HKB
XLVIII.--CONTINUATION.
The slightest reflection suffices to prove to us that God can not have any of the human qualities, virtues, or perfections. Our virtues and our perfections are the results of our temperament modified. Has God a temperament like ours? Our good qualities are our habits relative to the beings in whose society we live. God, according to you, is a solitary being. God has no one like Him; He does not live in society; He has no need of any one; He enjoys a happiness which nothing can alter. Admit, then, upon your own principles, that God can not possess what we call virtues, and that man can not be virtuous in regard to Him.
XLIX.--IT IS ABSURD TO SAY THAT THE HUMAN RACE IS THE OBJECT AND THE END OF CREATION.
Man, charmed with his own merits, imagines that it is but his own kind that God proposed as the object and the end in the formation of the universe. Upon what is this so flattering opinion based? It is, we are told, upon this: that man is the only being endowed with an intelligence which enables him to know the Divine nature, and to render to it homage worthy of it. We are assured that God created the world for His own glory, and that the human race was included in His plan, in order that He might have somebody to admire and glorify Him in His works. But by these intentions has not God visibly missed His end?
According to you, it would always be impossible for man to know his God, and he would be kept in the most invincible ignorance of the Divine essence.
A being who has no equals, can not be susceptible of glory. Glory can result but from the comparison of his own excellence with that of others.
If God by Himself is infinitely happy and is sufficient unto Himself, why does He need the homage of His feeble creatures?
In spite of all His works, God is not glorified; on the contrary, all the religions of the world show Him to us as perpetually offended; their great object is to reconcile sinful, ungrateful, and rebellious man with his wrathful God.
L.--GOD IS NOT MADE FOR MAN, NOR MAN FOR GOD.
If God is infinite, He is created still less for man, than man is for the ants. Would the ants of a garden reason pertinently with reference to the gardener, if they should attempt to occupy themselves with his intentions, his desires, and his projects? Would they reason correctly if they pretended that the park of Versailles was made but for them, and that a fastidious monarch had had as his only object to lodge them superbly? But according to theology, man in his relation to God is far beneath what the lowest insect is to man. Thus by the acknowledgment of theology itself, theology, which does but occupy itself with the attributes and views of Divinity, is the most complete of follies.
LI.--IT IS NOT TRUE THAT THE OBJECT OF THE FORMATION OF THE UNIVERSE WAS TO RENDER MEN HAPPY.
It is pretended, that in forming the universe, God had no object but to render man happy. But, in a world created expressly for him and governed by an all-mighty God, is man after all very happy? Are his enjoyments durable? Are not his pleasures mingled with sufferings? Are there many people who are contented with their fate? Is not mankind the continual victim of physical and moral evils? This human machine, which is shown to us as the masterpiece of the Creator's industry, has it not a thousand ways of deranging itself? Would we admire the skill of a mechanic, who should show us a complicated machine, liable to be out of order at any moment, and which would after a while destroy itself?
LII.--WHAT IS CALLED PROVIDENCE IS BUT A WORD VOID OF SENSE.