Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/17

Rh of a God against the Atheists? He has said that the Stoics were the followers of natural religion; and I say, that they were Atheists, since they believed that a blind fatality governed the universe; and it is by the religion of nature that we ought to attack that of the Stoics. He says that the scheme of natural religion is connected with that of Spinosa; and I say, that they are contradictory to each other, and it is by natural religion that we ought to destroy Spinosa's scheme. I say, that to confound natural religion with Atheism, is to confound the proof with the thing to be proved, and the objections against the error with error itself, and that this is to take away the most powerful arms we have against this error."

The author now proceeds to the second part of his defence, in which he has the following remarks. "What has the critic done to give an ample scope to his declamations, and to open the widest door to invectives? he has considered the author, as if he had intended to follow the example of M. Abbadye (sic), and had been writing a treatise on Rh