Nothing can preserve untainted the genuine principles of morals in our judgement of human conduct but the absolute necessity of these principles to the existence of society.
Survey most nations and most ages...examine the religious principles which have in fact prevailed in the world...you will scarcely be persuaded that they are anything but sick men's dreams...or perhaps you will regard them more as the playsome whimsies of monkeys in human shape than the serious, positive, dogmatical asseverations of a being who dignifies himself with the name of rational.
Hear the verbal protestations of all men...nothing so certain as their religious tenents...examine their lives...you will scarcely think that they repose the smallest confidence in them.
The greatest and truest zest gives us no security against hypocrisy...the most open impiety is attended with a secret dread and compunction.
Ignorance is the mother of devotion.
But even though superstition or enthusiasm should not put itself in direct opposition to morality, the very diverting of the attention...the raising up a new and frivolous species of merit...the preposterous distribution which it makes of praise and blame must have the most pernicious consequences and weaken extremely men's attachment to the natural motives of justice and humanity.
The highest zeal in religion and the deepest hypocrisy so far from being inconsistent are often or commonly united in the same individual character.
No morality can be forcible enough to bind the enthusiastic zealot...the sacredness of the cause sanctifies every measure which can be made use of to promote it.
The motives of vulgar superstition have no great influence on general conduct nor is their operation very favorable to morality in the instances where they predominate.
It is allowed that men never have recourse to devotion so readily as when dejected with grief or depressed with sickness...Is not this a proof that the religious spirit is not so nearly allied to joy as to sorrow?
