OF THE NEED OF REVELATION
The greatest benefit we owe to the New Testament is that it has revealed
to us the immortality of the soul. It is in vain, therefore, that this
fellow Warburton tried to cloud over this important truth, by
continually representing in his legation of Moses that "the ancient Jews
knew nothing of this necessary dogma, and that the Sadducees did not
admit it in the time of our Lord Jesus."
He interprets in his own way the very words that have been put into
Jesus Christ's mouth: "... have ye not read that which was spoken unto
you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living"
(St. Matt. xxii. 31, 32). He gives to the parable of the wicked rich man
a sense contrary to that of all the Churches. Sherlock, Bishop of
London, and twenty other scholars refuted him. English philosophers even
reproached him with the scandal of an Anglican bishop manifesting an
opinion so contrary to the Anglican Church; and after that, this man
takes it into his head to treat these persons as impious: like the
character of _Arlequin_ in the comedy of the _Dévaliseur de maisons_,
who, after throwing the furniture out of the window, sees a man carrying
some of it off, and cries with all his might "Stop thief!"
One should bless the revelation of the immortality of the soul, and of
rewards and punishments after death, all the more that mankind's vain
philosophy has always been sceptical of it. The great Cæsar did not
believe in it at all, he made himself quite clear in full senate when,
in order to stop Catalina being put to death, he represented that death
left man without sensation, that everything died with him; and nobody
refuted this view.
The Roman Empire was divided between two principal sects: that of
Epicurus which asserted that deity was useless to the world, and that
the soul perished with the body: and that of the Stoics who regarded the
soul as part of the Deity, which after death was joined again to its
origin, to the great everything from which it emanated. Thus, whether
one believed the soul mortal, or whether one believed it immortal, all
the sects were agreed in laughing at pains and punishments after death.
We still have a hundred monuments of this belief of the Romans. It is by
virtue of this opinion graved profoundly in their hearts, that so many
simple Roman citizens killed themselves without the least scruple; they
did not wait for a tyrant to hand them over to the executioners.
The most virtuous men even, and those most persuaded of the existence of
a God, hoped for no reward, and feared no punishment. Clement, who later
was Pope and saint, began by himself doubting what the early Christians
said of another life, and consulted St. Peter at Cæsarea. We are far
from believing that St. Clement wrote the history that is attributed to
him; but this history makes evident the need the human race had of a
precise revelation. All that can surprise us is that so repressive and
salutary a doctrine has left a prey to so many horrible crimes men who
have so little time to live, and who see themselves squeezed between two
eternities.