Assuredly they are quite mistaken about the Chinese government; they had
but to read the edicts of the emperors of this vast country to have
seen that these edicts are sermons, and that everywhere there is mention
of the Supreme Being, ruler, revenger, rewarder.
But at the same time they are not less mistaken on the impossibility of
a society of atheists; and I do not know how Mr. Bayle can have
forgotten one striking example which was capable of making his cause
victorious.
In what does a society of atheists appear impossible? It is that one
judges that men who had no check could never live together; that laws
can do nothing against secret crimes; that a revengeful God who punishes
in this world or the other the wicked who have escaped human justice is
necessary.
The laws of Moses, it is true, did not teach a life to come, did not
threaten punishments after death, did not teach the first Jews the
immortality of the soul; but the Jews, far from being atheists, far from
believing in avoiding divine vengeance, were the most religious of all
men. Not only did they believe in the existence of an eternal God, but
they believed Him always present among them; they trembled lest they be
punished in themselves, in their wives, in their children, in their
posterity, even unto the fourth generation; this curb was very potent.
But, among the Gentiles, many sects had no curb; the sceptics doubted
everything: the academicians suspended judgment on everything; the
Epicureans were persuaded that the Deity could not mix Himself in the
affairs of men; and at bottom, they admitted no Deity.
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