Do I propose, then, that every citizen shall be free to follow his
own reason, and believe whatever this enlightened or deluded reason
shall dictate to him? Certainly, provided he does not disturb the
public order. It does not depend on man to believe or not to believe;
but it depends on him to respect the usages of his country. If you
insist that it is a crime to disbelieve in the dominant religion, you
condemn the first Christians, your fathers, and you justify those
whom you reproach with persecuting them.
You say that there is a great difference; that all other religions
are the work of man, and the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church
alone is the work of God. But, surely, the fact that our religion
is divine does not imply that it should rule by hatred, fury,
exile, the confiscation of goods, imprisonment, torture, murder,
and thanksgiving to God for murder? The more divine the Christian
religion is, the less it is the place of man to command it; if God is
its author, he will maintain it without your aid. You know well that
intolerance begets only hypocrites or rebels. Fearful alternative!
Would you, indeed, sustain by executioners the religion of a God who
fell into the hands of executioners, and who preached only gentleness
and patience?
Reflect on the frightful consequences of the right of intolerance.
If it were allowed to despoil, cast in prison, and put to death a
citizen who, at a certain degree of latitude, would not profess the
religion generally admitted at that degree, how could we except the
leaders of the State from those penalties? Religion equally binds
the monarch and the beggar; hence more than fifty doctors or monks
have made the monstrous assertion that it was lawful to depose or
slay any sovereign who dissented from the dominant religion, and the
Parliaments of our kingdom have repeatedly condemned these abominable
decisions of abominable theologians.[25]
The blood of Henry the Great [IV.] was still warm when the Parlement
de Paris issued a decree making the independence of the Crown a
fundamental law. Cardinal Duperron, who owed his position to Henry
the Great, arose in the States of 1614 against the decree of the
Parlement, and had it suppressed. All the journals of the time record
the terms which Duperron used in his discourse: “If a prince became
an Arian,” he said, “we should be obliged to depose him.”
Let us be allowed to say that every citizen is entitled to inherit
his father’s property, and that we do not see why he should be
deprived of it, and dragged to the gibbet, because he takes sides
with one theologian against another.
We know that our dogmas were not always clearly explained and
universally received in the Church. Christ not having said in what
manner the Holy Ghost proceeded, the Latin Church long believed
with the Greek that he proceeded from the Father only; after a time
it added, in the Creed, that he also proceeded from the Son. I ask
whether, the day after this decision, any citizen who preferred
to keep to the old formula deserved to be put to death? But is it
less unjust and cruel to punish to-day the man who thinks as people
thought in former times? Were men guilty in the days of Honorius I.
because they did not believe that Jesus had two wills?
It is not long since the Immaculate Conception began to be generally
accepted; the Dominicans still refuse to believe it.[26] At what
particular date will these Dominicans incur the penalties of heresy
in this world and the next?
If we need a lesson how to behave in these interminable disputes, we
should look to the apostles and evangelists. There was ground for a
violent schism between Peter and Paul, and Paul withstood Peter to
the face, but the controversy was peacefully settled. The evangelists
in turn had a great field of combat, if they had resembled modern
writers. They contradict each other frequently; yet we find no
dissension among their followers over these contradictions, and they
are neatly reconciled by the fathers of the Church. St. Paul, in his
epistle to a few Jews at Rome who had been converted to Christianity,
says at the end of the third chapter that faith alone glorifies, and
works justify no one. St. James, on the contrary, in his epistle (ch.
ii.) says constantly that one cannot be saved without works. Here
is a point that has separated two great sects among us, yet made no
division among the apostles.
If the persecution of those with whom we dispute were a holy action,
the man who had killed most heretics would be the greatest saint in
Paradise. What a poor figure the man who had been content to despoil
and imprison his brothers would cut by the side of the zealot who had
slain hundreds of them on St. Bartholomew’s day! Here is a proof of
it. The successor of St. Peter and his consistory cannot err. They
approved, acclaimed, and consecrated the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
Therefore this deed was holy; and therefore of two assassins who were
equal in piety one who had killed twenty-four Huguenot women would
have double the glory of the man who had killed only a dozen. By the
same reasoning the fanatics of Cévènes would have ground to believe
that they would be elevated in glory in proportion to the number of
priests, monks, and Catholic women they had slain. It is a strange
title to glory in heaven.
WHETHER INTOLERANCE WAS OF DIVINE RIGHT IN JUDAISM,
AND WHETHER IT WAS ALWAYS PRACTISED.[27]
Divine right means, I believe, the precepts which God himself has
given. He ordered that the Jews should eat a lamb cooked with
lettuces, and that the eaters should stand, with a stick in their
hands, in commemoration of the Passover; he commanded that in the
consecration of the high-priest blood should be applied to his right
ear, right hand, and right foot. They seem curious customs to us, but
they were not to antiquity. He ordered them to put the iniquities of
the people on the goat _hazazel_, and forbade them to eat scaleless
fishes, hares, hedgehogs, owls, griffins, etc. He instituted feasts
and ceremonies.
All these things, which seem arbitrary to other nations, and a matter
of positive law and usage, being ordered by God himself, became a
divine law to the Jews, just as whatever Christ ordered is a divine
law for us. Let us not inquire why God substituted a new law for that
which he gave to Moses, and why he laid more commandments on Moses
than on Abraham, and more on Abraham than on Noah. It seems that he
deigns to accommodate himself to the times and the state of the human
race. It is a kind of paternal gradation. But these abysses are too
deep for our feeble sight. Let us keep to our subject, and see first
what intolerance was among the Jews.
It is true that in _Exodus_, _Numbers_, _Leviticus_, and
_Deuteronomy_ there are very severe laws, and even more severe
punishments, in connection with religion. Many commentators find
a difficulty in reconciling the words of Moses with the words of
Jeremiah and Amos, and those of the celebrated speech of St. Stephen
in _Acts_. Amos says that in the deserts the Jews worshipped Moloch,
Rempham, and Kium. Jeremiah says explicitly (vii., 12) that God
asked no sacrifice of their fathers when they came out of Egypt.
St. Stephen says in his speech to the Jews (_Acts_ vii., 42): “Then
God turned and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is
written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye
offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices for the space of forty
years in the wilderness? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch,
and the star of your god Rempham.”
Other critics infer that these gods were tolerated by Moses, and they
quote these words of _Deuteronomy_ (xii., 8): “When ye are in the
land of Canaan, ye shall not do all the things that we do here this
day, where every man does what he pleases.” They find encouragement
in the fact that nothing is said of any religious act of the people
in the desert, and there is no mention of Passover, Pentecost,
Feast of Tabernacles, or public prayer in any shape. Circumcision,
moreover, the seal of the covenant, was not practised.
It is enough, it seems to me, that it is proved by Holy Scripture
that, in spite of the extraordinary punishment inflicted on the Jews
on account of the cult of Apis, they had complete liberty for a long
time. Possibly the massacre of twenty-three thousand men by Moses
for worshipping the golden calf set up by his brother led him to
appreciate that nothing was gained by severity, and induced him to
close his eyes to the people’s passion for strange gods.
Sometimes he seems to transgress his own law. He forbade the making
of images, yet set up a brazen serpent. We find another deviation
from the law in the temple of Solomon. He had twelve oxen carved to
sustain the great basin of the temple, and in the ark were placed
cherubim with the heads of eagles and calves. It seems to have
been this calf-head, badly made, and found in the temple by Roman
soldiers, which led to the belief that the Jews worshipped an ass.
The worship of foreign gods was vainly prohibited. Solomon was quite
at his ease in idolatry. Jeroboam, to whom God had given ten parts
of the kingdom, set up two golden calves, and ruled for twenty-two
years, uniting in his person the dignities of monarch and pontiff.
The little kingdom of Judah under Rehoboam raised altars and statues
to foreign gods. The holy king Asa did not destroy the high places.
The high-priest Urijah erects in the temple, in the place of the
altar of holocausts, an altar to the king of Syria (2 _Kings_,
xvi.). In a word, there seems to be no real restraint in matters of
religion. I know that the majority of the Jewish kings murdered each
other, but that was always to further a material interest, not on
account of belief.[28]
It is true that some of the prophets secured the interest of heaven
in their vengeance. Elias brought down fire from heaven to consume
the priests of Baal. Elisha caused forty-two bears to devour the
children who commented on his baldness. But these are rare miracles,
and facts that it would be rather hard to wish to imitate.
It is also objected that the Jewish people were very ignorant and
barbaric. In the war with the Midianites Moses ordered that all
the male children and their mothers should be slain and the booty
divided. Some commentators even argue that thirty-two girls were
sacrificed to the Lord: “The Lord’s tribute was thirty and two
persons [virgins]” (_Numbers_ xxxii., 40). That the Jews did offer
human sacrifices is seen in the story of Jephthah [_Judges_ xi., 39],
and the cutting-up of King Agag by the priest Samuel. Ezekiel even
promises that they will eat human flesh: “Ye shall eat the horse and
the rider; ye shall drink the blood of princes.” Some commentators
apply two verses of this prophecy to the Jews themselves, and the
others to the carnivorous beasts. We do not find in the whole history
of this people any mark of generosity, magnanimity, or beneficence;
yet some ray of toleration escapes always from the cloud of their
long and frightful barbarism.
The story of Micah and the Levite, told in chapters xvii. and xviii.
of _Judges_, is another incontestable proof of the great liberty
and toleration that prevailed among the Jews. Micah’s wife, a rich
Ephraimite woman, had lost eleven hundred pieces of silver. Her
son restored them to her, and she devoted them to the Lord, making
images of him, and built a small chapel. A Levite served the chapel,
receiving ten pieces of silver, a tunic, and a cloak every year,
besides his food; and Micah said: “Now know I the Lord will do me
good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest” (xvii., 13).
However, six hundred men of the tribe of Dan, who wanted to seize
some village of the district to settle in, and had no priest-Levite
to secure the favour of God for their enterprise, went to Micah’s
house, and took the ephod, idols, and Levite, in spite of the
remonstrances of the priest and the cries of Micah and his mother.
They then proceeded with confidence to attack the village of Lais,
and put everything in it to fire and sword, as was their custom.
They gave the name of Dan to Lais in honour of their victory, and
set Micah’s idol on an altar; and, what is still more remarkable,
Jonathan, grandson of Moses, was the high priest of this temple, in
which the God of Israel and Micah’s idol were worshipped.
After the death of Gideon the Hebrews worshipped Baal-berith for
nearly twenty years, and gave up the cult of Adonai; and no leader or
judge or priest cried for vengeance. Their crime was great, I admit;
but if such idolatry was tolerated, how much the more easily should
we tolerate differences within the proper cult.
Some allege as a proof of intolerance that, when the Lord himself
had allowed his ark to be taken by the Philistines in a battle, the
only punishment he inflicted on the Philistines was a secret disease,
resembling hemorrhoids, the overthrowing of the statue of Dagon, and
the sending of a number of rats into their country. And when the
Philistines, to appease his anger, had sent back the ark, drawn by
two cows, which had calves, and offered to God five golden rats and
five golden anuses, the Lord slew seventy elders of Israel and fifty
thousand of the people for looking at the ark. The answer is plain,
therefore: the Lord’s chastisement is not connected with belief, or
difference of cult, or idolatry.
Had the Lord wished to punish idolatry, he would have slain all the
Philistines who dared to take his ark, and who worshipped Dagon; but
he slew instead fifty thousand and seventy men of his own people
merely because they looked at an ark at which they ought not to have
looked. So different are the laws, the morals, and the economy of the
Jews from anything that we know to-day; so far are the inscrutable
ways of God above our own! However, God is not punishing a foreign
cult, but a profanation of his own, an indiscreet curiosity, an act
of disobedience, possibly a spirit of revolt. We realise that such
chastisements belong to God only in the Jewish theocracy. We cannot
repeat too often that these times and ways have no relation to our
own.
Again, when in later years the idolatrous Naaman asked Elisha if
he were allowed to accompany his king to the temple of Rimmon, and
worship with him, Elisha--the man who caused children to be devoured
by bears--merely said, “Go in peace.” More remarkable still is the
fact that the Lord orders Jeremiah to put cords and yokes round his
neck, and send them to the kings of Moab, Ammon, Edom, Tyre, and
Sidon, saying, on the part of the Lord: “I have given all your lands
to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, my servant.” Here we have an
idolatrous king declared to be the servant and favourite of God.
The same Jeremiah, whom the petty king of the Jews, Zedekiah, had put
in prison and then pardoned, advises the king, on the part of God,
to surrender to the king of Babylon. Thus God takes the part of an
idolatrous king. He gives him possession of the ark, the mere sight
of which had cost fifty thousand and seventy Jews their lives, the
holy of holies, and the rest of the temple, the building of which
had cost a hundred and eight thousand gold talents, a million and
seventeen thousand silver talents, and ten thousand gold drachmas,
left by David and his officers for the construction of the house of
the Lord; which, without counting the funds used by Solomon, amounts
to nineteen thousand and sixty-two million francs, or thereabouts,
of our money [more than £750,000,000]. Never was idolatry so signally
rewarded! I am aware that the figure is exaggerated, and may be due
to a copyist; but if you reduce the sum by half, or to a fourth or
an eighth, it is still astonishing. One is hardly less surprised at
the wealth which Herodotus says he saw in the temple of Ephesus. But
treasures are nothing in the eyes of God; the title of his “servant,”
which is given to Nebuchadnezzar, is the only real treasure.
God is equally favourable to Kir, or Koresh, or Kosroes, whom we call
Cyrus. He calls him “his Christ,” “his Anointed,” although he was not
anointed in the ordinary meaning of the word, and he followed the
religion of Zoroaster; he calls him his “shepherd,” though he was a
usurper in the eyes of men. There is no greater mark of predilection
in the whole of Scripture.
You read in _Malachi_ that “from the east to the west the name of God
is great among the nations, and pure oblations are everywhere offered
to him.” God takes as much care of the idolatrous Ninevites as of the
Jews; he threatens and pardons them. Melchizedech, who was not a Jew,
sacrificed to God. The idolatrous Balaam was a prophet. Scripture
shows, therefore, that God not only tolerated other peoples, but took
a paternal care of them. And we dare to be intolerant!