of the cause, or so long accustomed to disease, that they have lost even the desire of health.
If religion be the object most important to mankind, if it extends its influences not only over our conduct in this life, but also over our eternal happiness, nothing can demand from us a more serious examination. Yet it is of all things, that, respecting which, mankind exercise the most implicit credulity. The same man, who examines with scrupulous nicety things of little moment to his welfare, wholly neglects inquiry concerning the motives which determine him to believe and perform things, on which, according to his own confession, depend both his temporal and eternal felicity. He blindly abandons himself to those whom chance has given him for guides; he confides to them the care of thinking for him, and even makes a merit of his own indolence and credulity. In matters of religion, infancy and barbarity seem to be the boast of the greater part of the human race.
Nevertheless, men have in all ages appeared, who, shaking off the prejudices of their fellows, have dared to lift before their eyes the light of truth. But what could their feeble voice effect against errors imbibed at the breast, confirmed by habit, authorised by example, and fortified by a policy, which often became the accomplice of its own ruin? The stentorian clamours of imposture soon overwhelm the calm exhortations of the advocates of reason. In vain shall the philosopher endeavour to inspire mankind with courage, so long as they tremble beneath the rod of priests and kings.
The surest means of deceiving mankind, and perpetuating their errors, is to deceive them in infancy. Amongst many nations at the present day, education seems designed only to form fanatics, devotees, and monks; that is to say, men either useless or injurious to society. Few are the places in which it is calculated to form good citizens. Princes, to whom a great part of the earth is at present unhappily subjected, are commonly the victims of a superstitious education, and remain all their lives in the profoundest ignorance of their own duties, and the truest interests of the states which they govern. Religion seems to have been invented only to render both kings and people equally the slaves of the priesthood. The latter is continually busied in raising obstacles to the felicity of nations. Wherever this reigns, other governments have but a precarious power; and citizens become indolent, ignorant, destitute of greatness of soul, and, in short, of every quality necessary to the happiness of society.
If, in a state where the Christian religion is professed, we find some activity, some science, and an approach to social manners; it is, because nature, whenever it is in her power, restores mankind to reason, and obliges them to labour for their own felicity. Were all Christian nations exactly conformed to their principles, they must be plunged into the most profound inactivity. Our countries would be inhabited by a small number of pious savages, who would meet only to destroy each other. For why should a man mingle with the affairs of a world, which his religion informs him is only a place of passage? What can be the industry of that people, who believe themselves commanded by their God to live in continual fear, to pray, to groan, and afflict themselves incessantly? How can a society exist which is composed of men who are convinced that, in their zeal for religion, they ought to hate and destroy all whose opinions differ from their own? How can we expect to find humanity, justice, or any virtue, amongst a horde of fanatics, who copy in their conduct a cruel, dissembling, and dishonest God? A God who delights in the tears of his unhappy creatures, who sets for them the ambush, and then punishes them for having fallen into it? A God who himself ordains robbery, persecution, and carnage?
Such, however, are the traits with which the Christian religion represents the God which it has inherited from the Jews. This God was a sultan, a despot, a tyrant, to whom all things were lawful. Yet he is held up to us as a model of perfection. Crimes, at which human nature revolts, have been committed in his name; and the greatest villanies have been justified by the pretence of their being committed, either by his command, or to merit his favour. Thus the Christian religion, which boasts of being the only true support of morality, and of furnishing mankind with the strongest motives for the practice of virtue, has proved to them a source of divisions, oppressions, and the blackest crimes. Under the pretext of bringing peace on earth, it has overwhelmed it with hate, discord, and war. It furnishes the human race with a thousand ingenious means of tormenting themselves, and scatters amongst them scourges unknown before. The Christian, possessed of common sense, must bitterly regret the tranquil ignorance of his idolatrous ancestors.
If the manners of nations have gained nothing by the Christian religion, governments, of which it has pretended to be the support, have drawn from it advantages equally small. It establishes to itself in every state a separate power, and becomes the tyrant or the enemy of every other power. Kings were always the slaves of priests; or if they refused to bow the knee, they were proscribed, stripped of their privileges, and exterminated either by subjects whom religion had excited to revolt, or assassins whose hands she had armed with her sacred poignard. Before the introduction of the Christian religion, those who governed the state, commonly governed the priesthood; since that period, sovereigns have dwindled into the first slaves of the priesthood, the mere executors of its vengeance and its decrees.
Let us then conclude, that the Christian religion has no right to boast of procuring advantages either by policy or morality. Let us tear aside the veil with which it envelopes itself. Let us penetrate back to its source. Let us pursue it in its course, we shall find that, founded on imposture, ignorance, and credulity, it can never be useful but to men who wish to deceive their fellow-creatures. We shall find, that it will never cease to generate the greatest evils among mankind, and that instead of producing the felicity it promises, it is formed to cover the earth with outrages, and deluge it in blood; that it will plunge the human race in delirium and vice, and blind their eyes to their truest interests and their plainest duties.
CHAP. II.—SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE JEWS.
In a small country, almost unknown to others, lived a nation, the founders of which having too long been slaves among the Egyptians, were delivered, from their servitude by a priest of Heliopolis, who, by means of his superior genius and knowledge, gained the ascendancy over them.1 This man, known by the name of Diodorus Siculus also relates the history of Moses—Vide translation of Abbe Terrasson.
1 Maneton and Cheremon, Egyptian historians, respecting
whom testimonies have been transmitted to us by Joseph the
Jew, inform us that a multitude of lepers were drawn out of
Egypt by king Amenophis; and that these exiles elected for
their leader a priest of Heliopolis whose name was Moses,
and who formed for them a religion and a code of laws.
Joseph contre Appion. liv. i. chap. ix. II, 12.
Be this as it may, Moses, by the confession of the Bible itself, began his career by assassinating an Egyptian, who was quarrelling with an Hebrew; after which he fled into Arabia, and married the daughter of an idolatrous priest, by whom he was often reproached for his cruelty. Thence he returned into Egypt, and placed himself at the head of his nation, which was dissatisfied with king Pharaoh. Moses reigned very tyrannically; the examples of Korah, Dathan, and Abirain, prove to what kind of people he had an aversion. He at last disappeared like Romulus, no one being able to find his body, or the place of his sepulture.
Moses, being educated in the mysteries of a religion, which was fertile in prodigies, and the mother of superstitions, placed himself at the head of a band of fugitives, whom he persuaded that he was an interpreter of the will of their God, whose immediate commands he pretended to receive. He proved his mission, it is said, by works which appeared supernatural to men ignorant of the operations of nature, and the resources of art. The first command that he gave them on the part of his God was to rob their masters, whom they were about to desert. When he had thus enriched them with the spoils of Egypt, being sure of their confidence, he conducted them into a desert, where, during forty years, he accustomed them to the blindest obedience, he taught them the will of heaven, the marvellous fables of their forefathers, and the ridiculous ceremonies