hold only from his apostles, or their disciples, it furnishes a
sufficiency of materials on which to found our conjectures. I shall
only observe to you, that the Jewish nation was remarkable for its
credulity; that the companions of Jesus were chosen from among the
dregs of the people; that Jesus always gave a preference to the
populace, with whom he wished, undoubtedly, to form a rampart against
the _priests_; and that, at last, Jesus was seized immediately after
the most splendid of his miracles. We see him put to death immediately
after the resurrection of Lazarus, which, even according to the gospel
account, bears the most evident characters of fraud, which are visible
to every one who examines it without prejudice.
I imagine, Madam, that what I have just stated will suffice to show
you what opinion you ought to entertain respecting the founder of
Christianity and his first sectaries. These have been either dupes or
fanatics, who permitted themselves to be seduced by deceptions, and by
discourses conformable to their desires, or by dexterous impostors,
who knew how to make the best of the tricks of their old master, to
whom they have become such able successors. In this way did they
establish a religion which enabled them to live at the people's
expense, and which still maintains in abundance those we pay, at such
a high rate, for transmitting from father to son the fables, visions,
and wonders which were born and nursed in Judea. The propagation of
the Christian faith, and the constancy of their martyrs, have nothing
surprising in them. The people flock after all those that show them
wonders, and receive without reasoning on it every thing that is told
them. They transmit to their children the tales they have heard
related, and by degrees these opinions are adopted by kings, by the
great, and even by the learned.
As for the martyrs, their constancy has nothing supernatural in it.
The first Christians, as well as all new sectaries, were treated, by
the Jews and pagans, as disturbers of the public peace. They were
already sufficiently intoxicated with the fanaticism with which their
religion inspired them, and were persuaded that God held himself in
readiness to crown them, and to receive them into his eternal
dwelling. In a word, seeing the heavens opened, and being convinced
that the end of the world was approaching, it is not surprising that
they had courage to set punishment at defiance, to endure it with
constancy, and to despise death. To these motives, founded on their
religious opinions, many others were added, which are always of such a
nature as to operate strongly upon the minds of men. Those who, as
Christians, were imprisoned and ill-treated on account of their faith,
were visited, consoled, encouraged, honored, and loaded with
kindnesses by their brethren, who took care of and succored them
during their detention, and who almost adored them after their death.
Those, on the other hand, who displayed weakness, were despised and
detested, and when they gave way to repentance, they were compelled to
undergo a rigorous penitence, which lasted as long as they lived. Thus
were the most powerful motives united to inspire the martyrs with
courage; and this courage has nothing more supernatural about it than
that which determines us daily to encounter the most perilous dangers,
through the fear of dishonoring ourselves in the eyes of our
fellow-citizens. Cowardice would expose us to infamy all the rest of
our days. There is nothing miraculous in the constancy of a man to
whom an offer is made, on the one hand, of eternal happiness and the
highest honors, and who, on the other hand, sees himself menaced with
hatred, contempt, and the most lasting regret.
You perceive, then, Madam, that nothing can be easier than to
overthrow the proofs by which Christian doctors establish the
revelation which they pretend is so well authenticated. Miracles,
martyrs, and prophecies prove nothing.
Were all the wonders true that are related in the Old and New
Testament, they would afford no proof in favor of divine omnipotence,
but, on the contrary, would prove the inability under which the Deity
has continually labored, of convincing mankind of the truths he wished
to announce to them. On the other hand, supposing these miracles to
have produced all the effects which the Deity had a right to expect
from them, we have no longer any reason to believe them, except on the
tradition and recitals of others, which are often suspicious, faulty,
and exaggerated. The miracles of Moses are attested only by Moses, or
by Jewish writers interested in making them believed by the people
they wished to govern. The miracles of Jesus are attested only by his
disciples, who sought to obtain adherents, in relating to a credulous
people prodigies to which they pretended to have been witnesses, or
which some of them, perhaps, believed they had really seen. All those
who deceive mankind are not always cheats; they are frequently
deceived by those who are knaves in reality. Besides, I believe I have
sufficiently proved, that miracles are repugnant to the essence of an
immutable God, as well as to his wisdom, which will not permit him to
alter the wise laws he has himself established. In short, miracles are
useless, since those related in Scripture have not produced the
effects which God expected from them.
The proof of the Christian religion taken from prophecy has no better
foundation. Whoever will examine without prejudice these oracles
pretended to be divine will find only an ambiguous, unintelligible,
absurd, and unconnected jargon, entirely unworthy of a God who
intended to display his prescience, and to instruct his people with
regard to future events. There does not exist in the Holy Scriptures a
single prophecy sufficiently precise to be literally applied to Jesus
Christ. To convince yourself of this truth, ask the most learned of
our doctors which are the formal prophecies wherein they have the
happiness to discover the Messiah. You will then perceive that it is
only by the aid of forced explanations, figures, parables, and
mystical interpretations, by which they are enabled to bring forward
any thing sensible and applicable to the _god-made-man_ whom they tell
us to adore. It would seem as if the Deity had made predictions only
that we might understand nothing about them.
In these equivocal oracles, whose meaning it is impossible to
penetrate, we find nothing but the language of intoxication,
fanaticism, and delirium. When we fancy we have found something
intelligible, it is easy to perceive that the prophets intended to
speak of events that took place in their own age, or of personages who
had preceded them. It is thus that our doctors apply gratuitously to
Christ prophecies or rather narratives of what happened respecting
David, Solomon, Cyrus, &c.
We imagine we see the chastisement of the Jewish people announced in
recitals where it is evident the only matter in question was the
Babylonish captivity. In this event, so long prior to Jesus Christ,
they have imagined finding a prediction of the dispersion of the Jews,
supposed to be a visible punishment for their _deicide_, and which
they now wish to pass off as an indubitable proof of the truth of
Christianity.
It is not, then, astonishing that the ancient and modern Jews do not
see in the prophets what our doctors teach us, and what they
themselves imagine they have seen. Jesus himself has not been more
happy in his predictions than his predecessors. In the gospel he
announces to his disciples in the most formal manner the destruction
of the world and the last judgment, as events that were at hand, and
which must take place before the existing generation had passed away.
Yet the world still endures, and appears in no danger of finishing. It
is true, our doctors pretend that, in the prediction of Jesus Christ,
he spoke of the ruin of Jerusalem by Vespasian and Titus; but none but
those who have not read the gospel would submit to such a change, or
satisfy themselves with such an evasion. Besides, in adopting it we
must confess at least that the Son of God himself was unable to
prophesy with greater precision than his obscure predecessors.
Indeed, at every page of these sacred books, which we are assured were
inspired by God himself, this God seems to have made a revelation only
to conceal himself. He does not speak but to be misunderstood. He
announces his oracles in such a way only that we can neither
comprehend them nor make any application of them. He performs miracles
only to make unbelievers. He manifests himself to mankind only to
stupefy their judgment and bewilder the reason he has bestowed on
them. The Bible continually represents God to us as a seducer, an
enticer, a suspicious tyrant, who knows not what kind of conduct to
observe with respect to his subjects; who amuses himself by laying
snares for his creatures, and who tries them that he may have the
pleasure of inflicting a punishment for yielding to his temptations.
This God is occupied only in building to destroy, in demolishing to
rebuild. Like a child disgusted with its playthings, he is continually
undoing what he has done, and breaking what was the object of his
desires. We find no foresight, no constancy, no consistency in his
conduct; no connection, no clearness in his discourses. When he
performs any thing, he sometimes approves what he has done, and at
other times repents of it. He irritates and vexes himself with what he
has permitted to be done, and, in spite of his infinite power, he
suffers man to offend him, and consents to let Satan, his creature,
derange all his projects. In a word, the revelations of the Christians
and Jews seem to have been imagined only to render uncertain and to
annihilate the qualities attributed to the Deity, and which are
declared to constitute his essence. The whole Scripture, the entire
system of the Christian religion, appears to be founded only on the
incapability of God, who was unable to render the human race as wise,
as good, and as happy as he wished them. The death of his innocent
Son, who was immolated to his vengeance, is entirely useless for the
most numerous portion of the earth's inhabitants; almost the whole
human race, in spite of the continual efforts of the Deity, continue
to offend him, to frustrate his designs, resist his will, and to
persevere in their wickedness.
It is on notions so fatal, so contradictory, and so unworthy of a God
who is just, wise, and good, of a God that is rational, independent,
immutable, and omnipotent, on whom the Christian religion is founded,
and which religion is said to be established forever by God, who,
nevertheless, became disgusted with the religion of the Jews, with
whom he had made and sworn an eternal covenant.
Time must prove whether God be more constant and faithful in
fulfilling his engagements with the Christians than he has been to
fulfil those he made with Abraham and his posterity. I confess, Madam,
that his past conduct alarms me as to what he may finally perform. If
he himself acknowledged by the mouth of Ezekiel that the laws he had
given to the Jews _were not good_, he may very possibly, some day or
other, find fault with those which he has given to Christians.
Our priests themselves seem to partake of my suspicions, and to fear
that God will be wearied of that protection which he has so long
granted to his church. The inquietudes which they evince, the efforts
which they make to hinder the civilization of the world, the
persecutions which they raise against all those who contradict them,
seem to prove that they mistrust the promises of Jesus Christ, and
that they are not certainly convinced of the eternal durability of a
religion which does not appear to them divine, but because it gives
them the right to command like gods over their fellow-citizens. They
would undoubtedly consider the destruction of their empire a very
grievous thing; but yet if the sovereigns of the earth and their
people should once grow weary of the sacerdotal yoke, we may be sure
the Sovereign of heaven would not require a longer time to become
equally disgusted.
However this may be, Madam, I venture to hope the perusal of this
letter will fully undeceive you of a blind veneration for books which
are called _divine_, although they appear as if invented to degrade
and destroy the God who is asserted to be their author. My first
letter, I feel confident, enabled you to perceive that the dogmas
established by these same books, or subsequently fabricated to justify
the ideas thus given of God, are not less contrary to all notions of a
Deity infinitely perfect. A system which in the outset is based upon
false principles can never become any thing else than a mass of
falsehoods.
I am, &c.
LETTER IV.
Of the fundamental Dogmas of the Christian Religion.
You are aware, Madam, that our theological doctors pretend these
revealed books, which I summarily examined in my preceding letter, do
not include a single word that was not inspired by the Spirit of God.
What I have already said to you is sufficient to show that in setting
out with this supposition, the Divinity has formed a work the most
shapeless, imperfect, contradictory, and unintelligible which ever
existed; a work, in a word, of which any man of sense would blush with
shame to be the author. If any prophecy hath verified itself for the
Christians, it is that of Isaiah, which saith, "Hearing ye shall hear,
but shall not understand." But in this case we reply that it was
sufficiently useless to speak not to be comprehended; to reveal _that_
which cannot be comprehended is to reveal _nothing_.
We need not, then, be surprised if the Christians, notwithstanding the
revelation of which they assure us they have been the favorites, have
no precise ideas either of the Divinity, or of his will, or the way in
which his oracles are to be interpreted. The book from which they
should be able to do so serves only to confound the simplest notions,
to throw them into the greatest incertitude, and create eternal
disputations. If it was the project of the Divinity, it would,
without doubt, be attended with perfect success. The teachers of
Christianity never agree on the manner in which they are to understand
the truths that God has given himself the trouble to reveal; all the
efforts which they have employed to this time have not yet been
capable of making any thing clear, and the dogmas which they have
successively invented have been insufficient to justify to the
understanding of one man of good sense the conduct of an infinitely
perfect Being.
Hence, many among them, perceiving the inconveniences which would
result from the reading of the holy books, have carefully kept them
out of the hands of the vulgar and illiterate; for they plainly
foresaw that if they were read by such they would necessarily bring on
themselves reproach, since it would never fail that every honest man
of good sense would discover in those books only a crowd of
absurdities. Thus the oracles of God are not even made for those for
whom they are addressed; it is requisite to be initiated in the
mysteries of a priesthood, to have the privilege of discerning in the
holy writings the light which the Divinity destined to all his dear
children. But are the theologians themselves able to make plain the
difficulties which the sacred books present in every page? By
meditating on the mysteries which they contain, have they given us
ideas more plain of the intentions of the Divinity? No; without doubt
they explain one mystery by citing another; they scatter new
obscurities on previous obscurities; rarely do they agree among
themselves; and when by chance their opinions coincide, _we_ are not
more enlightened, nor is our judgment more convinced; on the other
hand, our reason is the more confounded.
If they do agree on some point, it is only to tell us that human
reason, of which God is the author, is depraved; but what is the
purport of this coincidence in their opinions, if it be not to tax the
Deity with imbecility, injustice, and malignity? For why should God,
in creating a reasonable being, not have given him an understanding
which nothing could corrupt? They reply to us by saying "that the
reason of man is necessarily limited; that perfection could not be the
portion of a _creature_; that the designs of God are not like those of
man." But, in this case, why should the Divinity be offended by the
necessary imperfections which he discovers in his creatures? How can a
just God require that our mind must admit what it was not made to
comprehend? Can he who is above our reason be understood by us, whose
reason is so limited? If God be infinite, how can a finite creature
reason respecting him? If the mysteries and hidden designs of the
Divinity are of such a nature as not to be comprehended by man, what
good can we derive from their investigation? Had God designed that we
should occupy our thoughts with his purposes, would he not have given
us an understanding proportionate to the things he wished us to
penetrate?
You see, then, Madam, that in depressing our reason, in supposing it
corrupted, our priests, at the same time, annihilate even the
necessity of religion, which cannot be either useful or important to
us, if above our comprehension. They do more in supposing human reason
depraved; they accuse God of injustice, in requiring that our reason
should conceive what cannot be conceived. They accuse him of
imbecility in not rendering this reason more perfect. In a word, in
degrading man they degrade God, and rob him of those attributes which
compose his essence. Would you call him a just and good parent, who,
wishing that his children should walk by an obscure route, filled with
difficulties, would only give them for their conduct a light too weak
to find their way, and to avoid the continual dangers by which they
are surrounded? Should you consider that the father had adequately
provided for their security by giving them in writing unintelligible
instructions, which they could not decipher by the weak light he had
given them?
Our spiritual directors will not fail to tell us that the corruption
of reason and the weakness of the human understanding are the
consequences of sin. But why has man become sinful? How has the good
God permitted his dear children, for whom he created the universe, and
of whom he exacts obedience, to offend him, and thereby extinguish,
or, at least, weaken the light he had given them? On the other hand,
the reason of Adam ought to be, without doubt, completely perfect
before his fall. In this case, why did it not prevent that fall and
its consequences? Was the reason of Adam corrupted even beforehand by
incurring the wrath of his God? Was it depraved before he had done any
thing to deprave it?
To justify this strange conduct of Providence, to clear him from
passing as the author of sin, to save him the ridicule of being the
cause or the accomplice of offences which he did against himself, the
theologians have imagined a _being_ subordinate to the divine power.
It is the secondary being they make the author of all the evil which
is committed in the universe. In the impossibility of reconciling the
continual disorders of which the world is the theatre with the
purposes of a Deity replete with goodness, the Creator and Preserver
of the universe, who delights in order, and who seeks only the
happiness of his creatures, they have trumped up a destructive genius,
imbued with wickedness, who conspires to render men miserable, and to
overthrow the beneficent views of the Eternal. This bad and perverse
being they call _Satan_, the _Devil_, the _Evil One_; and we see him
play a great game in all the religions of the world, the founders of
which have found in the impotence of Deity the sources of both good
and evil. By the aid of this imaginary being they have been enabled to
resolve all their difficulties; yet they could not foresee that this
invention, which went to annihilate or abridge the power of Deity, was
a system filled with palpable contradictions, and that if the Devil
were really the author of sin, it would be he, in all justice, who
ought to undergo all its punishment.
If God is the author of all, it is he who created the Devil; if the
Devil is wicked, if he strives to counteract the projects of the
Divinity, it is the Divinity who has allowed the overthrow of his
projects, or who has not had sufficient authority to prevent the Devil
from exercising his power. If God had wished that the Devil should not
have existed, the Devil would not have existed. God could annihilate
him at one word, or, at least, God could change his disposition if
injurious to us, and contrary to the projects of a beneficent
Providence. Since, then, the Devil does exist, and does such
marvellous things as are attributed to him, we are compelled to
conclude that the Divinity has found it good that he should exist and
agitate, as he does, all his works by a perpetual interruption and
perversion of his designs.
Thus, Madam, the invention of the Devil does not remedy the evil; on
the contrary, it but entangles the priests more and more. By placing
to Satan's account all the evil which he commits in the world, they
exculpate the Deity of nothing; all the power with which they have
supposed the Devil invested is taken from that assigned to the
Divinity; and you know very well that according to the notions of the
Christian religion, the Devil has more adherents than God himself;
they are always stirring their fellow-creatures up to revolt against
God; without ceasing, in despite of God, Satan leads them into
perdition, except one man only, who refused to follow him, and who
found grace in the eyes of the Lord. You are not ignorant that the
millions that follow the standard of Beelzebub are to be plunged with
him into eternal misery.
But then has Satan himself incurred the disgrace of the All-powerful?
By what forfeit has he merited becoming the eternal object of the
anger of that God who created him? The Christian religion will explain
all. It informs us that the Devil was in his origin an angel; that is
to say, a pure spirit, full of perfections, created by the Divinity to
occupy a distinguishing situation in the celestial court, destined,
like the other ministers of the Eternal, to receive his orders, and to
enjoy perpetual blessedness. But he lost himself through ambition; his
pride blinded him, and he dared to revolt against his Creator; he
engaged other spirits, as pure as himself, in the same senseless
enterprise; in consequence of his rashness, he was hurled headlong out
of heaven, his miserable adherents were involved in his fall, and,
having been hardened by the divine pleasure in their foolish
dispositions, they have no other occupation assigned them in the
universe than to tempt mankind, and endeavor to augment the number of
the enemies of God, and the victims of his wrath.