The stiff Lutheran, the savage Calvinist, the proud Anglican high
churchman, the fanatical Jansenist, the Jesuit always aiming at
dominion, even in exile and at the very gallows, the Sorbonnist who
deems himself one of the fathers of a council; these, and some imbecile
beings under their respective guidance, inveigh incessantly and bitterly
against philosophy. They are all different species of the canine race,
snarling and howling in their peculiar ways against a beautiful horse
that is pasturing in a verdant meadow, and who never enters into contest
with them about any of the carrion carcasses upon which they feed, and
for which they are perpetually fighting with one another.
They every day produce from the press their trash of philosophic
theology, their philosophico-theological dictionaries; their old and
battered arguments, as common as the streets, which they denominate
"demonstrations"; and their ten thousand times repeated and ridiculous
assertions which they call "lemmas," and "corollaries"; as false coiners
cover a lead crown with a plating of silver.
They perceive that they are despised by all persons of reflection, and
that they can no longer deceive any but a few weak old women. This state
is far more humiliating and mortifying than even being expelled from
France and Spain and Naples. Everything can be supported except
contempt. We are told that when the devil was conquered by Raphael--as
it is clearly proved he was--that haughty compound of body and spirit at
first easily consoled himself with the idea of the chances of war. But
when he understood that Raphael laughed at him, he roundly swore that he
would never forgive him. Accordingly, the Jesuits never forgave Pascal;
accordingly, Jerieu went on calumniating Bayle even to the grave; and
just in the same manner all the Tartuffes, all the hypocrites, in
Molière's time, inveighed against that author to his dying day. In their
rage they resort to calumnies, as in their folly they publish arguments.
One of the most determined slanderers, as well as one of the most
contemptible reasoners that we have among us, is an ex-Jesuit of the
name of Paulian, who published a theologico-philosophical rhapsody in
the city of Avignon, formerly a papal city, and perhaps destined to be
so again. This person accuses the authors of the "Encyclopædia" of
having said:
"That as man is by his nature open only to the pleasures of the senses,
these pleasures are consequently the sole objects of his desires; that
man in himself has neither vice nor virtue, neither good nor bad morals,
neither justice nor injustice; that the pleasures of the senses produce
all the virtues; that in order to be happy, men must extinguish remorse,
etc."
In what articles of the "Encyclopædia," of which five new editions have
lately commenced, are these horrible propositions to be found? You are
bound actually to produce them. Have you carried the insolence of your
pride and the madness of your character to such an extent as to imagine
that you will be believed on your bare word? These ridiculous
absurdities may be found perhaps in the works of your own casuists, or
those of the Porter of the Chartreux, but they are certainly not to be
found in the articles of the "Encyclopædia" composed by M. Diderot, M.
d'Alembert, the chevalier Jaucourt, or M. de Voltaire. You have never
seen them in the articles of the Count de Tressan, nor in those of
Messrs. Blondel, Boucher-d'Argis, Marmontel, Venel, Tronchin,
d'Aubenton, d'Argenville, and various others, who generously devoted
their time and labors to enrich the "Encyclopædic Dictionary," and
thereby conferred an everlasting benefit on Europe. Most assuredly, not
one of them is chargeable with the abominations you impute to them. Only
yourself, and Abraham Chaumeix, the vinegar merchant and crucified
convulsionary, could be capable of broaching so infamous a calumny.
You confound error with truth, because you have not sense sufficient to
distinguish between them. You wish to stigmatize as impious the maxim
adopted by all publicists, "That every man is free to choose his
country."
What! you contemptible preacher of slavery, was not Queen Christina free
to travel to France and reside at Rome? Were not Casimir and Stanislaus
authorized to end their days in France? Was it necessary, because they
were Poles, that they should die in Poland? Did Goldoni, Vanloo, and
Cassini give offense to God by settling at Paris? Have all the Irish,
who have established themselves in fame and fortune in France, committed
by so doing a mortal sin?
And you have the stupidity to print such extravagance and absurdity as
this, and Riballier has stupidity enough to approve and sanction you;
and you range in one and the same class Bayle, Montesquieu, and the
madman de La Mettrie; and it may be added, you have found the French
nation too humane and indulgent, notwithstanding all your slander and
malignity, to deliver you over to anything but scorn!
What! do you dare to calumniate your country--if indeed a Jesuit can be
said to have a country? Do you dare to assert "that philosophers alone
in France attribute to chance the union and disunion of the atoms which
constitute the soul of man?" "_Mentiris impudentissime!_" I defy you to
produce a single book, published within the last thirty years, in which
anything at all is attributed to chance, which is merely a word without
a meaning.
Do you dare to accuse the sagacious and judicious Locke of having said
"that it is possible the soul may be a spirit, but that he is not
perfectly sure it is so; and that we are unable to decide what it may be
able or unable to acquire?"
"_Mentiris impudentissime!_" Locke, the truly respectable and venerable
Locke, says expressly, in his answer to the cavilling and sophistical
Stilling-fleet, "I am strongly persuaded, although it cannot be shown,
by mere reason, that the soul is immaterial, because the veracity of God
is a demonstration of the truth of all that He has revealed, and the
absence of another demonstration can never throw any doubt upon what is
already demonstrated."
See, moreover, under the article "Soul," how Locke expresses himself on
the bounds of human knowledge, and the immensity of the power of the
Supreme Being. The great philosopher Bolingbroke declares that the
opinion opposite to Locke's is blasphemy. All the fathers, during the
first three ages of the church, regarded the soul as a light, attenuated
species of matter, but did not the less, in consequence, regard it as
immortal. But now, forsooth, even your college drudges consequentially
put themselves forward and denounce as "atheists" those who, with the
fathers of the Christian church, think that God is able to bestow and to
preserve the immortality of the soul, whatever may be the substance it
consists of.
You carry your audacity so far as to discover atheism in the following
words, Who produces motion in nature? God. "Who produces vegetation in
plants? God. Who produces motion in animals? God. Who produces thought
in man? God."
We cannot so properly say on this occasion, "_Mentiris impudentissime_";
but we should rather say you impudently blaspheme the truth. We conclude
with observing that the hero of the ex-Jesuit Paulian is the ex-Jesuit
Patouillet, the author of a bishop's mandate in which all the
parliaments of the kingdom are insulted. This mandate was burned by the
hands of the executioner. Nothing after this was wanting but for the
ex-Jesuit Paulian to elevate the ex-Jesuit Nonnotte to be a father of
the church, and to canonize the Jesuits Malagrida, Guignard, Garnet, and
Oldham, and all other Jesuits to whom God has granted the grace of being
hanged or quartered; they were all of them great metaphysicians, great
philosophico-theologians.