Divine justice, as stated by our divines, is undoubtedly a quality very proper to cherish in us the love of the Divinity. According to the ideas of modern theology, it is evident, that God has created the majority of men, with the sole view of putting them in a fair way to incur eternal punishment. Would it not have been more conformable to goodness, reason, and equity, to have created only stones or plants, and not to have created sensible beings; than to have formed men, whose conduct in this world might subject them to endless punishment in the other? A God perfidious and malicious enough to create a single man, and then to abandon him to the danger of being damned, cannot be regarded as a perfect being; but as an unreasonable, unjust, and ill-natured. Very far from composing a perfect God, theologians have formed the most imperfect of beings. According to theological notions, God would resemble a tyrant, who, having put out the eyes of the greater part of his slaves, should shut them up in a dungeon, where, for his amusement, he would, incognito, observe their conduct through a trap-door, in order to punish with rigour all those, who, while walking about, should hit against each other; but who would magnificently reward the few whom he had not deprived of sight, in avoiding to run against their comrades. Such are the ideas, which the dogma of gratuitous predestination gives us of the divinity!

Although men are continually repeating that their God is infinitely good; yet it is evident, that in reality, they can believe nothing of the kind. How can we love what we do not know? How can we love a being, whose character is only fit to throw us into inquietude and trouble? How can we love a being, of whom all that is said tends to render him an object of utter detestation?