1º. How ought I to proceed with the object of showing that the Jews,
whom we burn by the hundred, were for four thousand years God’s
chosen people?
2º. How could God, whom one cannot without blasphemy regard as
unjust, forsake the whole earth for the little Jewish tribe, and then
abandon this little group for another, which, during two hundred
years, was even smaller and more despised?
3º. Why did he perform a number of incomprehensible miracles in
favour of this miserable nation before the period which is called
_historical_? Why did he, some centuries ago, cease to perform them?
And why do we, who are God’s people, never witness any?
4º. If God is the God of Abraham, why do you burn the children of
Abraham? And, when you burn them, why do you recite their prayers?
How is it that, since you worship the book of their law, you put them
to death for observing that law?
5º. How shall I reconcile the chronology of the Chinese, Chaldæans,
Phœnicians, and Egyptians with that of the Jews? And how shall I
reconcile the forty different methods of calculation which I find in
the commentators? If I say that God dictated the book, I may be told
that God evidently is not an expert in chronology.
6º. By what argument can I prove that the books attributed to Moses
were written by him in the desert? How could he say that he wrote
beyond the Jordan when he never crossed the Jordan? I may be told
that God is evidently not good at geography.
7º. The book entitled _Joshua_ says that Joshua had _Deuteronomy_
engraved on stones coated with mortar; this passage in _Joshua_,
and others in ancient writers, clearly prove that in the days of
Moses and Joshua the peoples of the East engraved their laws and
observations on stone and brick. The Pentateuch tells us that the
Jewish people were without food and clothing in the desert; it seems
hardly probable that, if they had no tailors or shoemakers, they had
men who were able to engrave a large book. In any case, how did they
preserve this large work inscribed in mortar?
8º. What is the best way to refute the objections of the learned men
who find in the Pentateuch the names of towns which were not yet in
existence; precepts for kings whom the Jews detested, and who did not
reign until seven hundred years after Moses; and passages in which
the author betrays that he was much later than Moses, as: “The bed of
Og, which is still seen in Ramath,” “The Canaanite was then in the
land,” etc., etc., etc., etc.?
These learned men might, with the difficulties and contradictions
which they impute to the Jewish chronicles, give some trouble to a
licentiate.
9º. Is the book of _Genesis_ to be taken literally or allegorically?
Did God really take a rib from Adam and make woman therewith? and, if
so, why is it previously stated that he made man male and female? How
did God create light before the sun? How did he separate light from
darkness, since darkness is merely the absence of light? How could
there be a day before the sun was made? How was the firmament made
amid the waters, since there is no such thing as a firmament?--it
is an illusion of the ancient Greeks. There are those who suggest
that _Genesis_ was not written until the Jews had some knowledge of
the erroneous philosophy of other peoples, and it would pain me to
hear it said that God knows no more about physics than he does about
chronology and geography.
10º. What shall I say of the garden of Eden, from which issued a
river which divided into four rivers--the Tigris, Euphrates, Phison
(which is believed to be the Phasis), and Gihon, which flows in
Ethiopia, and must therefore be the Nile, the source of which is a
thousand miles from the source of the Euphrates? I shall be told once
more that God is a very poor geographer.
11º. I should, with all my heart, like to eat the fruit which hung
from the tree of knowledge; and it seems to me that the prohibition
to eat it is strange. Since God endowed man with reason, he ought
to encourage him to advance in knowledge. Did he wish to be served
only by fools? I should also like to have speech with the serpent,
since it was so intelligent; but I should like to know what language
it spoke. The Emperor Julian, a great philosopher, asked this of the
great St. Cyril, who could not meet the question, and said to the
learned emperor: “You are the serpent.” St. Cyril was not polite;
but you will observe that he did not perpetrate this theological
impertinence until Julian was dead.
_Genesis_ says that the serpent eats earth; you know that _Genesis_
is wrong, and that earth alone contains no nourishment. In regard
to God walking familiarly every day in the garden, and talking to
Adam and Eve and the serpent, I may say that it would have been very
pleasant to have been there. But as I think you are much more fitted
for the kind of society which Joseph and Mary had in the stable
at Bethlehem, I will not advise you to visit the garden of Eden,
especially as the gate is now guarded by a cherub armed to the teeth.
It is true that, according to the rabbis, _cherub_ means “ox.”[64] A
curious kind of porter! Please let me know at least what a cherub is.
12º. How shall I explain the story of the angels who fell in love
with the daughters of men, and begot giants? May I not be told
that this episode is borrowed from pagan legends? But as the Jews
invented everything in the desert, and were very ingenious, it is
clear that all the other nations took their science from the Jews.
Homer, Plato, Cicero, and Vergil learned all they knew from the Jews.
Is not that proved?
13º. How shall I get out of the deluge, the cataracts of heaven
(which has no cataracts), and the animals coming from Japan, Africa,
America, and the south, and being enclosed in a large ark with food
and drink for one year, without counting the time when the earth was
still too damp to produce food for them? How did Noah’s little family
manage to give all these animals their proper food? It consisted only
of eight persons.
14º. How can I make the story of the tower of Babel plausible? This
tower must have been higher than the pyramids of Egypt, since God
allowed the building of the pyramids. Did it reach as high as Venus,
or at least to the moon?
15º. By what device shall I justify the two lies of Abraham, the
father of believers, who, at the age of one hundred and thirty-five
(counting carefully), represented the pretty Sarah as his sister in
Egypt and at Gerar, in order that the kings of those countries might
fall in love with her and make presents to him? What a naughty thing
to do, to sell one’s wife!
16º. Give me some explanation why, although God told Abraham that all
his posterity should be circumcised, this was not done under Moses.
17º. Can I know by my natural powers whether the three angels, to
whom Sarah offered a whole calf to eat, had bodies, or borrowed
bodies?
18º. Will my hearers believe me when I tell them that Lot’s wife
was changed into a salt statue? What shall I say to those who tell
me that it is probably a coarse imitation of the ancient fable of
Eurydice, and that a salt statue would not last in the rain?
19º. What shall I say in justification of the blessings which fell
on Jacob, the just man, who deceived his father Isaac and robbed his
father-in-law Laban? How shall I explain God appearing to him at the
top of a ladder? And how could Jacob fight an angel all night?, etc.,
etc.
20º. How must I treat the sojourn of the Jews in Egypt and their
escape? _Exodus_ says that they remained four hundred years in Egypt;
but, counting carefully, we find only two hundred and five years. Why
did Pharaoh’s daughter bathe in the Nile, in which no one ever bathes
on account of the crocodiles?, etc., etc.
21º. Moses having wedded the daughter of an idolater, how could
God choose him as his prophet without reproaching him? How could
Pharaoh’s magicians work the same miracles as Moses, except that of
covering the land with lice and vermin? How could they change into
blood all the waters, since these had already been changed into
blood by Moses? How was it that Moses, led by God himself, and at
the head of six hundred and thirty thousand fighting men, fled with
his people, instead of taking Egypt, in which God had slain all the
first-born? Egypt never had an army of a hundred thousand men,
from the first mention of it in historical times. How was it that
Moses, flying with his troops from the land of Goshen, crossed half
of Egypt, instead of going straight to Canaan, and advanced as far
as Memphis, between Baal-Sephon and the Red Sea? Finally, how could
Pharaoh pursue him with all his cavalry when, in the fifth plague
of Egypt, God had just destroyed all the horses and beasts in the
country, and, moreover, Egypt, which is much broken by canals, always
had very little cavalry?
22º. How shall I reconcile what is said in _Exodus_ with the speech
of St. Stephen in _Acts_ and the passages of _Jeremiah_ and _Amos_?
_Exodus_ says that they sacrificed to Jehovah for forty years in the
desert; Jeremiah, Amos, and St. Stephen say that neither sacrifice
nor victim was offered during all that time. _Exodus_ says that they
made the tabernacle, which contained the ark of the covenant; St.
Stephen, in _Acts_, says that they took the tabernacle from Moloch
and Remphan.
23º. I am not sufficiently versed in chemistry to deal happily with
the golden calf which, _Exodus_ says, was made in a day, and which
Moses reduced to ashes. Are they two miracles, or two possibilities
of human art?
24º. Was it a further miracle for the leader of a nation, in a
desert, to have twenty-three thousand men of that nation slain by a
single one of the twelve tribes, and for twenty-three thousand men to
let themselves be massacred without making any defence?
25º. Must I again regard it as a miracle, or as an act of ordinary
justice, that twenty-four thousand Hebrews were put to death because
one of them had lain with a Midianite woman, while Moses himself had
married a Midianite? And were not these Hebrews, who are described
to us as so ferocious, really very good fellows to let themselves be
slain for girls?
26º. What explanation shall I give of the law which forbids the
eating of the hare “because it ruminates, and has not a cloven
foot,” whereas hares have cloven feet and do not ruminate? We have
already seen that this remarkable book suggests that God is a poor
geographer, a poor chronologist, and a poor physicist; he seems
to have been no less weak in natural history. How can I explain
other equally wise laws, such as that of the waters of jealousy and
the sentence of death on a man who lies with his wife during the
menstrual period? etc., etc., etc. Can I justify these barbaric and
ridiculous laws, which are said to have been given by God himself?
27º. What answer shall I make to those who are surprised that a
miracle was needed to effect the crossing of the Jordan, since it is
only forty-five feet across at its widest, could easily be crossed
with a small raft, and was fordable at many points, as we learn from
the slaying of forty-two thousand Ephraimites by their brothers at a
ford of the same river?
28º. What reply shall I make to those who ask how the walls of
Jericho fell at the sound of a trumpet, and why other towns did not
fall in the same way?
29º. How shall I excuse the conduct of the harlot Rahab in betraying
her country, Jericho? How was this treachery necessary, since they
had only to blow their trumpet to take a town? And how shall I fathom
the depth of the divine decrees which enacted that our divine Saviour
Jesus Christ should descend from this harlot Rahab, from the incest
of Thamar with her father-in-law Judah, and from the adultery of
David and Bathsheba? How incomprehensible are the ways of God!
30º. How can I approve of Joshua hanging thirty-one kinglets and
usurping their little States--that is to say, their villages?
31º. How shall I speak of the battle of Joshua with the Amorites at
Beth-horon on the way to Gibeon? The Lord sends a rain of stones,
from Beth-horon to Azekah: it is fifteen miles from Beth-horon to
Azekah; therefore the Amorites were exterminated by rocks which fell
from heaven over a space of fifteen miles. The Scripture says that
it was midday. Why, then, did Joshua command the sun and the moon to
stand still in the middle of the sky in order to give him time to
complete the defeat of a small troop which was already exterminated?
Why did he tell the moon to stand still at midday? How could the sun
and moon remain in the same place for a day? Which commentator shall
I consult for an explanation of this extraordinary truth?
32º. What shall I say of Jephthah immolating his daughter, and having
forty-two thousand Jews of the tribe of Ephraim, who could not say
_Shibboleth_, put to death?
33º. Ought I to admit or deny that the Jewish law nowhere speaks of
punishment or reward after death? How is it that neither Moses nor
Joshua ever spoke of the immortality of the soul, a dogma well known
to the ancient Egyptians, Chaldæans, Persians, and Greeks, but hardly
known to the Jews until after the time of Alexander, and always
rejected by the Sadducees because it is not in the Pentateuch?
34º. What gloss must I put on the story of the Levite who, coming on
his ass to the Benjamite town Gibeah, excited the passion of all the
Gibeonites? He abandoned his wife to them, and she died the next day.
35º. I need your advice to enable me to understand the nineteenth
verse of the first chapter of _Judges_: “And the Lord was with Judah:
and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain: but could not
drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots
of iron.” I cannot, of my own feeble lights, understand how the God
of heaven and earth, who had so often superseded the order of nature
and suspended the eternal laws in favour of the Jewish people, was
unable to vanquish the inhabitants of a valley because they had iron
chariots. Can it be true that, as some learned men say, the Jews
at that time regarded their God as a local and protecting deity,
sometimes more powerful, at other times less powerful, than the gods
of the enemy? And is this not proved by the reply of Jephthah: “Ye
possess by right what your god Camos has given you: suffer then that
we take what our god Adonai has promised us”?
36º. I may add that it is difficult to believe that there were so
many chariots armed with scythes in a mountainous district, in which,
as the Scriptures often show, the height of magnificence was to be
mounted on an ass.[65]
37º. The story of Ehud gives me even greater trouble. I see that the
Jews were always in bondage, in spite of the help of their God, who
had sworn to give them all the country between the Nile, the sea,
and the Euphrates. For eighteen years they were subject to a petty
king named Eglon, when God raised up for them Ehud, son of Gera, who
used his left hand as well as the right. Ehud, son of Gera, made a
two-edged sword, and hid it under his cloak--as Jacques Clément and
Ravaillac did afterwards. He asks a private audience of the king,
saying that he has a secret of the utmost importance to communicate
to him from God. Eglon respectfully rises, and Ehud drives his
sword into his belly with his left hand. God entirely approved this
deed; but, judged by the moral code of all nations, it seems rather
questionable. Please tell me which was the most divine assassination,
that of St. Ehud, or that of St. David (who had Uriah, the husband
of his mistress, slain), or that of the blessed Solomon, who, having
seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, assassinated his
brother Adonias because he asked for one of them? etc., etc., etc.,
etc.
38º. I pray you tell me by what trick Samson caught three hundred
foxes, tied them together by their tails, and fastened lighted
torches to their hind quarters, in order to set fire to the harvests
of the Philistines. Foxes are found only in wooded country. There was
no forest in this district, and it seems rather difficult to catch
three hundred foxes alive and tie them together by their tails. It is
then said that he killed a thousand Philistines with the jaw of an
ass, and that a spring issued from one of the teeth of this jaw. When
it comes to the jaws of asses, you certainly owe me explanations.
39º. I also ask you for information about that good man Tobias, who
slept with his eyes open, and was blinded by the droppings of a
swallow; about the angel who came down expressly from what is called
the empyrean to seek, with Tobias junior, the money which the Jew
Gabel owed to Tobias senior; about the wife of Tobias junior, who had
had seven husbands whose necks had been wrung by the devil; and about
the way to restore sight to the blind with the gall of a fish. These
stories are curious, and nothing is more worthy of attention--after
Spanish novels; the only things to which they may be compared are the
stories of Judith and Esther. But how am I to interpret the sacred
text which says that the beautiful Judith descended from Simeon, son
of Reuben, whereas Simeon was the brother of Reuben, according to the
same sacred text, which cannot lie?
I am very fond of Esther, and think the alleged King Assuerus acted
very sensibly in marrying a Jewess and living with her for six
months without knowing who she was. As all the rest of the story
is of much the same character, I must ask you kindly to come to my
assistance, my wise masters.
40º. I need your help in regard to the history of the kings, at
least as much as in regard to the history of the judges, of Tobias
and his dog, of Esther, of Judith, of Ruth, etc., etc. When Saul was
appointed king, the Jews were in bondage to the Philistines. Their
conquerors did not allow them to have swords or lances; they were
even compelled to go to the Philistines to have their ploughshares
and axes sharpened. Nevertheless, Saul gives battle to the
Philistines and defeats them; and in this battle he is at the head of
three hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, in a little country that
cannot sustain thirty thousand souls. The Jews had not at that time
more than a third of Palestine, at the most, and so sterile a country
does not sustain twenty thousand inhabitants to-day. The surplus
population was compelled to go and earn its living by prostitution at
Damascus, Tyre, and Babylon.
41º. I know not how I can justify the conduct of Samuel in cutting
into pieces Agag, whom Saul had taken prisoner and put to ransom. I
wonder whether our king Philip, if he captured a Moorish king, and
made an agreement with him, would be approved if he cut the captured
king in pieces.
42º. We owe great respect to David, who was a man after God’s heart;
but I fear I am not learned enough to justify, by ordinary laws,
the conduct of David in associating with four hundred men of evil
ways, and burdened with debt, as the Scripture says; in going to
sack the house of the king’s servant Nabal, and marrying his widow
a week later; in offering his services to Achish, the king’s enemy,
and spreading fire and blood over the land of the allies of Achish,
without sparing either age or sex; in taking new concubines as soon
as he is on the throne; and, not content with these concubines, in
stealing Bathsheba from her husband, whom he not only dishonours,
but slays. I find it difficult to imagine how God could afterwards
descend, in Judæa, from this adulterous and homicidal woman, who is
counted among the ancestresses of the Eternal. I have already warned
you that this article causes much trouble to pious souls.
43º. The wealth of David and Solomon, which amounted to more than
five hundred thousand million gold ducats, seems to be not easily
reconciled with the poverty of the country and with the condition to
which the Jews were reduced under Saul, when they had not the means
of sharpening their ploughshares and axes. Our cavalry officers will
shrug their shoulders when I tell them that Solomon had four hundred
thousand horses in a little country where there never were, and are
not to-day, anything but asses, as I have already had the honour to
represent to you.
44º. If I were to run over the history of the frightful cruelties of
nearly all the kings of Judah and Israel, I fear I should scandalise,
rather than edify, the weak. These kings assassinate each other a
little too frequently. It is bad politics, if I am not mistaken.
45º. I see this small people almost always in bondage to the
Phœnicians, Babylonians, Persians, Syrians, or Romans; and I may
have some trouble in reconciling so much misery with the magnificent
promises of their prophets.
46º. I know that all the eastern nations had prophets, but I do not
quite understand those of the Jews. What is the meaning of the vision
of Ezekiel, son of Buzi, near the river Chebar; of the four animals
which had four faces and four wings each, with the feet of calves; of
the wheel that had four faces; and of the firmament above the heads
of the animals? How can we explain the order given by God to Ezekiel
to eat a parchment book, to have himself bound, and to lie on his
left side for three hundred and ninety days, and on his right side
for forty days?
47º. It will be my duty to explain the great prophecy of Isaiah in
regard to our Lord Jesus Christ. It is, as you know, in the seventh
chapter. Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, kinglet of Israel, were
besieging Jerusalem. Ahaz, kinglet of Jerusalem, consults the prophet
Isaiah as to the issue of the siege. Isaiah replies: “God shall give
you a sign: a girl (or woman) shall conceive and bear a son, and
shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he
may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child
shall be able to refuse the evil and choose the good the land shall
be delivered of both the kings, ... and the Lord shall hiss for the
fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the
bee that is in the land of Assyria.”
Then, in the eighth chapter, the prophet, to ensure the fulfilment
of the prophecy, lies with the prophetess. She bore a son, and
the Lord said to Isaiah: “Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz
[Hasten-to-seize-the-spoil, or Run-quickly-to-the-booty]. For before
the child shall have knowledge to cry, My father and my mother, the
power of Damascus shall be overthrown.” I cannot plainly interpret
this prophecy without your assistance.
48º. How must I understand the story of Jonah, who was sent to
Nineveh to preach penance? Nineveh was not Israelitic, and it seems
that Jonah was to instruct it in the Jewish law before bringing it
to repent. Instead of obeying the Lord, Jonah flies to Tarshish. A
storm arises, and the sailors throw Jonah into the sea to appease
the tempest. God sends a great fish to swallow Jonah, and he remains
three days and three nights in the belly of the fish. God orders the
fish to give up Jonah, and it obeys. Jonah disembarks on the coast
of Joppa. God commands him to go and tell Nineveh that in forty days
it will be overturned, unless it does penance. It is more than four
hundred miles from Joppa to Nineveh. Do not all the stories demand
a superior knowledge which I lack? I greatly wish to confound the
learned men who assert that this legend is taken from the legend of
the ancient Hercules.
49º. Show me how to interpret the first verses of the prophet Hosea.
God explicitly enjoins him to take a harlot and have children by
her. The prophet obeys punctually. He pays his respects to Dona
Gomer, daughter of Dom Diblaim, keeps her three years, and has three
children--which is a model. Then God desires another model. He orders
him to lie with another gay lady, a married woman, who has already
deceived her husband. The good Hosea, always obedient, has no trouble
in finding a handsome lady of this character, and it costs him only
fifteen pieces of silver and a measure of barley. I beg you to tell
me how much the piece of silver was worth among the Jews.
50º. I have still greater need of your wise guidance in regard to the
New Testament. I hardly know what to say when I have to reconcile
the two genealogies of Jesus. I shall be reminded that Matthew makes
Jacob the father of Joseph, while Luke makes him the son of Heli,
and that this is impossible unless we change _He_ into _Ja_ and _li_
into _cob_. I shall be asked why the one counts fifty-six generations
and the other only forty-two, and why the generations are quite
different; and then why only forty-one are given instead of the
promised forty-two; and lastly why the genealogical tree of Joseph
was given at all, seeing that he was not the father of Jesus. I fear
to make a fool of myself, as so many of my predecessors have done. I
trust that you will extricate me from this labyrinth.
51º. If I declare that, as Luke says, Augustus had ordered a census
to be taken of the whole earth when Mary was pregnant, and that
Cyrenius or Quirinus, the governor of Syria, published the decree,
and that Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem to be enumerated; and if
people laugh at me, and antiquarians teach me that there never was a
census of the Roman Empire, that Quintilius Varus, not Cyrenius, was
at that time governor of Syria, and that Cyrenius only governed Syria
ten years after the birth of Jesus, I shall be very much embarrassed,
and no doubt you will extricate me from this little difficulty. For
how could a book be inspired if there were one single untruth in it?
52º. When I teach that, as Matthew says, the family went into Egypt,
I shall be told that that is not true, but that, as the other
evangelists say, the family remained in Judæa; and if I then grant
that they remained in Judæa, I shall be told that they were in Egypt.
Is it not simpler to say that one can be in two places at once, as
happened to St. Francis Xavier and several other saints?
53º. Astronomers may laugh at the star which led the three kings
to a stable. But you are great astrologers, and will be able to
explain the phenomenon. Tell me, especially, how much gold the kings
presented. For you are wont to extort a good deal of it from kings
and peoples. And in regard to the fourth king, Herod, why did he
fear that Jesus, born in a stable, might become king of the Jews?
Herod was king only by permission of the Romans; it was the business
of Augustus. The massacre of the innocents is rather curious. I am
disappointed that no Roman writer mentions it. An ancient and most
truthful (as they all are) martyrology gives the number of these
martyred infants as fourteen thousand. If you would like me to add a
few thousand more, you have only to say so.
54º. You will tell me how the devil carried off God and perched him
on a hill in Galilee, from which one could see all the kingdoms of
the earth. The devil promising these kingdoms to God, provided God
worships the devil, may scandalise many good people, whom I recommend
to your notice.
55º. I beg you, when you go to a wedding feast, to tell me how God,
who also went to a wedding feast, succeeded in changing water into
wine for the sake of people who were already drunk.
56º. When you eat figs at breakfast towards the end of July, I
beg you to tell me why God, being hungry, looked for figs at the
beginning of the month of March, when it was not the season of figs.
57º. Having received your instructions on all the prodigies of this
nature, I shall have to say that God was condemned to be executed
for original sin. And if I am told that there was never any question
of original sin, either in the Old or the New Testament; that it is
merely stated that Adam was condemned to die on the day on which he
should eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and he did not die;
and that Augustine, bishop of Hippo, formerly a Manichean, was the
first to set up the doctrine of original sin, I submit to you that,
as my hearers are not the simple folk of Hippo, I run some risk of
exciting derision by speaking much without saying anything. When
certain cavillers came to show me that God could not possibly be
executed because an apple was eaten four thousand years before his
death, and could not possibly have redeemed the human race, yet,
apart from a chosen few, left the whole of it in the devil’s claws, I
had only verbiage to give in reply, and went away to hide my shame.
58º. Throw some light for me on the prophecy which Our Lord makes
in _Luke_ (ch. xxi.). Jesus says explicitly that he will come in
a cloud with great power and great glory before the generation to
which he speaks shall pass away. He did not do this; he did not come
in the clouds. If he came in some fog or other, we know nothing
about it; tell me what you think. The Apostle Paul also says to his
Thessalonian disciples that they will go with him in the clouds to
Jesus. Why did they not go? Does it cost more to go to the clouds
than to the third heaven? I beg your forgiveness, but I prefer the
clouds of Aristophanes to those of Paul.
59º. Shall I say with Luke that Jesus went up to heaven from the
little village of Bethany? Shall I state with Matthew that it was
from Galilee, where the disciples saw him for the last time? Or shall
I take the word of a learned doctor who says that Jesus had one foot
in Bethany and another in Galilee? The latter opinion seems to me the
more probable, but I will await your decision.
60º. I shall then be asked whether Peter was ever at Rome. I shall
reply, of course, that he was pope there for twenty-five years; and
the chief reason I shall give is that we have an epistle from the
good man (who could neither read nor write), and that it is dated
from Babylon. There is no answer to that argument, but I should like
something stronger.
61º. Please tell me why the “Apostles’ Creed” was not written until
the time of Jerome and Rufinus, four hundred years after the
apostles. Tell me why the earliest fathers of the Church never quote
any but the gospels which we call apocryphal. Is it not a clear proof
that the four canonical gospels had not yet been written?
62º. Are you not sorry, as I am, that the early Christians forged
so much bad poetry, and attributed it to the Sibyls? And that they
forged letters of Paul and Seneca, of Jesus, of Mary, and of Pilate?
And that they thus set up their sect on a hundred forgeries which
would be punished to-day by any court in the world? These frauds
are now recognised by all scholars. We are reduced to calling them
“pious.” But is it not sad that your truth should be based on lies?
63º. Tell me why, since Jesus did not institute seven sacraments,
we have seven sacraments[66]; why, whereas Jesus never said that he
was threefold and had two natures and two wills and one person, we
make him threefold, with one person and two natures; and why, having
two wills, he had not the will to instruct us in the dogmas of the
Christian religion.
64º. Is the pope infallible when he consorts with his mistress, and
when he brings to supper a bottle of poisoned wine for Cardinal
Cornetto?[67] When two councils anathematise each other, as has often
happened, which of them is infallible?
65º. Would it not really be better to avoid these labyrinths, and
simply preach virtue? When God comes to judge us, I doubt very
much if he will ask us whether grace is versatile or concomitant,
whether marriage is the visible sign of an invisible thing, whether
we believe that there are ten choirs of angels or nine, whether the
pope is above the council or the council above the pope. Will it be a
crime in his eyes to have prayed to him in Spanish when one does not
know Latin? Shall we be visited with his cruel wrath for having eaten
a penny-worth of bad meat on a certain day? And shall we be eternally
rewarded if, like you, my learned masters, we ate a hundred piastres’
worth of turbot, sole, and sturgeon? You do not believe it in the
depth of your hearts; you believe that God will judge you by your
works, not by the opinions of Thomas and Bonaventure.
Shall I not render a service to men in speaking to them only of
morality? This morality is so pure, so holy, so universal, so clear,
so ancient, that it seems to come from God himself, like the light
which we regard as the first of his works. Has he not given men
self-love to secure their preservation; benevolence, beneficence,
and virtue to control their self-love; the natural need to form a
society; pleasure to enjoy, pain to warn us to enjoy in moderation,
passions to spur us to great deeds, and wisdom to curb our passions?
Will you allow me to announce these truths to the noble people of
Spain?
66º. If you bid me conceal these truths, and strictly enjoin me
to announce the miracles of St. James of Galicia, or of Our Lady
of Atocha, or of Maria d’Agreda (who in her ecstasies behaved in
a most improper manner), tell me what I must do with those who
dare to doubt? Must I, for their edification, have the ordinary and
extraordinary question put to them?[68]