To die for an opinion, proves no more the truth or the soundness of this opinion than to die in a battle proves the right of the prince, for whose benefit so many people are foolish enough to sacrifice themselves.  The courage of a martyr, animated by the idea of Paradise, is not any more supernatural than the courage of a warrior, inspired with the idea of glory or held to duty by the fear of disgrace.  What difference do we find between an Iroquois who sings while he is burned by a slow fire, and the martyr St. Lawrence, who while upon the gridiron insults his tyrant?

The preachers of a new doctrine succumb because they are not the strongest; the apostles usually practice a perilous business, whose consequences they can foresee; their courageous death does not prove any more the truth of their principles or their own sincerity, than the violent death of an ambitious man or a brigand proves that they had the right to trouble society, or that they believed themselves authorized to do it.  A missionary’s profession has been always flattering to his ambition, and has enabled him to subsist at the expense of the common people; these advantages have been sufficient to make him forget the dangers which are connected with it.

CXXXIV.—­THEOLOGY MAKES OF ITS GOD AN ENEMY OF COMMON SENSE AND OF ENLIGHTENMENT.

You tell us, O theologians! that “what is folly in the eyes of men, is wisdom before God, who is pleased to confound the wisdom of the wise.”  But do you not pretend that human wisdom is a gift from Heaven?  In telling us that this wisdom displeases God, is but folly in His eyes, and that He wishes to confound it, you proclaim that your God is but the friend of unenlightened people, and that He makes to sensible people a fatal gift, for which this perfidious Tyrant promises to punish them cruelly some day.  Is it not very strange that we can not be the friend of your God but by declaring ourselves the enemy of reason and common sense?

CXXXV.—­FAITH IS IRRECONCILABLE WITH REASON, AND REASON IS PREFERABLE TO FAITH.

Faith, according to theologians, is consent without evidence.  From this it follows that religion exacts that we should firmly believe, without evidence, in propositions which are often improbable or opposed to reason.  But to challenge reason as a judge of faith, is it not acknowledging that reason can not agree with faith?  As the ministers of religion have determined to banish reason, they must have felt the impossibility of reconciling reason with faith, which is visibly but a blind submission to those priests whose authority, in many minds, appears to be of a greater importance than evidence itself, and preferable to the testimony of the senses.  “Sacrifice your reason; give up experience; distrust the testimony of your senses; submit without examination to all that is given to you as coming from Heaven.”  This is the usual language of all the priests of the world; they do not agree upon any point, except in the necessity of never reasoning when they present principles to us which they claim as the most important to our happiness.