LETTER VI. Of the Mysteries, Sacraments, and Religious Ceremonies of
Christianity
The reflections, Madam, which I have already offered you in these
letters ought, I conceive, to have sufficed to undeceive you, in a great
measure, of the lugubrious and afflicting notions with which you have
been inspired by religious prejudices. However, to fulfil the task which
you have imposed on me, and to assist you in freeing yourself from
the unfavorable ideas you may have imbibed from a system replete with
irrelevancies and contradictions, I shall continue to examine the
strange mysteries with which Christianity is garnished. They are founded
on ideas so odd and so contrary to reason, that if from infancy we
had not been familiarized with them, we should blush at our species in
having for one instant believed and adopted them.
The Christians, scarcely content with the crowd of enigmas with which
the books of the Jews are filled, have besides fancied they must add to
them a great many incomprehensible mysteries, for which they have the
most profound veneration. Their impenetrable obscurity appears to be a
sufficient motive among them for adding these. Their priests, encouraged
by their credulity, which nothing can outdo, seem to be studious to
multiply the articles of their faith, and the number of inconceivable
objects which they have said must be received with submission, and
adored even if not understood.
The first of these mysteries is the _Trinity_, which supposes that one
God, self-existent, who is a pure spirit, is, nevertheless, composed
of three Divinities, which have obtained the names of _persons_.
These three Gods, who are designated under the respective names of the
_Father_, the _Son_, and the _Holy Ghost_, are, nevertheless, but
one God only, These three persons are equal in power, in wisdom, in
perfections; yet the second is subordinate to the first, in consequence
of which he was compelled to become a man, and be the victim of the
wrath of his Father. This is what the priests call the mystery of
the _incarnation_. Notwithstanding his innocence, his perfection, his
purity, the Son of God became the object of the vengeance of a just God,
who is the same as the Son in question, but who would not consent to
appease himself but by the death of his own Son, who is a portion of
himself. The Son of God, not content with becoming man, died without
having sinned, for the salvation of men who had sinned. God preferred to
the punishment of imperfect beings, whom he did not choose to amend, the
punishment of his only Son, full of divine perfections. The death of God
became necessary to reclaim the human kind from the slavery of Satan,
who without that would not have quitted his prey, and who has been found
sufficiently powerful against the Omnipotent to oblige him to sacrifice
his Son. This is what the priests designate by the name of the mystery
of _redemption_.
It is assuredly sufficient to expose such opinions to demonstrate their
absurdity. It is evident, if there exists only a single God, there
cannot be three. We may, it is true, contemplate the Deity after the
manner of Plato, who, before the birth of Christianity, exhibited him
under three different points of view, that is to say, as all-wise, as
all-powerful, as full of reason, and as infinite in goodness; but it was
verily the excess of delirium to personify these three divine qualities,
or transform them into real beings. We can readily imagine these moral
attributes to be united in the same God, but it is egregious folly
to fashion them into three different Gods; nor will it remedy this
metaphysical polytheism to assert that these three are one. Besides,
this revery never entered the head of the Hebrew legislator. The
Eternal, in revealing himself to Moses, did not announce himself as
triple. There is not one syllable in the Old Testament about this
Trinity, although a notion so _bizarre_, so marvellous, and so little
consonant with our ideas of a divine being, deserved to have been
formally announced, especially as it is the foundation and corner stone
of the Christian religion, which was from all eternity an object of the
divine solicitude, and on the establishment of which, if we may credit
our sapient priests, God seems to have entertained serious thoughts long
before, the creation of the world.
Nevertheless, the second person, or the second God of the Trinity, is
revealed in flesh; the Son of God is made man. But how could the pure
Spirit who presides over the universe beget a son? How could this son,
who before his incarnation was only a pure spirit, combine that ethereal
essence with a material body, and envelop himself with it? How could the
divine nature amalgamate itself with the imperfect nature of man, and
how could an immense and infinite being, as the Deity is represented,
be formed in the womb of a virgin? After what manner could a pure spirit
fecundate this favorite virgin? Did the Son of God enjoy in the womb of
his mother the faculties of omnipotence, or was he like other children
during his infancy,--weak, liable to infirmities, sickness, and
intellectual imbecility, so conspicuous in the years of childhood; and
if so, what, during this period, became of the divine wisdom and power?
In fine, how could God suffer and die? How could a just God consent that
a God exempt from all sin should endure the chastisements which are due
to sinners? Why did he not appease himself without immolating a victim
so precious and so innocent? What would you think of that sovereign who,
in the event of his subjects rebelling against him, should forgive
them all, or a select number of them, by putting to death his only and
beloved son, who had not rebelled?
The priests tell us that it was out of tenderness for the human kind
that God wished to accomplish this sacrifice. But I still ask if it
would not have been more simple, more conformable to all our ideas of
Deity, for God to pardon the iniquities of the human race, or to have
prevented them committing transgressions, by placing them in a condition
in which, by their own will, they should never have sinned? According to
the entire system of the Christian religion, it is evident that God did
only create the world to have an opportunity of immolating his Son for
the rebellious beings he might have formed and preserved immaculate. The
fall of the rebellious angels had no visible end to serve but to effect
and hasten the fall of Adam. It appears from this system that God
permitted the first man to sin that he might have the pleasure of
showing his goodness in sacrificing his "only begotten Son" to reclaim
men from the thraldom of Satan. He intrusted to Satan as much power
as might enable him to work the ruin of our race, with the view of
afterwards changing the projects of the great mass of mankind, by making
one God to die, and thereby destroy the power of the Devil on the earth.
But has God succeeded in these projects to the end he proposed? Are
men entirely rescued from the dominion of Satan? Are they not still the
slaves of sin? Do they find themselves in the happy impossibility of
kindling the divine wrath? Has the blood of the Son of God washed away
the sins of the whole world? Do those who are reclaimed, those to whom
he has made himself known, those who believe, offend not against heaven?
Has the Deity, who ought, without doubt, to be perfectly satisfied with
so memorable a sacrifice, remitted to them the punishment of sin? Is it
not necessary to do something more for them? And since the death of
his Son, do we find the Christians exempt from disease and from death?
Nothing of all this has happened. The measures taken from all eternity
by the wisdom and prescience of a God who should find against his plans
no obstacles have been overthrown. The death of God himself has been of
no utility to the world. All the divine projects have militated against
the free-will of man, but they have not destroyed the power of Satan.
Man continues to sin and to die; the Devil keeps possession of the field
of battle; and it is for a very small number of the elect that the Deity
consented to die.
You do indeed smile, Madam, at my being obliged seriously to combat
such chimeras. If they have something of the marvellous in them, it is
quite adapted to the heads of children, not of men, and ought not to
be admitted by reasonable beings. All the notions we can form of those
things must be mysterious; yet there is no subject more demonstrable,
according to those whose interest it is to have it believed, though they
are as incapable as ourselves to comprehend the matter. For the priests
to say that they believe such absurdities, is to be guilty of manifest
falsehood; because a proposition to be believed must necessarily
be understood. To believe what they do not comprehend is to adhere
sottishly to the absurdities of others; to believe things which are not
comprehended by those who gossip about them is the height of folly;
to believe blindly the mysteries of the Christian religion is to admit
contradictions of which they who declare them are not convinced. In
fine, is it necessary to abandon one's reason among absurdities that
have been received without examination from ancient priests, who were
either the dupes of more knowing men, or themselves the impostors who
fabricated the tales in question?
If you ask of me how men have not long ago been shocked by such absurd
and unintelligible reveries, I shall proceed, in my turn, to explain to
you this secret of the church, this mystery of our priests. It is
not necessary, in doing this, to pay any attention to those general
dispositions of man, especially when he is ignorant and incapable of
reasoning. All men are curious, inquisitive; their curiosity spurs
them on to inquiry,'and their imagination busies itself to clothe with
mystery every thing the fancy conjures up as important to happiness. The
vulgar mistake even what they have the means of knowing, or, which is
the same thing, what they are least practised in they are dazzled with;
they proclaim it, accordingly, marvellous, prodigious, extraordinary;
it is a phenomenon. They neither admire nor respect much what is always
visible to their eyes; but whatever strikes their imagination, whatever
gives scope to the mind, becomes itself the fruitful source of other
ideas far more extravagant. The priests have had the art to prevail on
the people to believe in their secret correspondence with the Deity;
they have been thence much respected, and in all countries their
professed intercourse with an unseen Divinity has given room for their
announcement of things the most marvellous and mysterious.
Besides, the Divinity being a being whose impenetrable essence is veiled
from mortal sight, it has been commonly admitted by the ignorant, that
what could not be seen by mortal eye must necessarily be divine. Hence
_sacred, mysterious, and divine_, are synonymous terms; and these
imposing words have sufficed to place the human race on their knees to
adore what seeks not their inflated devotion.
The three mysteries which I have examined are received unanimously by
all sects of Christians; but there are others on which the theologians
are not agreed. In fine, we see men, who, after they have admitted,
without repugnance, a certain number of absurdities, stop all of a
sudden in the way, and refuse to admit more. The Christian Protestants
are in this case. They reject, with disdain, the mysteries for which
the Church of Rome shows the greatest respect; and yet, in the matter of
mysteries, it is indeed difficult to designate the point where the mind
ought to stop.
Seeing, then, that our doctors, better advised, undoubtedly, than those
of the Protestants, have adroitly multiplied mysteries, one is naturally
led to conclude, they despaired of governing the mind of man, if there
was any thing in their religion that was clear, intelligible, and
natural. More mysterious than the priests of Egypt itself, they have
found means to change every thing into mystery; the very movements of
the body, usages the most indifferent, ceremonies the most frivolous,
have become, in the powerful hands of the priests, sublime and divine
mysteries. In the Roman religion all is magic, all is prodigy, all is
supernatural. In the decisions of our theologians, the side which they
espouse is almost always that which is the most abhorrent to reason, the
most calculated to confound and overthrow common sense. In consequence,
our priests are by far the most rich, powerful, and considerable. The
continual want which we have of their aid to obtain from Heaven that
grace which it is their province to bring down for us, places us in
continual dependence on those marvellous men who have received their
commission to treat with the Deity, and become the ambassadors between
Heaven and us.
Each of our sacraments envelops a great mystery. They are ceremonies
to which the Divinity, they say, attaches some secret virtue, by unseen
views, of which we can form no ideas. In _baptism_, without which no man
can be saved, the water sprinkled on the head of the child washes his
spiritual soul, and carries away the defilement which is a consequence
of the sin committed in the person of Adam, who sinned for all men.
By the mysterious virtue of this water, and of some words equally
unintelligible, the infant finds itself reconciled to God, as his first
father had made him guilty without his knowledge and consent. In all
this, Madam, you cannot, by possibility, comprehend the complication
of these mysteries, with which no Christian can dispense, though,
assuredly, there is not one believer who knows what the virtue of the
marvellous water consists in, which is necessary for his regeneration.
Nor can you conceive how the supreme and equitable Governor of the
universe could impute faults to those who have never been guilty of
transgressions. Nor can you comprehend how a wise Deity can attach his
favor to a futile ceremony, which, without changing the nature of
the being who has derived an existence it neither commenced nor was
consulted in, must, if administered in winter, be attended with serious
consequences to the health of the child.
In _Confirmation_, a sacrament or ceremony, which, to have any value,
ought to be administered by a bishop, the laying of the hands on the
head of the young confirmant makes the Holy Spirit descend upon him, and
procures the grace of God to uphold him in the faith. You see, Madam,
that the efficacy of this sacrament is unfortunately lost in my person;
for, although in my youth I had been duly confirmed, I have not
been preserved against smiling at this faith, nor have I been kept
invulnerable in the credence of my priests and forefathers. In the
sacrament of _Penitence_, or confession, a ceremony which consists in
putting a priest in possession of all one's faults, public or private,
you will discover mysteries equally marvellous. In favor of this
submission, to which every good Catholic is necessarily obliged to
submit, a priest, _himself a sinner_, charged with full powers by the
Deity, pardons and remits, in His name, the sins against which God
is enraged. God reconciles himself with every man who humbles himself
before the priest, and in accordance with the orders of the latter, he
opens heaven to the wretch whom he had before determined to exclude.
If this sacrament doth not always procure grace, very distinguishing to
those who use it, it has, at all events, the advantage of rendering them
pliable to the clergy, who, by its means, find an easy sway in their
spiritual empire over the human mind, an empire that enables them, not
unfrequently, to disturb society, and more often the repose of families,
and the very conscience of the person confessing.
There is among the Catholics another sacrament, which contains the most
strange mysteries. It is that of the _Eucharist_. Our teachers, under
pain of being damned, enjoin us to believe that the Son of God is
compelled by a priest to quit the abodes of glory, and to come and mask
himself under the appearance of bread! This bread becomes forthwith
the body of God--this God multiplies himself in all places, and at all
times, when and where the priests, scattered over the face of the earth,
find it necessary to command his presence in the shape of bread--yet we
see only one and the same God, who receives the homage and adoration of
all those good people who find it very ridiculous in the Egyptians to
adore lupines and onions. But the Catholics are not simply content with
worshipping a bit of bread, which they consider by the conjurations of a
priest as divine; they eat this bread, and then persuade themselves
that they are nourished by the body or substance of God himself. The
Protestants, it is true, do not admit a mystery so very odd, and regard
those who do as real idolaters. What then? This marvellous dogma is,
without doubt, of the greatest utility to the priests. In the eyes of
those who admit it, they become very important gentlemen, who have the
power of disposing of the Deity, whom they make to descend between their
hands; and thus a Catholic priest is, in fact, the creator of his God!
There is, also, _Extreme Unction_, a sacrament which consists in
anointing with oil those sick persons who are about to depart into the
other world, and which not only soothes their bodily pains, but also
takes away the sins of their souls. If it produces these good effects,
it is an invisible and mysterious method of manifesting obvious results;
for we frequently behold sick persons have their fears of death allayed,
though the operation may but too often accelerate their dissolution.
But our priests are so full of charity, and they interest themselves so
greatly in the salvation of souls, that they like rather to risk their
own health beside the sick bed of persons afflicted with the most
contagious diseases, than lose the opportunity of administering their
salutary ointment.
_Ordination_ is another very mysterious ceremony, by which the Deity
secretly bestows his invisible grace on those whom he has selected
to fill the office of the holy priesthood. According to the Catholic
religion, God gives to the priests the power of making God himself,
as we have shown above; a privilege which without doubt cannot be
sufficiently admired. With respect to the sensible effects of this
sacrament, and of the visible grace which it confers, they are enabled,
by the help of some words and certain ceremonies, to change a profane
man into one that is sacred; that is to say, who is not profane any
longer. By this spiritual metamorphosis, this man becomes capable of
enjoying considerable revenues without being obliged to do any thing
useful for society. On the contrary, heaven itself confers on him the
right of deceiving, of annoying, and of pillaging the profane citizens,
who labor for his ease and luxury.
Finally, _Marriage_ is a sacrament that confers mysterious and invisible
graces, of which we in truth have no very precise ideas. Protestants
and Infidels, who look upon marriage as a civil contract, and not as a
sacrament, receive neither more nor less of its visible grace than the
good Catholics. The former see not that those who are married enjoy by
this sacrament any secret virtue, whence they may become more constant
and faithful to the engagements they have contracted. And I believe both
you and I, Madam, have known many people on whom it has only conferred
the grace of cordially detesting each other.
I will not now enter upon the consideration of a multitude of other
magic ceremonies, admitted by some Christian sectaries and rejected
by others, but to which the devotees who embrace them, attach the most
lofty ideas, in the firm persuasion, that God will, on that account,
visit them with his invisible grace. All these ceremonies, doubtless,
contain great mysteries, and the method of handling or speaking of them
is exceedingly mysterious. It is thus that the water on which a priest
has pronounced a few words, contained in his conjuring book, acquires
the invisible virtue of chasing away wicked spirits, who are invisible
by their nature. It is thus that the oil, on which a bishop has muttered
some certain formula, becomes capable of communicating to men, and even
to some inanimate substances, such as wood, stone, metals, and walls,
those invisible virtues which they did not previously possess. In fine,
in all the ceremonies of the church, we discover mysteries, and the
vulgar, who comprehend nothing of them, are not the less disposed to
admire, to be fascinated with, and to respect with a blind devotion. But
soon would they cease to have this veneration for these fooleries,
if they comprehended the design and end the priests have in view by
enforcing their observance.
The priests of all nations have begun by being charlatans, castle
builders, divines, and sorcerers.
We find men of these characters in nations the most ignorant and savage,
where they live by the ignorance and credulity of others. They are
regarded by their ignorant countrymen as superior beings, endowed with
supernatural gifts, favorites of the very Gods, because the uninquiring
multitude see them perform things which they take to be mighty
marvellous, or which the ignorant have always considered marvellous. In
nations the most polished, the people are always the same; persons the
most sensible are not often of the same ideas, especially on the subject
of religion; and the priests, authorized by the ancient folly of the
multitude, continue their old tricks, and receive universal applause.
You are not, then, to be surprised, Madam, if you still behold our
pontiffs and our priests exercise their magical rites, or rear
castles before the eyes of people prejudiced in favor of their ancient
illusions, and who attach to these mysteries a degree of consequence,
seeing they are not in a condition to comprehend the motives of the
fabricators. Every thing that is mysterious has charms for the ignorant;
the marvellous captivates all men; persons the most enlightened find it
difficult to defend themselves against these illusions. Hence you may
discover that the priests are always opinionatively attached to these
rites and ceremonies of their worship; and it has never been without
some violent revolution that they have been diminished or abrogated. The
annihilation of a trifling ceremony has often caused rivers of blood
to flow. The people have believed themselves lost and undone when one
bolder than the rest wished to innovate in matters of religion; they
have fancied that they were to be deprived of inestimable advantages and
invisible but saving grace, which they have supposed to be attached by
the Divinity himself to some movements of the body. Priests the most
adroit have overcharged religion with ceremonies, and practices, and
mysteries. They fancied that all these were so many cords to bind the
people to their interest, to allure them by enthusiasm, and render them
necessary to their idle and luxurious existence, which is not spent
without much money extracted from the hard earnings of the people, and
much of that respect which is but the homage of slaves to spiritual
tyrants.
You cannot any longer, I persuade myself, Madam, be made the dupe of
these holy jugglers, who impose on the vulgar by their marvellous tales.
You must now be convinced that the things which I have touched upon as
mysteries are profound absurdities, of which their inventors can render
no reasonable account either to themselves or to others. You must now be
certified that the movements of the body and other religious ceremonies
must be matters perfectly indifferent to the wise Being whom they
describe to us as the great mover of all things. You conclude, then,
that all these marvellous rites, in which our priests announce so much
mystery, and in which the people are taught to consider the whole of
religion as consisting, are nothing more than puerilities, to which
people of understanding ought never to submit. That they are usages
calculated principally to alarm the minds of the weak, and keep in
bondage those who have not the courage to throw off the yoke of priests.
I am, &c.