So that, were it the purpose ...

So that, were it the purpose of God to produce comets as signs of his wrath it would be true to say that he is quickening a false devotion almost all over the world, increasing the number of pilgrims to Mecca, multiplying the offerings to the most famous impostors, inducing men to build mosques for Mohammedan worship, causing the invention of new superstitions among the dervishes - in a word, stimulating many abominable things which otherwise might not have been.
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 Pierre Bayle

Quotes from the same author

It has been asserted, that a moral Atheist would be a monster beyond the power of nature to create: I reply, that it is not more strange for an Atheist to live virtuously, than for a Christian to abandon himself to crime! If we believe the last kind of monster, why dispute the existence of the first?
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 Pierre Bayle
The antiquity and general acceptance of an opinion is not assurance of its truth.
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 Pierre Bayle
The movement of comets is part of the ordinary works of nature which, without regard to the happiness or misery of mankind, are transported from one part of the heavens to another by virtue of the general laws of motion.
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 Pierre Bayle
If an historian were to relate truthfully all the crimes, weaknesses, and disorders of mankind, his readers would take his work for satire rather than for history.
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 Pierre Bayle