Divines every where exclaim, that God is infinitely just; but that his justice is not the justice of man. Of what kind or nature then is this divine justice? What idea can I form of a justice, which so often resembles injustice? Is it not to confound all ideas of just and unjust, to say, that what is equitable in God is iniquitous in his creatures? How can we receive for our model a being, whose divine perfections are precisely the reverse of human?

"God," it is said, "is sovereign arbiter of our destinies. His supreme power, which nothing can limit, justly permits him to do with the works of his own hands according to his good pleasure. A worm, like man, has no right even to complain." This arrogant style is evidently borrowed from the language, used by the ministers of tyrants, when they stop the mouths of those who suffer from their violences. It cannot then be the language of the ministers of a God, whose equity is highly extolled; it is not made to be imposed upon a being, who reasons. Ministers of a just God! I will inform you then, that the greatest power cannot confer upon your God himself the right of being unjust even to the vilest of his creatures. A despot is not a God. A God, who arrogates to himself the right of doing evil, is a tyrant; a tyrant is not a model for men; he must be an object execrable to their eyes.

Is it not indeed strange, that in order to justify the Divinity, they make him every moment the most unjust of beings! As soon as we complain of his conduct, they think to silence us by alleging, that God is master; which signifies, that God, being the strongest, is not bound by ordinary rules. But the right of the strongest is the violation of all rights. It seems right only to the eyes of a savage conqueror, who in the heat of his fury imagines, that he may do whatever he pleases with the unfortunate victims, whom he has conquered. This barbarous right can appear legitimate only to slaves blind enough to believe that everything is lawful to tyrants whom they feel too weak to resist.

In the greatest calamities, do not devout persons, through a ridiculous simplicity, or rather a sensible contradiction in terms, exclaim, that the Almighty is master. Thus, inconsistent reasoners, believe, that the Almighty (a Being, one of whose first attributes is goodness,) sends you pestilence, war, and famine! You believe that the Almighty, this good being, has the will and right to inflict the greatest evils, you can bear! Cease, at least, to call your God good, when he does you evil; say not, that he is just, say that he is the strongest, and that it is impossible for you to ward off the blows of his caprice.

God, say you, chastises only for our good. But what real good can result to a people from being exterminated by the plague, ravaged by wars, corrupted by the examples of perverse rulers, continually crushed under the iron sceptre of a succession of merciless tyrants, annihilated by the scourges of a bad government, whose destructive effects are often felt for ages? If chastisements are good, then they cannot have too much of a good thing! The eyes of faith must be strange eyes, if with them they see advantages in the most dreadful calamities, in the vices and follies with which our species are afflicted.