Thus, Madam, we are brought back to the contradictory discourses of those priests who, after having caused terror by their desolating dogmas, attempt to reassure us by vague hopes, and exhort us to place confidence in a God whom they have themselves so repulsively delineated. It is idle for them to tell us the yoke of Jesus Christ is light. It is insupportable to those who consider it properly. It is only light for those who bear it without reflection, or for those who assume it in order to impose it upon others, without intending to suffer its annoyances themselves.
Suffer me, Madam, to refer you to yourself. Were you happy, contented, or gay, when you made me the depository of the secret inquietudes inflicted upon you by prejudices, and which had commenced taking that fatal empire over your mind which I have endeavored to destroy? Was not your soul involved in woe in spite of your judgment? Were you not taking measures to wither all your happiness? In favor of religion, were you not ready to renounce the world, and disregard all you owe to society? If I was afflicted, I was not surprised. The Christian religion inevitably destroys the happiness and repose of those who are subjected by it; alarms and terrors are the objects of its pleasures; it cannot make those happy who fully receive it. It would certainly have plunged you into distress. All your faculties would have been injured, and your too susceptible imagination would have been carried to such dangerous extremes, that many others would have grieved at the result. A gentle and beneficent spirit, like yours, could never receive peace from Christianity. The evils of religion are sure, while its consolations are contradictory and vague. They cannot give that temper and tranquillity to the mind which is necessary to enable men to labor for their own happiness and that of others.
In effect, as I have already observed, it is very difficult for an individual to occupy himself with the happiness of another when he is himself miserable. The devotee, who imposes penances on his own head, who is suspicious of every thing, who is full of self-reproaches, and who is heated by visionary meditation, by fasting and seclusion, must naturally be irritated against all those who do not believe it their duty to make such absurd sacrifices. He can scarcely avoid being enraged at those audacious persons who neglect practices or duties that are claimed as the exactions of God. He will desire to be with those only who view things as he does himself; he will keep himself apart from all others, and will end by hating them. He believes himself obliged to make a loud and public parade of his mode of thinking, and he signalizes his zeal even at the risk of appearing ridiculous. If he showed indulgence, he would doubtless fear he should render himself an accomplice in a neglect of his God. He would reprehend such sinners, and it would be with acrimony, because his own soul was filled with it. In fine, if zealous, he would always be under the dominion of anger, and would only be indulgent in proportion as he was not bigoted.