SEQUEL AND CONCLUSION.
[Illustration: WIDOW CALAS PLEADING FOR A REVOCATION OF THE DECREE OF
THE PARLIAMENT OF TOULOUSE]
On the 7th of March, 1763, a council of state being held at
Versailles, at which all the great ministers assisted and the
chancellor sat as president, M. de Crosne, one of the masters of
requests, made a report of the affair of the Calas family with all
the impartiality of a judge, and the precision of one perfectly
well acquainted with the case, and with the plain truth and inspired
eloquence of an orator and a statesman, which is alone suitable to
such an assembly. The gallery was filled with a prodigious number
of persons of all ranks, who impatiently waited the decision of
the council. In a short time a deputation was sent to the king to
acquaint him that the council had come to a unanimous resolution:
that the parliament of Toulouse should transmit to them the whole
account of its proceedings, together with the reasons on which it had
framed the sentence condemning John Calas to be broken on the wheel;
when his majesty was pleased to concur in the decree of the council.
Justice and humanity then still continue to reside amongst mankind!
and principally in the council of a king beloved, and deserving so
to be; who, with his ministers, his chancellor and all the members
of his council, have not disdained to employ their time in weighing
all the circumstances relating to the sufferings of a private family
with as much attention as if it had been the most interesting affair
of war or peace; whilst the judges have shown themselves inspired
by a love of equity and a tender regard to the interests of their
fellow-subjects. All praise be given therefore to that Merciful
Being, the only giver of integrity and every other virtue.
And here we take occasion to declare that we never had the least
acquaintance with the unfortunate man who was condemned on the most
frivolous evidence by the court of justice of Toulouse, in direct
contradiction to the ordinances of our king and the laws of all
nations, nor with his son, Mark Antony, the extraordinary manner of
whose death led the judges into the error they committed; nor with
the mother, whose sufferings call aloud for compassion, nor yet with
her innocent daughter, who, together with her, travelled upwards of
six hundred miles to lay their virtue and distresses at the foot of
the throne.
The God in whose presence we declare this knows that we have been
actuated solely by the love of justice, mercy, and truth, in
delivering our thoughts in the manner we have done on toleration,
in regard to John Calas, who fell a victim to non-toleration and
persecution.
We had not the least intent to offend the eight judges of Toulouse
in saying that they were mistaken, as the council of state itself
supposes them to have been; on the contrary, we have opened a way
for them to vindicate themselves to all Europe by acknowledging that
equivocal circumstances, and the clamor of a headstrong and enraged
populace, had biassed their judgment; and by asking pardon of the
widow and repairing as much as in them lies the ruin they have
brought upon an innocent family, by adding to the number of those who
succor them in their affliction. They have put the father to death
unjustly; let them then be as fathers to his children, provided those
children are willing to accept of this poor token of repentance from
them. It would be infinitely to the honor of the judges to make such
an offer, and to that of the injured family to refuse it.
But it principally behooves the Sieur David, capitol of Toulouse, to
set the example of remorse and penitence, who was the first to raise
this persecution against innocence, and who insulted the hapless
father of a family when expiring on the scaffold. This was indeed an
unparalleled act of cruelty; but as God is willing to show mercy and
forgiveness it is the duty of mortals to pardon in like manner those
who make atonement for their offences.
I have received a letter from a friend in Languedoc, dated the 20th
of February, 1763, of which the following is an extract:
“Your treatise on toleration appears to be full of humanity and
truth; but I am afraid it will rather hurt than serve the Calas
family. It may gall the eight judges who were for the sentence, and
they may apply to the parliament to have your book burnt; besides,
the bigots, of whom you are sensible there is always a considerable
number, will oppose the voice of reason with the clamors of
prejudice,” etc.
My answer was as follows:
“The eight judges of Toulouse may, if they please, have my book
burnt. It will cost them very little trouble, since the “Provincial
Letters,” which had infinitely superior merit to anything of mine,
were condemned to the same fate. Every one, you know, is at liberty
to burn in his own house such books as he does not like.
“My treatise cannot possibly do either hurt or good to the Calas
family, with whom I have not the least acquaintance. The king’s
council is no less resolute than impartial; it judges according
to law and equity of those things which fall properly under its
cognizance; but it will not interfere with a common pamphlet, written
upon a subject altogether foreign from the affair under consideration.
“If a hundred volumes in folio should be written in condemnation or
vindication of the judges of Toulouse, or of toleration, neither the
council nor any other court of justice would look upon these as law
matters.
“I readily agree with you that there are numbers of enthusiasts who
will set up the cry against me, but at the same time I do insist that
I shall have as many sensible readers who will make use of their
reason.
“I hear that the Parliament of Toulouse and some other courts of
justice have a method of proceeding peculiar to themselves. They
admit fourths, thirds, and sixths of a proof; so that with six
hearsays on one side, three on the other, and four-fourths of a
presumption, they frame three complete proofs; and in consequence of
this curious demonstration will condemn you a man to be broken upon
the wheel without mercy. Now, the least acquaintance with the art of
logic or reasoning would point out a different method of proceeding
to them. What we call a half proof can never amount to more than a
suspicion; but there is no such thing in reality as a half proof; for
a thing must either be proved or not proved; there is no medium.
“A million of suspicions put together can no more frame a regular
proof than a million of ciphers can compose an arithmetical number.
“There are fourths of tones or sounds in music, and these are to be
expressed; but there are no fourths in truths, nor in reasoning.
“Two witnesses agreeing in the same deposition, are esteemed to make
a proof; but this is not enough; these two witnesses should be clear
of all passion and prejudice, and, above all, their testimony should
be in every part consonant with reason.
“Suppose four persons of the most respectable appearance were to come
and swear in a court of justice that they saw an infirm old man take
a vigorous young fellow by the collar and toss him out of a window,
to the distance of six or seven feet; certainly such deponents ought
to be sent to a madhouse.
“But the eight judges of Toulouse condemned John Calas upon a much
more improbable accusation; for there was no one appeared to swear
that he had actually seen this feeble old man of seventy seize
a stout young fellow of twenty-eight, and hang him up. Indeed,
certain enthusiastic wretches said that they had been told by other
enthusiasts like themselves that they had been told by some of their
own sect that they had heard that John Calas had by a supernatural
strength overcome his son and hanged him. And thus was the most
absurd of all sentences passed upon the most absurd of all evidence.
“In fine, there is no remedy against such kind of proceedings but
that those who purchase their seats in a court of justice should, for
the future, be obliged to study a little better.”
This treatise on toleration is a petition which humanity with all
submission presents to power and prudence. I have sowed a grain that
may perhaps produce a rich harvest. We may hope everything from time,
from the goodness of the heart of our gracious monarch, the wisdom
of his ministers, and the spirit of sound reason, which begins to
diffuse its salutary influence over all minds.
Nature addresses herself thus to mankind: “I have formed you all
weak and ignorant, to vegetate a few moments on that earth which
you are afterwards to fatten with your carcasses. Let your weakness
then teach you to succor each other, and as you are ignorant, bear
with and endeavor mutually to instruct each other. Even if ye were
all of the same way of thinking, which certainly will never come
to pass, and there should be one single person only found amongst
you who differed from you in belief, you ought to forgive him, for
it is I who make him think in the manner he does. I have given you
hands to cultivate the earth, and a faint glimmering of reason to
conduct yourselves by, and I have planted in your hearts a spirit of
compassion, that you may assist each other under the burden of life.
Do not smother that spark, nor suffer it to be corrupted, for know it
is of divine origin; neither substitute the wretched debates of the
schools in the place of the voice of nature.
“It is I alone who unite you all, in despite of yourselves, by
your mutual wants, even in the midst of those bloody wars that you
undertake for the slightest causes, and that afford a continual scene
of error, chances, and misfortunes. It is I alone who, in a nation,
prevent the fatal effects of the inextinguishable differences that
subsist between the sword and the law, between those two professions
and the clergy, and between even the citizen and the husbandman.
Though ignorant of the limits of their own prerogatives, they are
in spite of themselves obliged to listen to my voice, which speaks
to their hearts. It is I alone who maintain equity in the courts
of judicature, where otherwise everything would be determined by
error and caprice, in the midst of a confused heap of laws, framed
too often at a venture and to supply an immediate call, differing
from each other in every province and town, and almost always
contradictory in the same place. I alone can inspire the love and
knowledge of justice, while the laws inspire only chicanery and
subterfuge. He who listens to me seldom forms a wrong judgment, while
he who seeks only to reconcile contradictory opinions loses himself
in the fruitless labor.
“There is an immense edifice whose foundation I laid with my own
hands. It was at once solid and simple; all mankind might have
entered into it with safety, but they, in seeking to ornament,
overloaded it with useless and fantastic decorations. The building is
continually falling to decay, and they gather up the stones to throw
at one another; while I am incessantly calling out to them, ‘Hold,
madmen! clear away the ruins with which you are surrounded, and which
you yourselves have made; come and live with me in uninterrupted
tranquillity within my mansion, that is not to be shaken.’”
FOOTNOTES TO A TREATISE ON TOLERATION
[2] 12 October, 1761.
[3] After the body was carried to the town-house, indeed, there was
found a little scratch upon the end of the nose, and a small black
and blue spot upon the breast; but these were probably occasioned by
some carelessness in removing the corpse.
[4] I know of but two instances in history of fathers having murdered
their children on the score of religion; the first is the father of
St. Barbara, as she is called; it seems he had ordered two windows
to be made in his bathing-room. St. Barbara in his absence took it
into her head to make a third in honor of the Holy Trinity; she also
with the end of her finger made the sign of the cross upon the marble
pillars, which remained deeply impressed thereon; her father, in a
violent fury to have his room thus marked, runs after her with his
sword in his hand with an intention to kill her; she flies towards a
mountain, which very complaisantly opens upon her approach to give
her a passage. Her father finds himself obliged to go round about,
and at length gets hold of his fugitive daughter, whom he strips
and prepares to scourge; but God envelops her with a white cloud;
however, after all, her father caused her head to be struck off. This
is the story as we find it related in the book called “The Flower of
Saints.”
The second instance is of Prince Hermenegildus, who raised a
rebellion against the king, his father, and gave him battle in the
year 584, but was himself defeated and slain by one of his father’s
generals; however, he has been placed among the martyrs, because his
father was an Arian.
[5] It is necessary for the English reader to understand that in
Paris it is customary for the great lawyers or counsellors employed
in any remarkable case to publish their pleadings on each side. On
this occasion, however, our author observes, “that these publications
were pirated in several towns, by which Mrs. Calas lost the advantage
that was intended her by this act of generosity.”
[6] _Dévot_, or as we call it in English, devotee, comes from the
Latin word _devotus_. The _devoti_ of ancient Rome were such persons
who devoted themselves to death for the safety or good of the
republic, as the Curtii and Decii.
[7] They revived the opinion of Berengarius, concerning the
eucharist; they denied that a body can exist in a thousand different
places at one time, even by all the exertion of divine omnipotence;
they also denied that attributes can subsist without a subject;
they held that it was absolutely impossible that what appears to
be simple bread and wine to the sight, the taste, and the stomach,
can in the very instant of its existence be annihilated or changed
into another substance; in a word, they maintained all those errors
for which Berengarius was formerly condemned. They founded their
belief on several passages of the ancient fathers of the church,
and particularly of St. Justin, who says expressly in his Dialogue
against Typhon, “That the offering of fine flour is the figure of the
eucharist, which Christ has ordered us to make in commemoration of
his passion;
χαὶ ἡ τῆς σεμιδαλέως, _&c._, τύπος ἦν τοῦ ἄρτου τῆς εὐχαριστίας,
ὃν είς ἀνάμνμησιν τοῦ πάθους, _&c._ Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς ὁ χύριος ἡμῶν
παρέδωχε ποιεῖν.”
They revived all that had been advanced in the first ages against
the worship of relics, and brought these words of Vigilantius for
their authority: “What necessity is there for your paying adoration
or even respect to a mass of vile dust? Can it be supposed that the
souls of deceased martyrs retain after their death an affection for
their ashes? The customs of the ancient idolaters are now introduced
into the Church; we begun to light tapers at noonday; we may, indeed,
during our lifetime, mutually pray for each other; but of what
service can such prayers be after death?”
[8] The candid and venerable President de Thou expresses himself thus
concerning these innocent and unfortunate persons: “_Homines esse qui
trecentis circiter abhinc annis asperum & incultum solum vectigale a
dominis acceperint, quod improbo labore & assiduo cultu frugum ferax
& aptum pecori reddiderint; patientissimos eos laboris & inediæ,
a litibus abhorrentes, erga, egenos munificos, tributa principi &
sua jura dominis sedulo & summa fide pendere; Dei cultum assiduis
precibus & morum innocentiam præ se ferre, ceterum raro divorum
templa adire, nisi si quando ad vicina suis finibus oppida mercandi
aut negotiorum causa divertant; quo si quandoque pedem inferant, non
dei, divorumque statuis advolvi, nec cereos eis aut donaria ulla
ponere; non sacerdotes ab eis rogari ut pro se, aut propinquorum
manibus rem divinam faciant, non cruce frontem insigniri uti aliorum
moris est; cum cœlum intonant non se lustrali aqua aspergere, sed
sublatis in cœlum oculis dei opem implorare; non religionis ergo
peregre proficisci, non per vias ante crucium simulacra caput
aperire; sacra alio ritu, & populari lingua celebrare; non denique
Pontifici aut Episcopis honorem deferre, sed quosdam e suo numero
delectos pro antistibus & doctoribus habere. Hæc uti ad Franciscum
relata VI.” Id. Feb. anni &c._
Madame de Cental, who was proprietor of part of the lands thus laid
waste and drenched in the blood of their quondam inhabitants, applied
for redress to Henry II., who referred her to the Parliament of
Paris. The solicitor-general of Provence, whose name was Guerin and
who had been the principal author of these massacres, was condemned
to lose his head, and was the only one who suffered on this occasion
the punishment due to the other accomplices in his guilt, because,
says de Thou, _aulicorum favore destituertur_, he had not friends at
court.
[9] Francis Gomar was a Protestant divine; he maintained, in
contradiction to Arminius, his colleague, that God has, from all
eternity, predestined the greatest part of mankind to burn in
everlasting flames: this infernal doctrine was supported in the
manner most suitable to it, by persecution. The grand pensionary
Barneveldt, who was of the party which opposed Gomar, was beheaded
on the 13th of May, 1619, at the age of seventy-two, “_for having_”
(says his sentence) “_used his uttermost endeavors to vex the Church
of God_.”
[10] A pompous writer, in his apology for the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, speaking of England, has these words: “These were the
natural fruits of a false religion; there remained only one to be
brought to perfection, which these islanders, justly the contempt of
all nations, have cherished, and adapted to themselves.” Certainly
this author has been a little unfortunate in choosing his time for
representing the English as a people despicable and despised by all
the world; for surely, when a nation gives the most signal proofs of
its bravery and generosity, and when its victorious ensigns wave in
the four parts of the world, no great credit is to be given to the
writer who shall represent it as contemptible and contemned. But we
must observe that it is in a chapter in favor of persecution that we
meet with this extraordinary passage; and none but such as preach
persecution can write thus. This detestable book, which seems the
work of a madman, was composed by a person who has no ecclesiastical
cure; for what real pastor would write in such a manner? The author
has even carried his enthusiastic fury to such a length as to
justify the massacre of St. Bartholomew. It might be supposed that a
production full of such shocking paradoxes would be in the hands of
almost every one, were it only on account of its singularity, and yet
it seems to be hardly known.
[11] See Ricaut.
[12] See Kempfer, and all the accounts of Japan.
[13] M. de la Bourdonnaie, intendant of Rouen, says that the
manufacture of hats at Caudebec and Neufchâtel has greatly fallen off
since the refugees left that county. M. Foucaut, intendant of Caen,
says that trade in general has declined through the whole district;
and M. de Maupeou, intendant of Poitiers, that the manufacture
of druggets is quite lost. M. de Bezons complains that there is
now hardly any trade stirring in Clérac and Nérac. M. Miroménil,
intendant of Touraine, says that the trade of Tours has diminished
near ten millions per annum, and all this through the persecution
raised in that part of the kingdom. (See the Memorials of the
Intendants in the year 1698.) To this, if we add the number of land
and sea officers and common sailors who have been forced to engage
in foreign services, frequently with fatal consequences to their own
country, we shall then see whether or no persecution has been fatal
to the state.
We will not here presume to offer any hints to those ministers whose
conduct and capacity are sufficiently known, and whose greatness of
soul and nobleness of sentiment do honor to their illustrious birth;
they will of themselves readily perceive that the restoration of
our marine will require some indulgence at least to be shown to the
inhabitants of our sea-coasts.
[14] These disabilities no longer exist in Protestant countries.
[15] Chap. xxi., xxii.
[16] Acts xxv.
[17] Acts xxvi.
[18] Though the power of life and death in criminal matters had
been taken from the Jews after the banishment of Archelaus into the
country of the Allobroges and that Judæa had been governed as a
province, nevertheless the Romans frequently winked at the exertion
of a judicial power by these people on any particular occasion that
related merely to those of their own sect, such as, for instance,
when in any sudden tumult they out of zeal stoned to death the person
whom they thought guilty of blasphemy.
[19] Ulpianus I. tit. II. _Eis qui judaicam superstitionem sequuntur,
honores adipisci permiserunt, &c._
[20] Tacitus’ words are: _Quos per flagitia invisos vulgus
Christianos appellabat_.
It is hardly probable that the name of Christian was already known
in Rome. Tacitus wrote in the reigns of the Emperors Vespasian and
Domitian, and he speaks of the Christians in the manner that was
customary in his time. And here I must venture to assert that the
words _Odio humani generis convicti_, may equally well be rendered
agreeably to the style of this writer, _Convicted of being hated by
mankind_, as _Convicted of hating all mankind_.
And indeed, what was the employment of these first missionaries in
Rome? They labored to gain a few proselytes by preaching a pure and
simple moral doctrine; the humility of their hearts, and the modesty
of their manners were equal to the lowliness of their condition and
circumstances. Having been so lately separated from the Jews, they
were hardly known in the world as a different sect; how then could
they be hated by, or convicted of hating all mankind, to whom they
were in a manner unknown?
The Roman Catholics have been accused as the incendiaries of the city
of London in the year 1666, but not till they had first occasioned
civil wars on account of religion; and after several of that faith,
though unworthy to be so, had been legally convicted of the Gunpowder
Plot.
But surely the case of the primitive Christians in the time of Nero
was very different. It is no easy matter to clear up the obscurities
of history. Even Tacitus himself says nothing that can afford a
reason to suspect Nero of having set fire to Rome; and we might, with
a greater appearance of probability, charge Charles II. with having
lighted up the flames that laid London in ashes, to avenge the blood
of his father, that had been so lately shed upon the scaffold to
satisfy a rebellious people who thirsted for that blood. Charles had
at least some excuse for such an action, whereas Nero had neither
excuse, pretence, nor interest for the deed attributed to him.
Reports of this kind have been common in every country among the
populace, and even our own times have furnished us with some equally
false and ridiculous.
Tacitus, who was so well acquainted with the disposition of princes,
could not have been a stranger to that of the common people, who
are ever vain, inconstant, and violent in the opinions they adopt,
incapable of discerning truth from falsehood, and ready to believe,
assert, and forget everything.
Philo says that “Sejanus persecuted the Jews under Tiberius, but
that after the death of Sejanus, the emperor reinstated them in
all their privileges,” one of which was, that of being denizens of
Rome, notwithstanding the contempt they were held in by the Romans.
As such, they had a share in the distribution of corn, and whenever
such distribution happened to be made on the day that was their
Sabbath, the portion allotted them was put by till the next day; this
indulgence might probably be granted them in favor of the great sums
of money with which they furnished the state; for they have purchased
toleration in every country at a pretty high rate, though, it must be
confessed, that they have soon found means to reimburse themselves.
This passage of Philo’s clearly explains one in Tacitus, where he
says that “Four thousand Jews or Egyptians were banished to Sardinia,
where, if they had all perished, through the badness of the climate,
it would have been no great loss.” _Vile damnum._
Before I close this note, I shall observe that Philo speaks of
Tiberius as a wise and just prince. I am very ready to believe that
he was so, only where the being such was agreeable to his interest;
but the good character given him here by Philo makes me at the same
time greatly suspect the truth of those terrible crimes with which
Tacitus and Suetonius reproach him. Nor can I think it likely that
an infirm old man of seventy would have retired into the island of
Caprera to indulge himself in the uninterrupted exercise of a refined
debauchery, which appears to be hardly natural, and was, even in
those days of licentiousness, unknown to the most abandoned of the
Roman youth. Neither Tacitus nor Suetonius was acquainted with that
emperor; but took these stories upon the credit of vulgar reports;
Octavius and Tiberius Cæsar, and their successors, had been detested
for reigning over a free people without their consent. All historians
have taken a delight in bespattering their characters, and the world
has taken them at their words for want of authentic memorials or
chronicles in those times. Besides, as these writers do not quote
any authority for what they advance, who could contradict them? They
blackened whom they pleased, and wantonly directed the judgment of
posterity. The wise and impartial reader will, however, readily
perceive how far the veracity of historians is to be depended on, and
what degree of credit is due to public facts attested by authors of
reputation, born in a learned and enlightened nation, as well as what
bounds to set to our belief of anecdotes, when related by these same
authors, without any authority to support them.
[21] We most certainly have a proper deference for whatever the Holy
Church has made the objects of our reverence; accordingly, we invoke
the blessed martyrs; but at the same time that we pay St. Laurence
all due respect, may we not be permitted to doubt that St. Sixtus
said to him: “You will follow me in three days.” That, during this
short interval, the prefect of Rome made him demand a sum of money
of the Christians; that Laurence had time to assemble all the poor
people in that city; that he walked before the prefect, to show him
the place where they were assembled; that he was afterwards tried
and condemned to the torture; that the prefect ordered the smith to
make a gridiron large enough to broil a man upon; that the principal
magistrate of Rome assisted in person at this strange execution; and
lastly that St. Laurence, while upon the gridiron, called out to him,
“I am done enough on this side, let them turn me on the other, if you
have a mind to eat me.” This same gridiron seems to have very little
of the Roman genius in it; and besides, how happens it that we do not
find a word of this story in any of the heathen writers?
[22] We have only to open Virgil to be convinced that the Romans
acknowledged one Supreme Being, the lord and master of all other
heavenly beings.
_O! quis res hominumque deumque_
_Æternis regis imperiis, & fulmine terres,_
_O pater, o hominum divumque æterna potestas, &c._
And Horace expresses himself still more strongly:
_Unde nil majus generatur ipso,_
_Nec viget quidquam simile, aut secundum._
In those mysteries into which almost all the Roman youths were
initiated, nothing else was sung but the unity of God. See the
noble hymn of Orpheus, and the letter of Maximus of Modarum to St.
Augustine, in which he says that “None but fools can possibly deny
a Supreme Being.” Longinus, who was a heathen, writes also to St.
Augustine that “God is one, incomprehensible, ineffable.” Even
Lactantius, who certainly cannot be charged with being too indulgent,
acknowledges in his fifth book that “The Romans subjected all the
other deities to the one supreme God;” _illos subjecit & mancipat
Deo_. Tertullian also in his Apology confesses that “The whole empire
acknowledged one God, ruler of the world, and infinite in power and
majesty:” _Principem mundi perfectæ potentiæ & majestatis_. Again, if
we look into Plato, who taught Cicero his philosophy, we shall there
find him thus express himself: “There is but one God, whom we all
ought to love and adore, and labor to resemble Him in integrity and
holiness.” Epictetus in a dungeon, and Mark Antoninus on a throne,
tell us the same in a hundred different passages of their writings.
[23] Chap. 39.
[24] Chap. 35.
[25] Chap. iii.
[26] This assertion requires to be proved. It cannot be denied that
from the time that history succeeded to fiction, the Egyptians
have constantly appeared to be a people as dastardly as they were
superstitious. Cambyses made the conquest of their country in a
single battle; Alexander gave them laws without striking a stroke,
or without one of their cities daring to wait a siege. The Ptolemies
subdued them with as little trouble, nor did Octavius and Augustus
Cæsar find more difficulty in bringing them under their obedience.
Omar overran all Egypt in one single campaign; the Mamelukes, who
inhabited Colchis and the regions of Mount Caucasus, became their
masters afterwards; and it was these people, and not the Egyptians,
who defeated the army of St. Louis, and took that king prisoner. At
length the Mamelukes having, in process of time, become Egyptians,
that is to say, effeminate, cowardly, lazy, and dissipated, like the
original natives of the climate, they were in three months’ time
brought under the yoke of Selim I., who caused their Soldan to be
hanged, and made their kingdom a province of the Turkish Empire,
and such it will remain till other barbarians may hereafter make
themselves masters of it.
Herodotus relates that in the fabulous ages a king of Egypt called
Sesostris left his country in order to go and make the conquest of
the world; it is evident that such a design could only be worthy of
a Don Quixote; and not to mention that the name Sesostris is not
Egyptian, we may rank this event, like many others of the same date,
among the romances and fairy tales. Nothing is more common among
a conquered people than to tell strange stories of their former
grandeur, just as, in some countries, certain wretched families,
in want of the common necessaries of life, pride themselves upon
being descended from ancient sovereigns. The Egyptian priests told
Herodotus that this king, whom he called Sesostris, went on an
expedition to conquer Colchis, which is much the same as if we were
to say that a king of France set out from Touraine to conquer Norway.
It avails not that these stories are found repeated in a thousand
different writers; it makes them not a whit more probable; it is much
more natural to suppose that the fierce and athletic inhabitants of
Mount Caucasus, of Colchis, and the other parts of Scythia, who so
often made incursions upon and ravaged Asia, might have penetrated as
far as Egypt; and although the priests of Colchis might afterwards
have carried back with them the form of circumcision, yet that is
no kind of proof that they were ever conquered by the Egyptians.
Diodorus Siculus tells us that all the kings who were conquered
by Sesostris came every year from their own kingdoms to bring him
their respective tributes, when Sesostris made them draw the chariot
in which he went in triumph to the temples of his gods. These old
women’s stories we see every day gravely copied by other writers; it
must be confessed that these kings were very complaisant, to come
every year so far to be made hackney horses of.
As to their pyramids, and other monuments of antiquity, they prove
nothing but the pride and bad taste of the Egyptian princes, and
the wretched slavery of a weak people, who employed their strength,
which was their only support, in pleasing the barbarous ostentation
of their masters. The polity of these people, even in those times
which are so much cried up, appears to have been both absurd and
tyrannical; they pretended that the whole universe belonged to their
monarchy. It well became such an abject race to set up for conquerors
of the world!
The profound learning which we find attributed to the Egyptian
priests is also one of the most ridiculous absurdities in ancient
history, that is to say, in fable. People who pretended that in a
revolution of eleven thousand years the sun had risen twice in the
west and set twice in the east in beginning his course anew were
doubtless curious astronomers. The religion of these priests, who
governed the state, was inferior even to that of the most savage
people of America; every one knows that crocodiles, monkeys, cats,
and onions were the objects of their adoration; and there is not
perhaps in the world so absurd a worship, excepting that of the Great
Lama.
Their arts were as mean as their religion; there is not one ancient
Egyptian statue fit to be seen; and whatever they had amongst them
of any merit came from Alexandria in the times of the Ptolemies and
Cæsars and was the work of Grecian artists; nay, they were even
obliged to send to Greece for masters to teach them geometry.
The illustrious Bossuet, in his discourse upon universal history,
dedicated to the son of Louis the Fourteenth, runs wild in his
encomiums upon the merits of the Egyptians; this may dazzle the
understanding of a young prince, but will never satisfy men of
learning. This production is a very fine piece of eloquence, but
a historian should be more of the philosopher than the orator.
The reflections here offered concerning the Egyptians are merely
conjectural; for by what other name can we call anything that is said
concerning antiquity?
[27] Though we do not presume to doubt the suffering of St. Ignatius,
yet, can any man of common understanding, who reads the account of
his martyrdom, prevent some doubts from rising in his mind? The
unknown author of this narrative says: “Trajan thought his glory
would not be complete unless he subjected the God of the Christians
to his obedience.” What a thought! Was Trajan the kind of man who
could desire to triumph over the gods? The emperor is said to have
thus accosted Ignatius when he was brought before him: “Who art thou,
unclean spirit?” It is very unlikely that an emperor would have
discoursed with a prisoner, or have passed sentence upon him himself;
it is not customary for sovereign princes to do so. Trajan might
possibly cause Ignatius to be brought before him, but he would not
say to him, “Who art thou?” since he knew very well who he was. And
as to the term “unclean spirit,” could it possibly have been used by
such a man as Trajan? Is it not evident that this is an expression
used in exorcising, and put by a Christian into the emperor’s mouth?
Good heavens! what a style for Trajan.
Can we imagine that Ignatius answered him that he was called
Theophorus, because he carried Jesus in his heart, and that Trajan
entered into a long conversation with him concerning Christ? They
make Trajan say at the end of this conference: “We command that
Ignatius, who glories in carrying within him the crucified man, be
thrown into prison loaded with chains,” etc. A sophist, a foe to
Christianity, might call Jesus Christ _the crucified man_; but it is
hardly probable that such a term would have been used in a decree.
The punishment of the cross was so common among the Romans that they
could not in their law style think of distinguishing by the words
“crucified man” the object of the Christians’ worship; nor is it in
this manner that the laws or the emperors pronounced sentence.
They afterwards make Ignatius write a long letter to the Christians
of Rome. “I write to you,” says he, “though loaded with chains.”
Certainly, if he was allowed to write to the Christians of Rome,
those Christians were not considered as the objects of persecution;
consequently, Trajan could have no design to subject their God to his
obedience; or, on the other hand, if these Christians were actually
liable to persecution, Ignatius was guilty of very great imprudence
in regard to them, since this was betraying them to their enemies and
making himself an informer against them.
Surely those who had the compiling of these facts should have had
greater regard to probability and the circumstances of the times. The
martyrdom of St. Polycarp also occasions some doubts. It is said that
a voice called to him from heaven, saying: “Courage, Polycarp!” that
this voice was distinctly heard by the Christians, but by no other
of the attendants: we are told also, that when Polycarp was tied to
the stake, and the fire lighted round him, the flames parted asunder,
and a dove flew out from the midst of them; and that this saint, to
whom the fire showed so much respect, exhaled an aromatic odor that
perfumed the whole assembly; nevertheless, he whom the fire dared
not to approach, could not resist the edge of the sword. Surely we
may hope for pardon if we discover more piety than truth in these
relations.
[28] Hist. Ecclesiast. lib. viii.
[29] The Catholic priests are now numbered by thousands in Great
Britain and Ireland.
[30] See Mr. Locke’s excellent letter upon toleration.
[31] The Jesuit Busembaum, and his commentator, the Jesuit La Croix,
tell us, that it “is lawful to kill any prince excommunicated by the
Pope, of whatsoever country, because the whole world belongs to the
Pope; and that whoever accepts of or executes such commission does a
meritorious and charitable act.” It is this maxim which seems to have
been invented in the madhouses of hell, that has almost stirred up
all France against the Jesuits, who are now more than ever reproached
for this doctrine, which they have so often preached, and as often
disavowed. They have endeavored to justify themselves by producing
nearly the same maxims in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and
several Dominicans.* It is true, indeed, that this St. Thomas,
the angelic Doctor and Interpreter of the Divine Will, advances
that an apostate prince loses his right to the crown, and forfeits
the obedience due to him from his subjects;† that the Church may
condemn him to death; that the Emperor Julian was permitted to reign
only because he was too powerful to be resisted: that we ought to
kill every heretic:‡ that those who deliver a people from the
government of a tyrannical prince, etc., etc. We have, doubtless, a
great respect for the angel of the schools; but if he had preached up
such maxims in France at the time of his brother James Clement, and
the mendicant Ravaillac, his angelical doctorship would have met with
but a scurvy reception.
* Peruse, if you can get it, the letter of a
layman to a divine on the subject of St. Thomas,
a Jesuitical pamphlet published in 1762.
† Lib. ii. part ii. question 12.
‡ Ibid. Questions 11 and 12.
It must be confessed that John Gerson, chancellor of the University,
carried the matter yet further than St. Thomas; and John Petit, the
Franciscan, still further than Gerson. Several of the order openly
maintained the detestable maxims of their brother Petit. It must be
acknowledged that this hellish doctrine of king-killing proceeds
wholly from the ridiculous notion which has so long prevailed amongst
all orders of monks, that the Pope is a God upon earth, and can
dispose of the crowns and lives of sovereigns at his pleasure. In
this respect, we are inferior even to those Tartarian idolaters who
held the Grand Lama to be immortal; greedily gather the contents of
his close-stool, dry these precious relics with great care, enclose
them in rich cases, and kiss them with the warmest devotion. For my
part, I confess that I had rather, for the good of my country, and
the sake of public tranquillity, carry those relics constantly about
my neck, than to give my assent to the Pope’s having in any case
whatsoever an authority over the temporals of kings, or even those of
a private person.
[32] Chap. ii. 11–14.
[33] Deut. xiv.
[34] Agreeable to my intention of making some useful notes upon this
treatise, I shall here observe that although God is said to have
made a covenant with Noah, and with all the beasts of the field, yet
he permits him to eat of every thing that has the breath of life,
excepting only the eating of blood, which he positively prohibits;
and moreover adds that “the Lord will take vengeance of every beast
by whom man’s blood shall be shed.”
From these passages and several others of the like tenor, we may
infer, with all the sages of ancient and present times, and with
every person of enlightened conceptions, that beasts are endowed with
some knowledge. We do not find God making a covenant with trees or
with stones that have no sense; but He does with the beasts, whom
it has pleased Him to endow with senses, frequently more exquisite
than our own, and consequently with those ideas that are necessarily
connected with sense. It is for this reason that He prohibits the
barbarous custom of feeding upon their blood, the blood being the
source of life, and consequently of sense. Take away all the blood
from an animal and all his organs will immediately cease from action.
It is therefore with the greatest justice that we find it said in so
many different parts of the Holy Scripture, that the soul, that is to
say, what was called the sensitive soul, is in the blood; an opinion
perfectly agreeable to nature, and as such received by all nations.
It is upon this opinion that we found that pity which we ought to
show to all animals. It is one of the seven precepts of the Noachides
that were adopted by the Jews, that no one shall eat the limb of a
living animal. This precept is a proof that mankind had formerly the
cruelty to mutilate animals in order to feast upon the limbs so cut
off, and to leave the creatures living, in order to feed successively
upon the other parts of their bodies; a custom which we find to
have actually subsisted among some barbarous nations—witness the
sacrifices offered in the island of Chios to _Bacchus Omadios_, or
the eater of raw flesh. God, by permitting the flesh of animals to
serve us for food, seems to recommend them to our humanity. It must
be confessed that there is great cruelty in putting them to torture,
and that nothing but custom could have lessened in us the natural
abhorrence of slaughtering an animal that we have fed with our own
hands. There have in all times been sects who have made a religious
scruple of such practices, as do to this day all the inhabitants of
the Peninsula of the Ganges. The whole sect of Pythagoreans, both in
Greece and Italy, constantly abstained from the eating of flesh. And
Porphyry, in his book upon “Abstinence,” reproaches his disciples
with having quitted their sect only for the sake of indulging an
inhuman appetite.
It is in my opinion a giving up of the light of reason, to pretend
to assert that beasts are no more than mere machines; for is it not
a manifest contradiction to acknowledge that God has given them the
organs of sense, and then to affirm that they have no sense?
Besides, I think one must never have made any observation upon
animals, not to distinguish in them the different cries of want,
suffering, joy, fear, love, anger, and indeed all other affections of
the mind or body; surely, it would be very strange that they should
so well express what they have no sense of!
This remark may furnish abundant matter of reflection to inquisitive
minds, in relation to the power and goodness of the Creator, who has
been pleased to bestow life, sense, ideas, and memory on those beings
whose organs he has formed with His own all-powerful hand. As to us,
we neither know how these organs are formed, how they are unfolded,
in what manner we receive life, nor by what laws sense, ideas,
memory, and will are annexed to that life; and yet in this dark and
ternal state of ignorance inherent to our natures, we are perpetually
disputing with, and persecuting one another, like the bulls of the
field, who fight with their horns, without knowing for what use, or
in what manner those horns were given them.
[35] Amos v. 26.
[36] Jer. vii. 22.
[37] Acts vii. 42.
[38] Deut. xii. 8.
[39] Several writers have too rashly concluded from this passage that
the chapter concerning the golden calf—which is no other than the
Egyptian god Apis—has, as well as many other chapters, been added to
the books of Moses.
Eben-Ezra was the first who undertook to prove that the Pentateuch—or
the five books of Moses—was written in the times of the Kings.
Wollaston, Collins, Tindal, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and many
others have asserted that in those ages men had no other way of
committing their thoughts to writing but by engraving them upon
polished stone, brick, lead, or wood; and tell us that in the time
of Moses the Chaldæans and Egyptians had no other way of writing,
and that then they could engrave but in a very abridged manner, and
by hieroglyphics, the substance only of such things as they thought
worthy of being transmitted to posterity, and could never form any
regular histories; then it was next to an impossibility to engrave
books of any considerable bulk in the wilderness, where they were
continually changing their habitation; where they had no person to
furnish them with clothing, to make that clothing for them, or even
to mend their sandals, and where God was obliged to perform a miracle
to preserve the garments of His people entire. They say that it is
hardly probable that there should have been so many engravers among
them, at the time that they were so deficient in the more necessary
arts of life, and did not know even how to make bread; and if we
answer to this, that the pillars of the tabernacle were of brass, and
their chapiters of massy silver they reply, that though the order for
this might have been given in the wilderness, it was not executed
till after they were settled in perfect tranquillity.
They cannot conceive, they say, how the Israelites, who were a poor
and vagabond people, could have asked for a calf of massy gold to
be erected for the object of their adoration, at the foot of the
very mountain where God was then talking with Moses, and in the very
midst of the thunder and lightning, and the sound of the heavenly
trumpet, which were heard and seen by all present. They profess
their astonishment that it should have been only the day before
Moses descended from the mountain, that all the people should have
addressed themselves to his brother Aaron to raise this golden calf;
or how it was possible for Aaron to have cast such an image in one
single day; and still more, how Moses could have reduced it into an
impalpable powder. They say that it is impossible for any artist to
make a statue of gold in less than three months, and that not all the
possible efforts of the chemical art are sufficient to reduce such a
mass into a powder that may be swallowed, and consequently, that the
prevarication of Aaron and this operation of Moses must have been two
miracles.
Deceived by the humanity and goodness of their hearts, they cannot
believe that Moses slaughtered three and twenty thousand souls to
expiate this crime; nor, that so many men would have tamely suffered
themselves to be murdered without a third miracle. Lastly, they think
it very extraordinary that Aaron, who was the most guilty of all,
should have been rewarded for that very crime for which the rest
underwent so dreadful a punishment, by being created high-priest, and
go to offer sacrifice at the high altar, while the bodies of three
and twenty thousand of his slaughtered brethren lay bleeding round
him.
They start the same difficulties concerning the eighty thousand
Israelites who were slain by order of Moses, to atone for the crime
of a single one of them, for being surprised with a Moabite woman;
and seeing that Solomon, and so many other of the Jewish kings did,
without being punished for it, take to themselves strange wives, they
cannot conceive what great crime there could be in an individual
making an alliance with one Moabite woman.
Ruth was a Moabitess, though her family was originally of Bethlehem;
the Scripture always distinguishes her by the name of Ruth the
Moabitess; and yet she went and laid herself by the side of Boaz,
received six measures of barley from him, was afterwards married to
him, and was the grandmother of David. Rahab was not only a stranger,
but also a common prostitute, or a harlot, as she is called in
Scripture; yet she was taken to wife by Solomon, a prince of Judæa;
from whom also David was descended. This Rahab is taken to be a
type of the Christian church by several of the ancient fathers; and
especially by Origen, in his seventh homily on Joshua.
Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, by whom David begat Solomon, was a
Hittite. And if we go farther back, we shall find that the patriarch
Judah married a Canaanitess; and his sons lay with Thamar, who was of
the race of Aaron; and the woman with whom Judah, without knowing it,
committed incest, was not of the Israelitish race.
Thus then was our Lord Jesus Christ pleased to take upon him flesh
in a family descended from five aliens, to show that all nations
should partake of his inheritance. The rabbi Eben-Ezra was, as we
have already observed, the first who undertook to prove that the
Pentateuch was compiled long after the time of Moses; and for his
authority quotes several passages in those books; and amongst others
the following: “The Canaanite then dwelt in that land. The mountain
of Moriah, called the Mountain of God. The bed of Og, king of Bashan,
is still to be seen in Rabah. And the country of Bashan is called
the villages of Jaiar unto this day. Never was there a prophet
seen in Israel like unto Moses. These are the kings who reigned in
Edom, before any king reigned over Israel.” He pretends that these
passages, in which mention is made of events that happened long after
the time of Moses, could never have been written by Moses himself. To
this it is replied, that these passages were added long after by way
of notes by the transcribers.
Newton, whose name ought on every other occasion to be mentioned with
respect, but who, as a man, may have been liable to error, in the
introduction to his commentaries upon Daniel and St. John, ascribes
the five books of Moses, Joshua, and Judges to holy writers of much
later date; and founds his opinion on the thirty-sixth chapter of
Genesis, the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twenty-first
chapters of Judges, the eighth chapter of Samuel, the second chapter
of Chronicles, and the fourth chapter of the book of Ruth; and
indeed, considering that in the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis
we find mention made of Kings, and that David is spoken of in the
books of Judges and that of Ruth, it should seem that those books
were compiled in the times of the Kings. This is also the opinion
of several divines, at the head of whom is the famous Le Clerc. But
there are very few of those who are followers of this opinion, that
have had the curiosity to fathom these mysteries; a curiosity which
certainly makes no part of the duty of man. For when the learned and
the ignorant, the prince and the peasant, shall, after this short
life, appear together before the throne of Eternal Majesty, every
one of us then will wish to have been just and humane, generous and
compassionate; and no one will pride himself in having known exactly
the year in which the Pentateuch was written, or in having been able
to distinguish the true text from the additional notes in use among
the Scribes. God will not ask us whether we were of the opinion of
the Masorites against the Talmud, or whether we may not have mistaken
a _Caph_ for a _Beth_, a _Yod_ for a _Vau_, or a _Daleth_ for a
_Resh_. No, certainly; but he will judge us according to our deeds,
and not according to our knowledge of the Hebrew language. Let us
therefore abide firmly by the decision of the Church, so far as is
agreeable to the reasonable duty of a believer.
We will conclude this note with an important passage from Leviticus,
a book composed after the time of the golden calf. The Jews are there
commanded no more to offer their sacrifices to goats with whom they
have gone a-whoring.* We cannot say whether this strange worship
came from Egypt, the country of sorcery and superstition; but there
is reason to believe, that the custom of our pretended magicians of
keeping a Sabbath apart, for adoring a goat, and committing such
detestable uncleanliness with it as is shocking to conception, came
from the ancient Jews, as it is certain that they first taught a
part of Europe the practice of magic. What a detestable people!
Surely such infamous and unnatural practices deserve the punishment
at least equal to that which befell them for worshipping the golden
calf; and yet, we find the lawgiver contents himself with simply
prohibiting those practices. We have quoted this subject only to show
what the Jewish nation was; the sin of bestiality must certainly have
been very common amongst them, since they are the only people we
know among whom there was a necessity for any law to prohibit that
crime, the commission of which was not even suspected by any other
legislators.
* Leviticus vii. and xviii. 22.
There is reason to believe that on account of the fatigues and
distresses which the Jews suffered in the deserts of Paran, Horeb,
and Kadash-Barnea, the female species, which is always the weakest,
might have failed amongst them; and it is certain that the Jews were
greatly in want of women, since we find them almost always commanded,
when they conquered any town or village, to the right or left of the
lake Asphaltes, to put all the inhabitants to the sword, excepting
only the young women who were of an age to know man.
The Arabs, who still inhabit a part of these deserts, stipulate to
this day in the treaties which they make with the caravans, that
they shall furnish them with marriageable women; so that it is not
improbable but that the young men of those barren countries might
have carried the depravation of human nature so far as to have
had carnal commerce with goats, as is related of the shepherds of
Calabria.
It is still, however, uncertain whether any monsters were produced
by this unnatural copulation, and whether there is any foundation
for the ancient stories of satyrs, fauns, centaurs, and minotaurs;
history says there is; but natural philosophy has not yet cleared up
to us this monstrous circumstance.
[40] Num. xxi 9.
[41] Midian was not included in the Land of Promise; it is a little
canton of Idumæa, in Arabia Petræa, beginning to the northward of the
torrent of Arron, and ending at the torrent of Zared, in the midst of
rocks on the eastern border of the lake Asphaltes. This country is
inhabited by a small Arabian horde or tribe, and may be about eight
leagues long and about seven in breadth.
[42] Num. xxxi.
[43] Num. xxxi. 40.
[44] It is plain by the text that Jephthah did actually sacrifice his
daughter. Doctor Calmet; in his dissertation upon Jephthah’s vow,
says, that “God did not approve these vows; but when once any one had
made them, he insisted upon their being fulfilled, was it only to
punish those who made them, and to put a check upon them in the doing
it by fear of being obliged to perform them.” This action of Jephthah
is condemned by St. Augustine and almost all the fathers, although
the Scripture says that he was filled with the spirit of God; and St.
Paul in the eleventh chapter of his Epistle to the Hebrews, greatly
praises Jephthah, exalting him even above Samuel and David.
St. Jerome, in his Epistle to Julian, expresses himself thus;
“Jephthah sacrificed his daughter to the Lord, and therefore the
Apostle has placed him among the saints.” Here now is a diversity
in opinions, concerning which it is not permitted us to pronounce a
decision; nay, it is even dangerous to have any opinion of our own.
[45] The death of Agag, king of the Amalekites, may be looked upon as
a real sacrifice. Saul had made this prince a prisoner of war, and
had admitted him to a capitulation notwithstanding that the priest
and the prophet Samuel had charged him to spare no one; saying to him
expressly: “Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they
have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and
suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”—“And Samuel hewed Agag in
pieces before the Lord at Gilgal.”
“The zeal with which this prophet was animated,” says Calmet, “put a
sword into his hand on this occasion, to revenge the honor of God,
and to confound Saul.”
In this melancholy adventure, we have a vow, a priest, and a victim;
consequently, it is a real sacrifice. We find from history that most
nations, the Chinese excepted, were wont to sacrifice human victims
to the Deity; Plutarch says, that this custom prevailed even among
the Romans at some certain times. Cæsar in his “Commentaries” tells
us that the Germans were going to sacrifice two of his officers,
whom he had sent to confer with their king, Ariovistus, had not
Cæsar delivered them by beating the German army. I have in another
place observed,* that this violation of the laws of nations, and
the offering of human victims, which was rendered more horrible
by its being done by the hands of their women, seems a little to
contradict Tacitus’s panegyric on them in his treatise “_De Moribus
Germanorum_,” which seems rather to have been designed as a satire
upon the Roman people, than to praise the Germans, to whom he was an
utter stranger. And here we may observe by the way, that Tacitus was
fonder of satire than of truth; he labors to throw everything, even
the most indifferent actions, into an odious point of light; and his
malice pleases us as much as his style, because we are naturally fond
of wit and slander.
* Additions to General History, part i., of
Voltaire.
But to return to the subject of human sacrifices. This custom
prevailed as much among our forefathers as with the Germans; it is
the lowest degree of debasement to which human nature can fall when
left to herself, and is one of the effects of the weakness of mortal
understanding, which reasons thus: We ought to offer to God whatever
we have of most pleasing or valuable; there is nothing more valuable
than our children; therefore we ought to select the youngest and most
beautiful to sacrifice them to the Deity.
Philo says that the Canaanites used to offer their children in
sacrifice, before God had commanded Abraham, as a trial of his faith,
to offer up his only son, Isaac.
Sanchoniathon, as quoted by Eusebius, says that the Phœnicians, when
threatened with any great danger or distress, offered up the most
favorite of their children, and that Ilus sacrificed his son, Jehud,
much about the same time that God made the trial of Abraham’s faith.
It is very difficult to penetrate into the dark recesses of early
antiquity; but it is too melancholy a truth that these horrible
sacrifices were almost everywhere in use; and men have laid them
aside, only in proportion as they have become civilized. So true is
it that civilization is the nurse of humanity.
[46] Ezek. xxxix. 49.
[47] Judges ix. 24.
[48] Judges xvii. last verse.
[49] Judges xviii. 11–29.
[50] Judges xviii. 11–39.
[51] The author evidently confounds Elisha and Elijah.
[52] Those who are unacquainted with the customs of antiquity,
and who judge only from what they see about them, may possibly be
astonished at this odd command; but they should reflect, that at
those times it was the custom in Egypt, and most part of Assyria, to
express things by hieroglyphical figures, signs, and types.
The prophets, who were called seers by the Egyptians and Jews,
not only expressed themselves in allegories, but also represented
by signs those events which they foretold. Thus we find Isaiah,
the chief of the four greater prophets, taking a roll and writing
therein, “Maher-Shalal-Hashbaz,” that is, “Make haste to the spoil”;
and going in unto the prophetess, she conceived and bare a son, whom
the Lord called Maher-Shalal-Hashbaz. This is a type of the evils
which were to be brought upon the Jews by the people of Egypt and
Assyria.
The prophet also says: “Before that the child shall be of an age to
eat butter and honey, to refuse the evil and choose the good, the
land that they abhorred shall be delivered of both her kings; and the
Lord will hiss to the flies of Egypt, and for the bees of Assyr, and
the Lord will shave with a razor that is hired, the beard and the
hair of the feet of the king of Assyria.”*
* Isaiah vii. 15–18.
This prophecy of the bees, and of the shaving of the beard, and of
the hair of the feet, can be understood only by those who know that
it was a custom to call the swarms of bees together by the sound of a
flageolet or pipe, or some other rustic instrument; that the greatest
affront that could be done to any man was to cut off his beard; and
that the hair on the private parts was called the hair of the feet,
which was never shaven but in cases of leprosy, or other unclean
disorders. All these figures, which would appear so strange in our
style, signify nothing more than that the Lord will, in the course of
a few years, deliver His people from captivity.
We find the same prophet walking naked and barefoot to show that
the king of Assyria shall lead away the Egyptians and Ethiopians
captives, without their having wherewithal to cover their
nakedness.†
† Isaiah xx.
The prophet Ezekiel eats the roll of parchment which God had given
him; afterwards he eats his bread covered with excrement, and
continues to lie on his left side three hundred and ninety days,
and forty days on his right side, to show that the Jews should want
bread, and as a type of the number of years they were to remain in
captivity. He loads himself with chains, as a figure of those that
they are to wear; and he cuts off the hair of his head and of his
beard, and divides them into three parts; the first of these portions
is a type of those who are to perish in the city of Jerusalem; the
second, of such as are to be slain without the walls; and the third,
of those who are to be carried away to Babylon.‡
‡ Ezek. iv. seq.
The prophet Hosea takes to himself a woman who is an adulteress, and
whom he purchases for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an homer
and a half of barley, and says unto her: “Thou shalt abide for me
many days, thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be for
another man, for so shall the children of Israel abide many days
without a king, and without a prince, and without an image, and
without an ephod, and without teraphim”;§ in a word, the seers or
prophets scarcely ever foretell anything without using a type or sign
of the thing foretold.
§ Hosea iii.
Jeremiah therefore only conformed to the usual custom when he bound
himself with cords, and put bonds and yokes upon his neck, as figures
of the approaching slavery of those to whom he sent them, and if we
attend properly to these things, we shall find the times here spoken
of to be like those of an old world, differing in everything from the
new society. The laws, the manner of making war, were all absolutely
different; and if we only open Homer and the first book of Herodotus,
we need nothing more to convince us that there is not the least
resemblance between the people of early antiquity and ourselves;
hence we ought to distrust our own judgment, when we attempt to
compare their manners with ours. Even nature herself is not now the
same she was then; magicians and sorcerers had at that time a power
over her which they no longer possess; they enchanted serpents, they
raised the dead out of their tombs, etc. God sent dreams, and men
interpreted them. The gift of prophecy was common. And we read of
several metamorphoses, such as of Nebuchadnezzar into an ox, of Lot’s
wife into a pillar of salt, and of five whole cities changed in an
instant into a burning lake.
There were likewise several species of men that no longer exist. The
race of giants, Rephaim, Emim, Nephilim, and Enacim, have totally
disappeared. St. Augustine, in his fifth book “_De Civitate Dei_,”
says that he saw a tooth of one of those ancient giants that was
at least a hundred times as large as one of our grinders. Ezekiel
speaks of pygmies (_Gamadim_), not above a cubit high, who fought at
the siege of Tyre; and almost all writers, sacred and profane, have
agreed in the truth of these relations.
In fine, the ancient world was so different from ours that there is
no drawing any rule for our conduct from it; and if in the earliest
ages of antiquity we find mankind mutually persecuting and destroying
one another on account of their different faiths, far be it from
us, who live under the enlightened law of grace, to copy after such
originals.
[53] Jer. xxvii. xxviii.
[54] Isaiah xliv. and xlv.
[55] Malachi i. 1.
[56] Deut. xxviii. 28 and seq.
[57] There is but one passage in the whole Mosaic law from which one
might conclude that Moses was acquainted with the reigning opinion
among the Egyptians, that the soul did not die with the body. This
passage is very particular, and is in the eighteenth chapter of
Deuteronomy: “There shall not be found among you any one that useth
divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,
or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits (Python), or a
wizard, or a necromancer.” From this passage it appears that by
invoking the souls of the dead this pretended necromancy supposed a
permanency of the soul. It might also happen that the necromancers
of whom Moses speaks, being but ignorant deceivers, might not have a
distinct idea of the magic they operated. They made people believe
that they forced the dead to speak, and by the power of their art
restored the body to the same state as when living; without once
examining whether their ridiculous operations might authorize the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The ancient magicians were
never philosophers; they were at best but a set of stupid jugglers,
who played their tricks before as illiterate spectators.
But what is very strange and worthy of observation is that the word
“python” should be found in Deuteronomy so long before that Greek
term was known to the Hebrews; and indeed this word is not to be
found in the Hebrew, of which we have never had a good translation.
There are many insurmountable difficulties in this language; it is a
mixture of Phœnician, Egyptian, Syriac, and Arabic, and has undergone
many alterations to the present time. The Hebrew verbs had only two
moods, the present and the future; the rest were to be guessed at
by the sense. The different vowels were frequently expressed by the
same characters, or rather, indeed, they were not expressed at all;
and the inventors of points have only increased the difficulties they
meant to remove. Every adverb had twenty different significations,
and the same word had frequently several contrary senses. Add to this
that the language was in itself very dry and barren; for the Jews,
not being acquainted with the arts, could not express what they knew
nothing of. In a word, the Hebrew is to the Greek what the language
of a pedant is to that of an academic.
[58] Ezek. xviii. 20.
[59] The opinion of Ezekiel was at length the prevailing one of the
synagogue; not but that there were always some Jews who, though they
believed in a state of eternal punishment, yet believed at the same
time that God punished the sins of the fathers upon the children.
At present, indeed, they are punished even beyond the fiftieth
generation, and yet are in danger of eternal punishment. It may be
asked how the offsprings of those Jews who were not concerned in
putting Christ to death can be temporarily punished in the persons
of their children, who were as innocent as themselves. This temporal
punishment, or rather this manner of living, so different from all
other people, and of trading over the whole earth without having any
country of their own, cannot be considered as a punishment, compared
with what they are to expect hereafter on account of their unbelief,
and which they might avoid by a sincere repentance.
[60] Ezek. xx. 25.
[61] Those who have thought to discover the doctrine of hell and
heaven, such as it is now believed by us, in the Mosaic books, have
been strangely mistaken; their error is owing entirely to an idle
dispute about words: the Vulgate having translated the Hebrew word
_Sheol_, the pit, by the Latin word _infernum_, and this latter
having been rendered in French by _enfer_, hell, they have taken
occasion from this equivocal translation to establish a belief that
the ancient Hebrews had a notion of the _Hades_ and _Tartarus_ of the
Greeks, known to other nations before them by different appellations.
We are told in the sixteenth chapter of Numbers, that the earth
opened her mouth and swallowed up Korah, Dathan, and Abiron, and they
and all that appertained to them went down alive into the pit, or
grave; now certainly there is nothing said in this passage concerning
the souls of these three persons, nor yet of the torments of hell,
nor of eternal punishments.
It is very extraordinary that the authors of the “_Dictionnaire
Encyclopédique_” under the word _hell_ (_enfer_) should say that the
ancient Hebrews believed in its existence. If this be true, there
would be an insurmountable contradiction in the Pentateuch; for why
should Moses have spoken of the punishment after death in one single
passage only, of all his works. On this occasion they quote the
thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy; but after a mutilated manner.
The whole passage is as follows: “They have moved me to jealousy with
that which is not God, they have provoked me to anger with their
vanities, and I will move them to jealousy with those that are not
a people, I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. For a
fire is kindled in my anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell;
and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the
foundations of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will
spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and
devoured with burning heat and with bitter destruction; I will also
send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of
the dust.”
But have any or all of these expressions the least relation to the
idea of hell-torments? On the contrary, it seems as if these words
were purposely inserted to prove that our hell was unknown to the
ancient Jews.
The author of this article quotes also the following passage from
the twenty-fourth chapter of Job: “The eye of the adulterer waiteth
for the twilight, saying, no eye shall see me, and disguiseth his
face. In the dark they dig through houses which they had marked for
themselves in the daytime. They know not the light, for the morning
is to them as the shadow of death; if one know them, they are in the
terrors of the shadow of death. He is swift as the waters, their
portion is cursed in the earth, he beholdeth not the way of the
vineyards. Drought and heat consume the snow-waters, so doth the
grave those who have sinned.”
I quote these passages entire, otherwise it will be impossible to
form a true idea of them. But let me ask if there is the least
expression here from which one may conclude that Moses ever taught
the Jews the clear and simple doctrine of eternal rewards and
punishments?
Not to mention that the Book of Job has nothing to do with the Mosaic
law, there is great reason to believe that Job himself was not a
Jew; this is the opinion of St. Jerome in his “Hebrew Questions upon
Genesis.” The word Satan, which occurs in Job, was not known to the
Jews, nor is it anywhere to be found in the five books of Moses. This
name, as well as those of Gabriel and Raphael, were entirely unknown
to the Jews before their captivity in Babylon. It would appear, then,
that Job is very improperly quoted in this place.
But the last chapter of Isaiah is likewise brought in, where it is
said: “And it shall come to pass that from one new moon to another,
and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship
before me, saith the Lord. And they shall go forth and look upon the
carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me; for their
worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they
shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.”
Certainly, the casting out of these bodies to the view of all
passengers, even to abhorring, and their being eaten by worms, can
never mean that Moses taught the Jews the doctrine of the immortality
of the soul; and the words “the fire shall not be quenched” can as
little signify that the bodies so exposed to public view were to
suffer eternal torments in hell.
How can any one quote a passage in Isaiah to prove that the Jews in
the time of Moses had adopted the doctrine of the immortality of
the soul? According to the Hebrew computation, Isaiah prophesied
about the year of the world 3380. Moses lived about the year 2500;
therefore there was a distance of eight centuries between the one and
the other. Now it is an insult to common sense, a downright mockery,
thus to abuse the licence of quoting, by pretending to prove that a
writer was of this or that opinion from a passage in another writer
who lived eight hundred years after him, and who has not even made
any mention of such opinion. It is beyond contradiction that the
immortality of the soul, and rewards and punishments after death, are
clearly and positively expressed and declared in the New Testament,
and it is equally certain, that nothing concerning them is to be
found in any one part of the five books of Moses.
Notwithstanding that the Jews did afterwards embrace this doctrine,
they were far from having a proper idea of the spirituality of the
soul; they thought, in common with most other nations, that the
soul was an uncompounded aerial light substance that retained the
appearance of the body it had formerly animated; and hence came the
term apparition, manes of the dead. Several fathers of the Church
were of the same opinion. Tertullian, in his twenty-second chapter
“_De Anima_,” expresses himself thus: “_Definimus animam Dei flatu
natam, immortalem, corporalem, effigiatam, substantia simplicem_”;
that is, “We define the soul a substance, formed by the breath of
God; of an immortal, corporeal, figurative, and simple nature.”
St. Irenæus, in the thirty-fourth chapter of his second book,
says: “_Incorporales sunt animæ quantum ad comparationem mortalium
corporum_.” “Souls are incorporeal in comparison of mortal bodies.”
Adding, “Christ has taught us that the soul retains the image of the
body”; “_Caracterem corporum in quo adoptantur_,” etc. Christ does
not appear ever to have taught such a doctrine, and it is difficult
to understand what St. Irenæus means in this passage.
St. Hilarius, in his commentary on St. Matthew, is still more express
and positive; he roundly asserts the soul to have a corporeal
substance, “_Corpoream naturæ suæ substantiam sortiuntur_.”
St. Ambrose on Abraham, book ii. chap. viii., will have it that
there is nothing free from matter, unless it be the substance of the
Blessed Trinity.
These reverend fathers seem to have been very indifferent
philosophers; but there is the greatest reason to believe that their
divinity was in the main very sound, inasmuch as, notwithstanding
their ignorance of the incomprehensible nature of the soul, they
asserted it to be immortal, and endeavored to make it Christian.
We know that the soul is of a spiritual nature, but we do not at all
know what spirit is. We are very imperfectly acquainted with matter;
nor is it possible for us to have a distinct idea of what is not
matter. Hardly capable of understanding what effects our senses have,
we cannot of ourselves know anything of what surpasses the bound of
those senses. We carry some few words of our common language into the
inexplorable depths of metaphysics and divinity, in order to acquire
some slight idea of those things, which we could never conceive or
express; and we use those words as props to support the steps of our
feeble understandings in travelling through those unknown regions.
Thus we make use of the word spirit, which is the same as breath or
air, to express something which is not matter; and this word breath,
air, spirit, inspiring us insensibly with an idea of an uncompounded
and light substance, we still refine upon this as much as possible,
in order to obtain a proper conception of pure and simple
spirituality; but we shall never be able to obtain a distinct notion
of this, we do not even know what we say, when we pronounce the word
substance; in its literal signification, it signifies something
beneath, and thereby shows us that it is incomprehensible; for what
is meant by that which is beneath? The knowledge of the secrets of
God is not to be acquired in this life. Plunged as we are in mortal
obscurity, we fight against one another, and strike at random in the
darkness with which we are surrounded, without precisely knowing for
what we are fighting.
If mankind would consider all this with attention, every reasonable
person will be ready to conclude that we ought to have the greatest
indulgence for the opinions of others, and by our conduct endeavor to
merit the same from them.
The above remarks are not at all foreign to the principal point in
question, which is to know whether men are bound to tolerate one
another; inasmuch as by proving that in all times those of different
opinions have been alike mistaken, it appears to have been the duty
of all mankind in every age to treat each other with kindness and
forbearance.
[62] The doctrine of predestination is of long standing and
universal; we find it in Homer. Jupiter was desirous to save the
life of his son Sarpedon; but destiny had marked him for death, and
Jupiter was obliged to submit. Destiny was, with the philosophers,
either the necessary concatenation of causes and effects necessarily
produced by nature, or that same concatenation ordained by
Providence; the latter of which is most reasonable. We find the
whole system of fatality or predestination, comprised in this line
of Annæus Seneca: “_Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt_.” It has
always been acknowledged that God governs the universe by eternal,
universal and immutable laws; this truth gave rise to the many
unintelligible disputes concerning free-will, which had never been
defined before the great philosopher Locke arose, who has proved it
to be the power of acting. God bestows this power, and man, acting
freely according to the eternal decrees of Providence, is one of the
wheels of the great machine of the universe. Free-will has been a
subject of disputation from all antiquity; but no one until of late
times was ever persecuted on this subject. How horrible, how absurd
is it to have imprisoned and banished on account of this dispute a
Pompone d’Andilly, an Arnauld, a Nicole, a Sacy, and so many others
who were the shining lights of France!
[63] The theological romance of the Metempsychosis came from India,
a part of the world to which we are indebted for many more fables
than is generally believed. We find this doctrine explained by that
beautiful poet Ovid, in the twelfth book of his “_Metamorphoses_.”
It has been received in almost every part of the world, and has
everywhere met with its opposers; nevertheless, we do not find that
any priest among the ancients ever caused a disciple of Pythagoras to
be sent to prison.
[64] Neither the ancient Jews, the Egyptians, nor the Greeks, their
contemporaries, believed that the soul of man went to heaven after
death. The Jews thought that the sun and moon were placed some
leagues above us in the same circle, and that the firmament was a
thick and solid vault, that supported the weight of the waters,
which, however, sometimes ran out through the crevices in this
vault. The ancient Greeks placed the palace of their gods upon Mount
Olympus. And the abode of heroes after death was, in Homer’s time,
thought to be in an island beyond the ocean. This likewise was the
opinion of the Essenians.
After Homer, planets were assigned to the gods; but there was no more
reason for men to place a god in the moon than for the inhabitants
of the moon to place a god in our planet of the earth. Juno and Iris
had no other palaces assigned them but the clouds, where there was
no place to rest the soles of their feet. Among the Sabæans every
deity had its star. But as the stars are little suns, it would be
impossible to live there without partaking of the nature of fire.
Upon the whole, then, it is needless to inquire what the ancients
thought of heaven; since the best answer that can be given is, they
thought nothing about it.
[65] Matthew xxii. 1–13.
[66] St. Luke xiv.
[67] It was indeed very difficult, not to say impossible, for the
Jews to comprehend, without an immediate revelation, the ineyable
mystery of the incarnation of God, the Son of God. In the sixth
chapter of Genesis we find the sons of great men called “the sons of
God.” In like manner the royal Psalmist calls the tall cedars “the
cedars of God.” Samuel says, “The fear of God fell upon the people”;
that is, a violent fear seized them. A great tempest is called the
wind of the Lord, and Saul’s distemper, the melancholy of the Lord.
Nevertheless, the Jews seemed to have clearly understood that our
Saviour called Himself the Son of God in the proper sense of that
word; and if they looked upon this as a blasphemous expression, it
is an additional proof of their ignorance of the incarnation, and
of God, the Son of God, being sent upon earth for the redemption of
mankind.
[68] Matthew xxvi. 61–64.
[69] See that excellent book, entitled, “The Manual of the
Inquisition.”
[70] Now Bona, a town of Constantine in Africa. St. Augustine was
bishop of this see above forty years. It now belongs to Algiers.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Original printed spelling and grammar are retained, with a few
exceptions noted below. Small caps are changed to all capital
letters. Italics _look like this_. The original page numbers have
been removed. The four illustrations were originally printed full
page, with their captions printed alone on an adjacent page. In
this edition, the captions are combined appropriately with the
illustrations, which are moved to locations near their original
locations, but between paragraphs of text. Scans of the original book
may be found at archive.org—search for “worksofvoltaire04voltiala”.
There were seventy level-one footnotes, some extending over several
pages, and nine level-two footnotes anchored within level-one
footnotes. The level-one footnotes were renumbered, and are moved to
the ends of their two sections—_Dialogue Between Madame de Maintenon
and Mdlle. de l’Enclos_ and _A Treatise on Toleration_. The nested
footnotes remain near their anchors.
Page 229: A matching right double quotation mark was added to the
phrase _“as God being their King, and exercising justice immediately
upon them, according to their transgression or obedience, found it
not necessary to reveal to them a doctrine which He reserved for
after-times, when He should no longer so directly govern His people_.