From men's language we might suppose that he is thought to be purely benevolent.
Yet from their dogmas it would seem that he is a capricious tyrant.How are we to explain the discrepancy?The discrepancy is the infallible result of the circumstances already stated.5The Deity has limitless power,and therefore is the natural object of our instinctive fears.The character of the Deity is absolutely incomprehensible,and incomprehensibility in human affairs is identical with caprice and insanity.6The ends and the means of the Deity are alike beyond our knowledge;and the extremes both of wisdom and of folly are equally unaccountable,Now,we praise or blame human beings in order to affect their conduct towards us,to attract favours or repel injuries.A tyrant possessed of unlimited power considers that by ****** abstinence from injury he deserves boundless gratitude.
The weak will only dare to praise,and the strong will only blame.The slave-owner never praises and the slave never blames,because one can use the lash while the other is subject to the lash.If,then,we regard the invisible Being as a capricious despot,and,moreover,as a despot who knows every word we utter,we shall never speak of him without the highest eulogy,just because we attribute to him the most arbitrary tyranny.Hence,the invisible despot will specially favour the priests whose lives are devoted to supporting his authority,and,next to priests,those who,by the practice of ceremonies painful or useless to themselves,show that their sole aim is to give him pleasure.He will specially detest the atheists,and,next to atheists,all who venture to disregard his arbitrary laws.
A human judge may be benevolent,because he is responsible to the community.
They give and can take away his power.But the invisible and irresponsible ruler will have no motives for benevolence,and approve conduct pernicious to men because it is the best proof of a complete subservience to himself.7In spite of this,it has been generally asserted that religion supplies a motive,and the only adequate motive,to moral conduct.But the decay of religion would leave the sources of pain and pleasure unchanged.To say,then,that the conduct prescribed by religion would disappear if the religious motives were removed is virtually to admit that it produces no 'temporal benefit.'Otherwise,the motives for practising such conduct would not be affected.In fact,morality is the same in all countries,though the injunctions of religion are various and contradictory.If religion ordered only what is useful,it would coincide with human laws,and be at worst superfluous.As a fact,it condemns the most harmless pleasures,such as the worst of human legislators have never sought to suppress.People have become tolerant,that is,they have refused to enforce religious observances,precisely because they have seen that such observances cannot be represented as conducive to temporal happiness.
Duty,again,may be divided into duty to God and duty to man.Our 'duty to God'is a 'deduction from the pleasures of the individual without at all benefiting the species.'
It must therefore be taken as a tax paid for the efficacy supposed to be communicated to the other branch --the 'duty to man.'8Does religion,then,stimulate our obedience to the code of duty to man?'Philip Beauchamp ,admits for once that,in certain cases,it 'might possibly'be useful,it might affect 'secret crimes,'that is,crimes where the offender is undiscoverable,that,however,is a trifle.These cases,he thinks,would be 'uncommonly rare'under a well-conceived system.The extent of evil in this life would therefore be trifling were superhuman inducements entirely effaced from the human bosom,and if 'human institutions were ameliorated according to the progress of philosophy.'9On the other hand,the imaginary punishments are singularly defective in the qualities upon which Bentham had insisted in human legislation.They are remote and uncertain,and to make up for this are represented as boundless in intensity and durability.For that reason,they precisely reverse the admitted principle that punishment should be so devised as to produce the greatest possible effect by the smallest infliction of pain.Supernatural sanctions are supposed to maximise pain with a minimum of effect,the fear of hell rarely produces any effect till a man is dying,and then inflicts great suffering,though it has been totally inefficient as a preventive at the time of temptation.