Lutheranism, freed from some absurdities, is preferable to Catholicism; Protestantism to Lutheranism, Socinianism to Protestantism, Deism, with temples and ceremonies, to Socinianism.

Since it is necessary that man, being superstitious by nature, should have a fetish, the simplest and most harmless will be the best fetish."[179] We need not discuss nor extend the quotation; enough has been said to relieve us from the duty of analysing or criticising articles in which Christianity is treated with all the formal respect that the secular authority insisted upon.
This formal respect is not incompatible with many veiled and secret sarcasms, which were as well understood as they were sharply enjoyed by those who read between the lines.

It is not surprising that these sarcasms were constantly unjust and shallow.

Even those of us who repudiate theology and all its works for ourselves, may feel a shock at the coarseness and impurity of innuendo which now and then disfigures Diderot's treatment of theological as of some other subjects.

For this the attitude of the Church itself was much to blame; coarse, virulent, unspiritual as it was in France in those days.