The Christians, scarcely content with the crowd of enigmas with which the books of the Jews are filled, have besides fancied they must add to them a great many incomprehensible mysteries, for, which they have the most profound veneration. Their impenetrable obscurity appears to be a sufficient motive among them for adding these. Their priests, encouraged by their credulity, which nothing can outdo, seem to be studious to multiply the articles of their faith, and the number of inconceivable objects which they have said must be received with submission, and adored even if not understood.
The first of these mysteries is the Trinity, which supposes that one God, self-existent, who is a pure spirit, is, nevertheless, composed of three Divinities, which have obtained the names of persons. These three Gods, who are designated under the respective names of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are, nevertheless, but one God only. These three persons are equal in power, in wisdom, in perfections; yet the second is subordinate to the first, in consequence of which he was compelled to become a man, and be the victim of the wrath of his Father. This is what the priests call the mystery of the incarnation. Notwithstanding his innocence, his perfection, his purity, the Son of God became the object of the vengeance of a just God, who is the same as the Son in question, but who would not consent to appease himself but by the death of his own Son, who is a portion of himself. The Son of God, not content with becoming man, died without having sinned, for the salvation of men who had sinned. God preferred to the punishment of imperfect beings, whom he did not choose to amend, the punishment of his only Son, full of divine perfections. The death of God became necessary to reclaim the human kind from the slavery of Satan, who without that would not have quitted his prey, and who has been found sufficiently powerful against the Omnipotent to oblige him to sacrifice his Son. This is what the priests designate by the name of the mystery of redemption.
It is, unquestionably, the briefest way to show the absurdity of these notions, to state them fairly as the priests deliver them to us. It is evident, that if there be but one God alone, there could not be three. Yet one may very easily conceive such a trifold Divinity much in the same way as Plato, who has, doubtless, had the advantage of the Christian teachers in this respect, since he fashioned the Deity under three different points of view, namely, all-powerful, all-wise, reasonable, and, in fine, as full of goodness; but in the excess of his zeal for these perfections, Plato, who personified these three divine qualities, either himself transformed them into three real beings, or, at least, furnished the Christians with the means of their composition. It is not a difficult task to suppose, that those moral attributes may be found in one and the same God; but it is the height of folly, because such a supposition can be reasonably entertained, to fashion three different Gods; and in vain shall we be able to remedy this metaphysical polytheism by arguments to make of one three, and of three one. Besides, this reverie never entered the head of the Hebrew Legislator.— The Eternal, it is true, revealed himself to Moses, but not as a threefold Deity. There is not one syllable in the Old Testament about this Trinity, although a notion so bizzare, so marvellous, and so little consonant with our ideas of a divine being, deserved to have been formally announced, especially as it is the foundation and corner-stone of the Christian religion, which was from all eternity an object of the divine solicitude, and on the establishment of which, if we may credit our sapient priests, God seems to have entertained serious thoughts long before the creation of the world.
Nevertheless, the second person, or the second God of the Trinity, is revealed in flesh, the son of God is made man. But how could the pure Spirit who presides over the universe beget a son? How could this son, who before his incarnation was only a pure spirit, combine that etherial essence with a material body, and envelope himself with it? How could the divine nature amalgamate itself with the imperfect nature of man, and how could an immense and infinite being, as the Deity is represented, be formed in the womb of a virgin? After what manner could a pure spirit fecundate this favourite virgin? Did the Son of God enjoy in the womb of his mother, the faculties of omnipotence, or was he like other children during his infancy, weak, liable to infirmities, sickness, and intellectual imbecility, so conspicuous in the years of childhood; and if so, what, during this period, became of the divine wisdom and power? In fine, how could God suffer and die? How could a just God consent that a God exempt from all sin should endure the chastisements which are due to sinners? Why did he not appease himself without immolating a victim so precious and so innocent?
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