The Death of Socrates.The Death of Socrates.
United in this principle with the rest of the universe, he does not join any of the sects, who all contradict themselves; his religion is the most ancient and the most extended; for the simple adoration of a God has preceded all the systems in the world. He speaks a language which all nations understand, while they are unable to understand each other's. He has brethren from Pekin to Cayenne, and he reckons all the wise his brothers. He believes that religion consists neither in the opinions of incomprehensible metaphysics, nor in vain decorations, but in adoration and justice. To do good—that is his worship; to submit oneself to God—that is his doctrine. The Mahometan cries out to him: "Take care of yourself, if you do not make the pilgrimage to Mecca." "Woe be to thee," says a Franciscan, "if thou dost not make a journey to our Lady of Loretto." He laughs at Loretto and Mecca; but he succors the indigent and defends the oppressed.
I deceive myself every day; but I suspect that all the nations who have cultivated the arts have lived under a theocracy. I always except the Chinese, who appear learned as soon as they became a nation. They were free from superstition directly China was a kingdom. It is a great pity, that having been raised so high at first, they should remain stationary at the degree they have so long occupied in the sciences. It would seem that they have received from nature an ample allowance of good sense, and a very small one of industry. Yet in other things their industry is displayed more than ours.
The Japanese, their neighbors, of whose origin I know nothing whatever—for whose origin do we know?—were incontestably governed by a theocracy. The earliest well-ascertained sovereigns were the "dairos," the high priests of their gods; this theocracy is well established. These priests reigned despotically about eight hundred years. In the middle of our twelfth century it came to pass that a captain, an "imperator," a "seogon" shared their authority; and in our sixteenth century the captains seized the whole power, and kept it. The "dairos" have remained the heads of religion; they were kings—they are now only saints; they regulate festivals, they bestow sacred titles, but they cannot give a company of infantry.
The Brahmins in India possessed for a long time the theocratical power; that is to say, they held the sovereign authority in the name of Brahma, the son of God; and even in their present humble condition they still believe their character indelible. These are the two principal among the certain theocracies.
The priests of Chaldæa, Persia, Syria, Phœnicia, and Egypt, were so powerful, had so great a share in the government, and carried the censer so loftily above the sceptre, that empire may be said, among those nations, to nave been divided between theocracy and royalty.
The government of Numa Pompilius was evidently theocratical. When a man says: "I give you laws furnished by the gods; it is not I, it is a god who speaks to you"—then it is God who is king, and he who talks thus is lieutenant-general.
Among all the Celtic nations who had only elective chiefs, and not kings, the Druids and their sorceries governed everything. But I cannot venture to give the name of theocracy to the anarchy of these savages.
The little Jewish nation does not deserve to be considered politically, except on account of the prodigious revolution that has occurred in the world, of which it was the very obscure and unconscious cause.
Do but consider the history of this strange people. They have a conductor who undertakes to guide them in the name of his God to Phœnicia, which he calls Canaan. The way was direct and plain, from the country of Goshen as far as Tyre, from south to north; and there was no danger for six hundred and thirty thousand fighting men, having at their head a general like Moses, who, according to Flavius Josephus, had already vanquished an army of Ethiopians, and even an army of serpents.
Instead of taking this short and easy route, he conducts them from Rameses to Baal-Sephon, in an opposite direction, right into the middle of Egypt, due south. He crosses the sea; he marches for forty years in the most frightful deserts, where there is not a single spring of water, or a tree, or a cultivated field—nothing but sand and dreary rocks. It is evident that God alone could make the Jews, by a miracle, take this route, and support them there by a succession of miracles.
The Jewish government therefore was then a true theocracy. Moses, however, was never pontiff, and Aaron, who was pontiff, was never chief nor legislator. After that time we do not find any pontiff governing. Joshua, Jephthah, Samson, and the other chiefs of the people, except Elias and Samuel, were not priests. The Jewish republic, reduced to slavery so often, was anarchical rather than theocratical.
Under the kings of Judah and Israel, it was but a long succession of assassinations and civil wars. These horrors were interrupted only by the entire extinction of ten tribes, afterwards by the enslavement of two others, and by the destruction of the city amidst famine and pestilence. This was not then divine government.
When the Jewish slaves returned to Jerusalem, they were subdued by the kings of Persia, by the conqueror Alexandria and his successors. It appears that God did not then reign immediately over this nation, since a little before the invasion of Alexander, the pontiff John assassinated the priest Jesus, his brother, in the temple of Jerusalem, as Solomon had assassinated his brother Adonijah on the altar.
The government was still less theocratical when Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, employed many of the Jews to punish those whom he regarded as rebels. He forbade them all, under pain of death, to circumcise their children; he compelled them to sacrifice swine in their temple, to burn the gates, to destroy the altar; and the whole enclosure was filled with thorns and brambles.
Matthias rose against him at the head of some citizens, but he was not king. His son, Judas Maccabæus, taken for the Messiah, perished after glorious struggles. To these bloody contests succeeded civil wars. The men of Jerusalem destroyed Samaria, which the Romans subsequently rebuilt under the name of Sebasta.
In this chaos of revolutions, Aristobulus, of the race of the Maccabees, and son of a high priest, made himself king, more than five hundred years after the destruction of Jerusalem. He signalized his reign like some Turkish sultans, by cutting his brother's throat, and causing his mother to be put to death. His successors followed his example, until the period when the Romans punished all these barbarians. Nothing in all this is theocratical.
If anything affords an idea of theocracy, it must be granted that it is the papacy of Rome; it never announces itself but in the name of God, and its subjects live in peace. For a long time Thibet enjoyed the same advantages under the Grand Lama; but that is a gross error striving to imitate a sublime truth.
The first Incas, by calling themselves descendants in a right line from the sun, established a theocracy; everything was done in the name of the sun. Theocracy ought to be universal; for every man, whether a prince or a boatman, should obey the natural and eternal laws which God has given him.
Every prince who puts himself at the head of a party, and succeeds, is sure of being praised to all eternity, if the party lasts that time; and his adversaries may be assured that they will be treated by orators, poets, and preachers, as Titans who revolted against the gods. This is what happened to Octavius Augustus, when his good fortune made him defeat Brutus, Cassius, and Antony. It was the lot of Constantine, when Maxentius, the legitimate emperor, elected by the Roman senate and people, fell into the water and was drowned.
Theodosius had the same advantage. Woe to the vanquished! blessed be the victorious!—that is the motto of mankind. Theodosius was a Spanish officer, the son of a Spanish soldier of fortune. As soon as he was emperor he persecuted the anti-consubstantialists. Judge of the applauses, benedictions, and pompous eulogies, on the part of the consubstantialists! Their adversaries scarcely subsist any longer; their complaints and clamors against the tyranny of Theodosius have perished with them, and the predominant party still lavishes on this prince the epithets of pious, just, clement, wise, and great.
One day this pious and clement prince, who loved money to distraction, proposed laying a very heavy tax upon the city of Antioch, then the finest of Asia Minor. The people, in despair, having demanded a slight diminution, and not being able to obtain it, went so far as to break some statues, among which was one of the soldier, the emperor's father. St. John Chrysostom, or golden mouth, the priest and flatterer of Theodosius, failed not to call this action a detestable sacrilege, since Theodosius was the image of God, and his father was almost as sacred as himself. But if this Spaniard resembled God, he should have remembered that the Antiochians also resembled Him, and that men formed after the exemplar of all the gods existed before emperors.
Finxit in effigiem moderantum cuncta deorum.—OVID,Met.i, b. 83.
Theodosius immediately sent a letter to the governor, with an order to apply the torture to the principal images of God who had taken part in this passing sedition; to make them perish under blows received from cords terminated with leaden balls; to burn some, and deliver others up to the sword. This was executed with all the punctuality of a governor who did his duty like a Christian, who paid his court well, and who would make his way there. The Orontes bore nothing but corpses to the sea for several days; after which, his gracious imperial majesty pardoned the Antiochians with his usual clemency, and doubled the tax.
How did the emperor Julian act in the same city, when he had received a more personal and injurious outrage? It was not a paltry statue of his father which they defaced; it was to himself that the Antiochians addressed themselves, and against whom they composed the most violent satires. The philosophical emperor answered them by a light and ingenious satire. He took from them neither their lives nor their purses. He contented himself with having more wit than they had. This is the man whom St. Gregory Nazianzen and Theodoret, who were not of his communion, dare to calumniate so far as to say that he sacrificed women and children to the moon; while those who were of the communion of Theodosius have persisted to our day in copying one another, by saying in a hundred ways, that Theodosius was the most virtuous of men, and by wishing to make him a saint.
We know well enough what was the mildness of this saint in the massacre of fifteen thousand of his subjects at Thessalonica. His panegyrists reduce the number of the murdered to seven or eight thousand, which is a very small number to them; but they elevate to the sky the tender piety of this good prince, who deprived himself of mass, as also that of his accomplice, the detestable Rufinus. I confess once more, that it was a great expiation, a great act of devotion, the not going to mass; but it restores not life to fifteen thousand innocents, slain in cold blood by an abominable perfidy. If a heretic was stained with such a crime, with what pleasure would all historians turn their boasting against him; with what colors would they paint him in the pulpits and college declamations!
I will suppose that the prince of Parma entered Paris, after having forced our dear Henry IV. to raise the siege; I will suppose that Philip II. gave the throne of France to his Catholic daughter, and to the young Catholic duke of Guise; how many pens and voices would forever have anathematized Henry IV., and the Salic law! They would be both forgotten, and the Guises would be the heroes of the state and religion. Thus it is—applaud the prosperous and fly the miserable! "Et cole felices, miseros fuge."
If Hugh Capet dispossess the legitimate heir of Charlemagne, he becomes the root of a race of heroes. If he fails, he may be treated as the brother of St. Louis since treated Conradin and the duke of Austria, and with much more reason.
Pepin rebels, dethrones the Merovingian race, and shuts his king in a cloister; but if he succeeds not, he mounts the scaffold. If Clovis, the first king of Belgic Gaul, is beaten in his invasion, he runs the risk of being condemned to the fangs of beasts, as one of his ancestors was by Constantine. Thus goes the world under the empire of fortune, which is nothing but necessity, insurmountable fatality. "Fortuna sævo læta negotio." She makes us blindly play her terrible game, and we never see beneath the cards.
The theologian knows perfectly that, according to St. Thomas, angels are corporeal with relation to God; that the soul receives its being in the body; and that man has a vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual soul; that the soul is all in all, and all in every part; that it is the efficient and formal cause of the body; that it is the greatest in nobleness of form; that the appetite is a passive power; that archangels are the medium between angels and principalities; that baptism regenerates of itself and by chance; that the catechism is not a sacrament, but sacramental; that certainty springs from the cause and subject; that concupiscence is the appetite of sensitive delectation; that conscience is an act and not a power.
The angel of the schools has written about four thousand fine pages in this style, and a shaven-crowned young man passes three years in filling his brain with this sublime knowledge; after which he receives the bonnet of a doctor of the Sorbonne, instead of going to Bedlam. If he is a man of quality, or the son of a rich man, or intriguing and fortunate, he becomes bishop, archbishop, cardinal, and pope.
If he is poor and without credit, he becomes the chaplain of one of these people; it is he who preaches for them, who reads St. Thomas and Scotus for them, who makes commandments for them, and who in a council decides for them.
The title of theologian is so great that the fathers of the Council of Trent give it to their cooks, "cuoco celeste, gran theologo." Their science is the first of sciences, their condition the first of conditions, and themselves the first of men; such the empire of true doctrine; so much does reason govern mankind!
When a theologian has become—thanks to his arguments—either prince of the holy Roman Empire, archbishop of Toledo, or one of the seventy princes clothed in red, successors of the humble apostles, then the successors of Galen and Hippocrates are at his service. They were his equals when they studied in the same university; they had the same degrees, and received the same furred bonnet. Fortune changes all; and those who discovered the circulation of the blood, the lacteal veins, and the thoracic canal, are the servants of those who have learned what concomitant grace is, and have forgotten it.
I knew a true theologian; he was master of the languages of the East, and was instructed as much as possible in the ancient rites of nations. The Brahmins, Chaldæans, Fire-worshippers, Sabeans, Syrians, and Egyptians, were as well known to him as the Jews; the several lessons of the Bible were familiar to him; and for thirty years he had tried to reconcile the gospels, and endeavored to make the fathers agree. He sought in what time precisely the creed attributed to the apostles was digested, and that which bears the name of Athanasius; how the sacraments were instituted one after the other; what was the difference between synaxis and mass; how the Christian Church was divided since its origin into different parties, and how the predominating society treated all the others as heretics. He sounded the depth of policy which always mixes with these quarrels; and he distinguished between policy and wisdom, between the pride which would subjugate minds and the desire of self-illumination, between zeal and fanaticism.
The difficulty of arranging in his head so many things, the nature of which is to be confounded, and of throwing a little light on so many clouds, often checked him; but as these researches were the duty of his profession, he gave himself up to them notwithstanding his distaste. He at length arrived at knowledge unknown to the greater part of his brethren: but the more learned he waxed, the more mistrustful he became of all that he knew. While he lived he was indulgent; and at his death, he confessed that he had spent his life uselessly.
Vidi et crudeles dantem Salmonea pœnasDum flammas Jovis et sonitus imitatur Olympia, etc.—VIRGIL, Æneid, b. vi, 1. 585.Salmoneus suffering cruel pains I found,For imitating Jove, the rattling soundOf mimic thunder, and the glittering blazeOf pointed lightnings and their forked rays.
Those who invented and perfected artillery are so many other Salmoneuses. A cannon-ball of twenty-four pounds can make, and has often made, more ravage than an hundred thunder-claps; yet no cannoneer has ever been struck by Jupiter for imitating that which passes in the atmosphere.
We have seen that Polyphemus, in a piece of Euripides, boasts of making more noise, when he had supped well, than the thunder of Jupiter. Boileau, more honest than Polyphemus, says that another world astonishes him, and that he believes in the immortality of the soul, and that it is God who thunders:
Pour moi, qu'en santé même un autre monde étonne,Qui crois l'âme immortelle, et que c'est Dieu qui tonne.—SAT. i, line 161,162.
I know not why he is so astonished at another world, since all antiquity believed in it. Astonish was not the proper word; it was alarm. He believes that it is God who thunders; but he thunders only as he hails, as he rains, and as he produces fine weather—as he operates all, as he performs all. It is not because he is angry that he sends thunder and rain. The ancients paint Jupiter taking thunder, composed of three burning arrows, and hurling it at whomsoever he chose. Sound reason does not agree with these poetical ideas.
Thunder is like everything else, the necessary effect of the laws of nature, prescribed by its author. It is merely a great electrical phenomenon. Franklin forces it to descend tranquilly on the earth; it fell on Professor Richmann as on rocks and churches; and if it struck Ajax Oileus, it was assuredly not because Minerva was irritated against him.
If it had fallen on Cartouche, or the abbé Desfontaines, people would not have failed to say:
"Behold how God punishes thieves and—." But it is a useful prejudice to make the sky fearful to the perverse. Thus all our tragic poets, when they would rhyme to "poudre" or "resoudre," invariably make use of "foudre"; and uniformly make "tonnerre" roll, when they would rhyme to "terre."
Theseus, in "Phèdre," says to his son—act iv, scene 2:
Monstre, qu'à trop longtemps épargné le tonnerre,Reste impur des brigands dont j'ai purgé la terre!
Severus, in "Polyeucte," without even having occasion to rhyme, when he learns that his mistress is married, talks to Fabian, his friend, of a clap of thunder. He says elsewhere to the same Fabian—act iv, scene 6—that a new clap of "foudre" strikes upon his hope, and reduces it to "poudre":
Qu'est ceci, Fabian, quel nouveau coup de foudreTombe sur mon espoir, et le réduit en poudre?
A hope reduced to powder must astonish the pit! Lusignan, in "Zaïre," prays God that the thunder will burst on him alone:
Que la foudre en éclats ne tombe que sur moi.
If Tydeus consults the gods in the cave of a temple, the cave answers him only by great claps of thunder.
I've finally seen the thunder and "foudre"Reduce verses to cinders and rhymes into "poudre."
We must endeavor to thunder less frequently.
I could never clearly comprehend the fable of Jupiter and Thunder, in La Fontaine—b. viii, fable 20.
Vulcain remplit ses fourneauxDe deux sortes de carreaux.L'un jamais ne se fourvoie,Et c'est celui que toujoursL'Olympe en corps nous envoie.L'autre s'écarte en son cours,Ce n'est qu'aux monts qu'il en coûte;Bien souvent même il se perd;Et ce dernier en sa routeNous vient du seul Jupiter.
"Vulcan fills his furnaces with two sorts of thunderbolts. The one never wanders, and it is that which comes direct from Olympus. The other diverges in its route, and only spends itself on mountains; it is often even altogether dissipated. It is this last alone which proceeds from Jupiter."
Was the subject of this fable, which La Fontaine put into bad verse so different from his general style, given to him? Would it infer that the ministers of Louis XIV. were inflexible, and that the king pardoned? Crébillon, in his academical discourse in foreign verse, says that Cardinal Fleury is a wise depositary, the eagle, using his thunder, yet the friend of peace:
Usant en citoyen du pouvoir arbitraire,Aigle de Jupiter, mais ami de la paix,Il gouverne la foudre, et ne tonne jamais.
He says that Marshal Villars made it appear that he survived Malplaquet only to become more celebrated at Denain, and that with a clap of thunder Prince Eugene was vanquished:
Fit voir, qu'à Malplaquet il n'avait survécuQue pour rendre à Denain sa valeur plus célèbreEt qu'un foudre du moins Eugène était vaincu.
Thus the eagle Fleury governed thunder without thundering, and Eugene was vanquished by thunder. Here is quite enough of thunder.
Horace, sometimes the debauched and sometimes the moral, has said—book i, ode 3—that our folly extends to heaven itself: "Cœlum ipsum petimus stultitia."
We can say at present that we carry our wisdom to heaven, if we may be permitted to call that blue and white mass of exhalations which causes winds, rain, snow, hail, and thunder, heaven. We have decomposed the thunderbolt, as Newton disentangled light. We have perceived that these thunderbolts, formerly borne by the eagle of Jupiter, are really only electric fire; that in short we can draw down thunder, conduct it, divide it, and render ourselves masters of it, as we make the rays of light pass through a prism, as we give course to the waters which fall from heaven, that is to say, from the height of half a league from our atmosphere. We plant a high fir with the branches lopped off, the top of which is covered with a cone of iron. The clouds which form thunder are electrical; their electricity is communicated to this cone, and a brass wire which is attached to it conducts the matter of thunder wherever we please. An ingenious physician calls this experiment the inoculation of thunder.
It is true, that inoculation for the smallpox, which has preserved so many mortals, caused some to perish, to whom the smallpox had been inconsiderately given; and in like manner the inoculation of thunder ill-performed would be dangerous. There are great lords whom we can only approach with the greatest precaution, and thunder is of this number. We know that the mathematical professor Richmann was killed at St. Petersburg, in 1753, by a thunderbolt which he had drawn into his chamber: "Arte sua periit." As he was a philosopher, a theological professor failed not to publish that he had been thunderstruck like Salmoneus, for having usurped the rights of God, and for wishing to hurl the thunder: but if the physician had directed the brass wire outside the house, and not into his pent-up chamber, he would not have shared the lot of Salmoneus, Ajax Oileus, the emperor Carus, the son of a French minister of state, and of several monks in the Pyrenees.
What is toleration? It is the appurtenance of humanity. We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies—it is the first law of nature.
When, on the exchange of Amsterdam, of London, of Surat, or of Bassora, the Gueber, the Banian, the Jew, the Mahometan, the Chinese Deist, the Brahmin, the Christian of the Greek Church, the Roman Catholic Christian, the Protestant Christian, and the Quaker Christian, traffic together, they do not lift the poniard against each other, in order to gain souls for their religion. Why then have we been cutting one another's throats almost without interruption since the first Council of Nice?
Constantine began by issuing an edict which allowed all religions, and ended by persecuting. Before him, tumults were excited against the Christians, only because they began to make a party in the state. The Romans permitted all kinds of worship, even those of the Jews, and of the Egyptians, for whom they had so much contempt. Why did Rome tolerate these religions? Because neither the Egyptians, nor even the Jews, aimed at exterminating the ancient religion of the empire, or ranged through land and sea for proselytes; they thought only of money-getting; but it is undeniable, that the Christians wished their own religion to be the dominant one. The Jews would not suffer the statue of Jupiter at Jerusalem, but the Christians wished it not to be in the capitol. St. Thomas had the candor to avow, that if the Christians did not dethrone the emperors, it was because they could not. Their opinion was, that the whole earth ought to be Christian. They were therefore necessarily enemies to the whole earth, until it was converted.
Among themselves, they were the enemies of each other on all their points of controversy. Was it first of all necessary to regard Jesus Christ as God? Those who denied it were anathematized under the name of Ebionites, who themselves anathematized the adorers of Jesus.
Did some among them wish all things to be in common, as it is pretended they were in the time of the apostles? Their adversaries called them Nicolaites, and accused them of the most infamous crimes. Did others profess a mystical devotion? They were termed Gnostics, and attacked with fury. Did Marcion dispute on the Trinity? He was treated as an idolater.
Tertullian, Praxeas, Origen, Novatus, Novatian, Sabellius, Donatus, were all persecuted by their brethren, before Constantine; and scarcely had Constantine made the Christian religion the ruling one, when the Athanasians and the Eusebians tore each other to pieces; and from that time to our own days, the Christian Church has been deluged with blood.
The Jewish people were, I confess, a very barbarous nation. They mercilessly cut the throats of all the inhabitants of an unfortunate little country upon which they had no more claim than they had upon Paris or London. However, when Naaman was cured of the leprosy by being plunged seven times in the Jordan—when, in order to testify his gratitude to Elisha, who had taught him the secret, he told him he would adore the god of the Jews from gratitude, he reserved to himself the liberty to adore also the god of his own king; he asked Elisha's permission to do so, and the prophet did not hesitate to grant it. The Jews adored their god, but they were never astonished that every nation had its own. They approved of Chemos having given a certain district to the Moabites, provided their god would give them one also. Jacob did not hesitate to marry the daughters of an idolater. Laban had his god, as Jacob had his. Such are the examples of toleration among the most intolerant and cruel people of antiquity. We have imitated them in their absurd passions, and not in their indulgence.
It is clear that every private individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. This admits of no difficulty. But the government, the magistrates, the princes!—how do they conduct themselves towards those who have a faith different from their own? If they are powerful foreigners, it is certain that a prince will form an alliance with them. The Most Christian Francis I. will league himself with the Mussulmans against the Most Catholic Charles V. Francis I. will give money to the Lutherans in Germany, to support them in their rebellion against their emperor; but he will commence, as usual, by having the Lutherans in his own country burned. He pays them in Saxony from policy; he burns them in Paris from policy. But what follows? Persecutions make proselytes. France will soon be filled with new Protestants. At first they will submit to be hanged; afterwards they will hang in their turn. There will be civil wars; then Saint Bartholomew will come; and this corner of the world will be worse than all that the ancients and moderns have ever said of hell.
Blockheads, who have never been able to render a pure worship to the God who made you! Wretches, whom the example of the Noachides, the Chinese literati, the Parsees, and of all the wise, has not availed to guide! Monsters, who need superstitions, just as the gizzard of a raven needs carrion! We have already told you—and we have nothing else to say—if you have two religions among you, they will massacre each other; if you have thirty, they will live in peace. Look at the Grand Turk: he governs Guebers, Banians, Christians of the Greek Church, Nestorians, and Roman Catholics. The first who would excite a tumult is empaled; and all is tranquil.
Of all religions, the Christian ought doubtless to inspire the most toleration, although hitherto the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men. Jesus, having deigned to be born in poverty and lowliness like his brethren, never condescended to practise the art of writing. The Jews had a law written with the greatest minuteness, and we have not a single line from the hand of Jesus. The apostles were divided on many points. St. Peter and St. Barnabas ate forbidden meats with the new stranger Christians, and abstained from them with the Jewish Christians. St. Paul reproached them with this conduct; and this same St. Paul, the Pharisee, the disciple of the Pharisee Gamaliel—this same St. Paul, who had persecuted the Christians with fury, and who after breaking with Gamaliel became a Christian himself—nevertheless, went afterwards to sacrifice in the temple of Jerusalem, during his apostolic vacation. For eight days he observed publicly all the ceremonies of the Jewish law which he had renounced; he even added devotions and purifications which were superabundant; he completely Judaized. The greatest apostle of the Christians did, for eight days, the very things for which men are condemned to the stake among a large portion of Christian nations.
Theudas and Judas were called Messiahs, before Jesus: Dositheus, Simon, Menander, called themselves Messiahs, after Jesus. From the first century of the Church, and before even the name of Christian was known, there were a score of sects in Judæa.
The contemplative Gnostics, the Dositheans, the Cerintheins, existed before the disciples of Jesus had taken the name of Christians. There were soon thirty churches, each of which belonged to a different society; and by the close of the first century thirty sects of Christians might be reckoned in Asia Minor, in Syria, in Alexandria, and even in Rome.
All these sects, despised by the Roman government, and concealed in their obscurity, nevertheless persecuted each other in the hiding holes where they lurked; that is to say, they reproached one another. This is all they could do in their abject condition: they were almost wholly composed of the dregs of the people.
When at length some Christians had embraced the dogmas of Plato, and mingled a little philosophy with their religion, which they separated from the Jewish, they insensibly became more considerable, but were always divided into many sects, without there ever having been a time when the Christian church was reunited. It took its origin in the midst of the divisions of the Jews, the Samaritans, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenians, the Judaites, the disciples of John, and the Therapeutae. It was divided in its infancy; it was divided even amid the persecutions it sometimes endured under the first emperors. The martyr was often regarded by his brethren as an apostate; and the Carpocratian Christian expired under the sword of the Roman executioner, excommunicated by the Ebionite Christian, which Ebionite was anathematized by the Sabellian.
This horrible discord, lasting for so many centuries, is a very striking lesson that we ought mutually to forgive each other's errors: discord is the great evil of the human species, and toleration is its only remedy.
There is nobody who does not assent to this truth, whether meditating coolly in his closet, or examining the truth peaceably with his friends. Why, then, do the same men who in private admit charity, beneficence, and justice, oppose themselves in public so furiously against these virtues? Why!—it is because their interest is their god; because they sacrifice all to that monster whom they adore.
I possess dignity and power, which ignorance and credulity have founded. I trample on the heads of men prostrated at my feet; if they should rise and look me in the face, I am lost; they must, therefore, be kept bound down to the earth with chains of iron.
Thus have men reasoned, whom ages of fanaticism have rendered powerful. They have other persons in power under them, and these latter again have underlings, who enrich themselves with the spoils of the poor man, fatten themselves with his blood, and laugh at his imbecility. They detest all toleration, as contractors enriched at the expense of the public are afraid to render their accounts, and as tyrants dread the name of liberty. To crown all, in short, they encourage fanatics who cry aloud: Respect the absurdities of my master; tremble, pay, and be silent.
Such was the practice for a long time in a great part of the world; but now, when so many sects are balanced by their power, what side must we take among them? Every sect, we know, is a mere title of error; while there is no sect of geometricians, of algebraists, of arithmeticians; because all the propositions of geometry, algebra, and arithmetic, are true. In all the other sciences, one may be mistaken. What Thomist or Scotist theologian can venture to assert seriously that he goes on sure grounds?
If there is any sect which reminds one of the time of the first Christians, it is undeniably that of the Quakers. The apostles received the spirit. The Quakers receive the spirit. The apostles and disciples spoke three or four at once in the assembly in the third story; the Quakers do as much on the ground floor. Women were permitted to preach, according to St. Paul, and they were forbidden according to the same St. Paul: the Quakeresses preach by virtue of the first permission.
The apostles and disciples swore by yea and nay; the Quakers will not swear in any other form. There was no rank, no difference of dress, among apostles and disciples; the Quakers have sleeves without buttons, and are all clothed alike. Jesus Christ baptized none of his apostles; the Quakers are never baptized.
It would be easy to push the parallel farther; it would be still easier to demonstrate how much the Christian religion of our day differs from the religion which Jesus practised. Jesus was a Jew, and we are not Jews. Jesus abstained from pork, because it is uncleanly, and from rabbit, because it ruminates and its foot is not cloven; we fearlessly eat pork, because it is not uncleanly for us, and we eat rabbit which has the cloven foot and does not ruminate.
Jesus was circumcised, and we retain our foreskin. Jesus ate the Paschal lamb with lettuce, He celebrated the feast of the tabernacles; and we do nothing of this. He observed the Sabbath, and we have changed it; He sacrificed, and we never sacrifice.
Jesus always concealed the mystery of His incarnation and His dignity; He never said He was equal to God. St. Paul says expressly, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, that God created Jesus inferior to the angels; and in spite of St. Paul's words, Jesus was acknowledged as God at the Council of Nice.
Jesus has not given the pope either the march of Ancona or the duchy of Spoleto; and, notwithstanding, the pope possesses them by divine right. Jesus did not make a sacrament either of marriage or of deaconry; and, with us, marriage and deaconry are sacraments. If we would attend closely to the fact, the Catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion is, in all its ceremonies and in all its dogma, the reverse of the religion of Jesus!
But what! must we all Judaize, because Jesus Judaized all His life? If it were allowed to reason logically in matters of religion, it is clear that we ought all to become Jews, since Jesus Christ, our Saviour, was born a Jew, lived a Jew and died a Jew, and since He expressly said, that He accomplished and fulfilled the Jewish religion. But it is still more clear that we ought mutually to tolerate one another, because we are all weak, irrational, and subject to change and error. A reed prostrated by the wind in the mire—ought it to say to a neighboring reed placed in a contrary direction: Creep after my fashion, wretch, or I will present a request for you to be seized and burned?
My friends, when we have preached toleration in prose and in verse, in some of our pulpits, and in all our societies—when we have made these true human voices resound in the organs of our churches -we have done something for nature, we have reestablished humanity in its rights; there will no longer be an ex-Jesuit, or an ex-Jansenist, who dares to say, I am intolerant.
There will always be barbarians and cheats who will foment intolerance; but they will not avow it—and that is something gained. Let us always bear in mind, my friends, let us repeat—for we must repeat, for fear it should be forgotten—the words of the bishop of Soissons, not Languet, but Fitzjames-Stuart, in his mandate of 1757: "We ought to regard the Turks as our brethren."
Let us consider, that throughout English America, which constitutes nearly the fourth part of the known world, entire liberty of conscience is established; and provided a man believes in a God, every religion is well received: notwithstanding which, commerce flourishes and population increases. Let us always reflect, that the first law of the Empire of Russia, which is greater than the Roman Empire, is the toleration of every sect.
The Turkish Empire, and the Persian, always allowed the same indulgence. Mahomet II., when he took Constantinople, did not force the Greeks to abandon their religion, although he looked on them as idolaters. Every Greek father of a family got off for five or six crowns a year. Many prebends and bishoprics were preserved for them; and even at this day the Turkish sultan makes canons and bishops, without the pope having ever made an imam or a mollah.
My friends, there are only some monks, and some Protestants as barbarous as those monks, who are still intolerant. We have been so infected with this furor, that in our voyages of long duration, we have carried it to China, to Tonquin, and Japan. We have introduced the plague to those beautiful climes. The most indulgent of mankind have been taught by us to be the most inflexible. We said to them at the outset, in return for their kind welcome—Know that we alone on the earth are in the right, and that we ought to be masters everywhere. Then they drove us away forever. This lesson, which has cost seas of blood, ought to correct us.
The author of the preceding article is a worthy man who would sup with a Quaker, an Anabaptist, a Socinian, a Mussulman, etc.Iwould push this civility farther; I would say to my brother the Turk—Let us eat together a good hen with rice, invoking Allah; your religion seems to me very respectable; you adore but one God; you are obliged to give the fortieth part of your revenue every day in alms, and to be reconciled with your enemies on the day of the Bairam. Our bigots, who calumniate the world, have said a hundred times, that your religion succeeded only because it was wholly sensual. They have lied, poor fellows! Your religion is very austere; it commands prayer five times a day; it imposes the most rigorous fast; it denies you the wine and the liquors which our spiritual directors encourage; and if it permits only four wives to those who can support them—which are very few—it condemns by this restriction the Jewish incontinence, which allowed eighteen wives to the homicide David, and seven hundred, without reckoning concubines, to Solomon, the assassin of his brother.
I will say to my brother the Chinese: Let us sup together without ceremony, for I dislike grimaces; but I like your law, the wisest of all, and perhaps the most ancient. I will say nearly as much to my brother the Indian.
But what shall I say to my brother the Jew? Shall I invite him to supper? Yes, on condition that, during the repast, Balaam's ass does not take it into its head to bray; that Ezekiel does not mix his dinner with our supper; that a fish does not swallow up one of the guests, and keep him three days in his belly; that a serpent does not join in the conversation, in order to seduce my wife; that a prophet does not think proper to sleep with her, as the worthy man, Hosea, did for five francs and a bushel of barley; above all, that no Jew parades through my house to the sound of the trumpet, causes the walls to fall down, and cuts the throats of myself, my father, my mother, my wife, my children, my cat and my dog, according to the ancient practice of the Jews. Come, my friends, let us have peace, and say ourbenedicite.
Tophet was, and is still, a precipice near Jerusalem, in the valley of Hinnom, which is a frightful place, abounding only in flints. It was in this dreary solitude that the Jews immolated their children to their god, whom they then called Moloch; for we have observed, that they always bestowed a foreign name on their god.Shadaiwas Syrian;Adonai, Phœnician;Jehovahwas also Phœnician;Eloi,Elohim,Eloa, Chaldæan; and in the same manner, the names of all their angels were Chaldæan or Persian. This we have remarked very particularly.
All these different names equally signify "the lord," in the jargon of the petty nations bordering on Palestine. The wordMolochis evidently derived fromMelk, which was the same asMelcomorMelcon, the divinity of the thousand women in the seraglio of Solomon; to-wit, seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. All these names signify "lord": each village had its lord.
Some sages pretend that Moloch was more particularly the god of fire; and that it was on that account the Jews burned their children in the hollow of the idol of this same Moloch. It was a large statue of copper, rendered as hideous as the Jews could make it. They heated the statue red hot, in a large fire, although they had very little fuel, and cast their children into the belly of this god, as our cooks cast living lobsters into the boiling water of their cauldrons. Such were the ancient Celts and Tudescans, when they burned children in honor of Teutates and Hirminsule. Such the Gallic virtue, and the German freedom!
Jeremiah wished, in vain, to detach the Jewish people from this diabolical worship. In vain he reproaches them with having built a sort of temple to Moloch in this abominable valley. "They have built high places in Tophet, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, in order to pass their sons and daughters through the fire."
The Jews paid so much the less regard to the reproaches of Jeremiah, as they fiercely accused him of having sold himself to the king of Babylon; of having uniformly prophesied in his favor; and of having betrayed his country. In short, he suffered the punishment of a traitor; he was stoned to death.
The Book of Kings informs us, that Solomon built a temple to Moloch, but it does not say that it was in the valley of Tophet, but in the vicinity upon the Mount of Olives. The situation was fine, if anything can be called fine in the frightful neighborhood of Jerusalem.
Some commentators pretend, that Ahaz, king of Judah, burned his son in honor of Moloch, and that King Manasses was guilty of the same barbarity. Other commentators suppose, that these kings of the chosen people of God were content with casting their children into the flames, but that they were not burned to death. I wish that it may have been so; but it is very difficult for a child not to be burned when placed on a lighted pile.
This valley of Tophet was the "Clamart" of Paris, the place where they deposited all the rubbish and carrion of the city. It was in this valley that they cast loose the scape-goat; it was the place in which the bodies of the two criminals were cast who suffered with the Son of God; but our Saviour did not permit His body, which was given up to the executioner, to be cast in the highway of the valley of Tophet, according to custom. It is true, that He might have risen again in Tophet, as well as in Calvary; but a good Jew, named Joseph, a native of Arimathea, who had prepared a sepulchre for himself on Mount Calvary, placed the body of the Saviour therein, according to the testimony of St. Matthew. No one was allowed to be buried in the towns; even the tomb of David was not in Jerusalem.
Joseph of Arimathea was rich—"a certain rich man of Arimathea,"—that the prophecy of Isaiah might be fulfilled: "And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death."
Though there are few articles of jurisprudence in these honest alphabetical reflections, we must, however, say a word or two on torture, otherwise called "the question"; which is a strange manner of questioning men. They were not, however, the simply curious who invented it; there is every appearance, that this part of our legislation owes its first origin to a highwayman. Most of these gentlemen are still in the habit of screwing thumbs, burning feet, and questioning, by various torments, those who refuse to tell them where they have put their money.
Conquerors having succeeded these thieves, found the invention very useful to their interests; they made use of it when they suspected that there were bad designs against them: as, for example, that of seeking freedom was a crime of high treason, human and divine. The accomplices must be known; and to accomplish it, those who were suspected were made to suffer a thousand deaths, because, according to the jurisprudence of these primitive heroes, whoever was suspected of merely having a disrespectful opinion of them, was worthy of death. As soon as they have thus merited death, it signifies little whether they had frightful torments for several days, and even weeks previously—a practice which savors, I know not how, of the Divinity. Providence sometimes puts us to the torture by employing the stone, gravel, gout, scrofula, leprosy, smallpox; by tearing the entrails, by convulsions of the nerves,-and other executors of the vengeance of Providence.
Now, as the first despots were, in the eyes of their courtiers, images of the Divinity, they imitated it as much as they could. What is very singular is, that the question, or torture, is never spoken of in the Jewish books. It is a great pity that so mild, honest, and compassionate a nation knew not this method of discovering the truth. In my opinion, the reason is, that they had no need of it. God always made it known to them as to His cherished people. Sometimes they played at dice to discover the truth, and the suspected culprit always had double sixes. Sometimes they went to the high priest, who immediately consulted God by the urim and thummim. Sometimes they addressed themselves to the seer and prophet; and you may believe that the seer and prophet discovered the most hidden things, as well as the urim and thummim of the high priest. The people of God were not reduced, like ourselves, to interrogating and conjecturing; and therefore torture could not be in use among them, which was the only thing wanting to complete the manners of that holy people. The Romans inflicted torture on slaves alone, but slaves were not considered as men. Neither is there any appearance that a counsellor of the criminal court regards as one of his fellow-creatures, a man who is brought to him wan, pale, distorted, with sunken eyes, long and dirty beard, covered with vermin with which he has been tormented in a dungeon. He gives himself the pleasure of applying to him the major and minor torture, in the presence of a surgeon, who counts his pulse until he is in danger of death, after which they recommence; and as the comedy of the "Plaideurs" pleasantly says, "that serves to pass away an hour or two."
The grave magistrate, who for money has bought the right of making these experiments on his neighbor, relates to his wife, at dinner, that which has passed in the morning. The first time, madam shudders at it; the second, she takes some pleasure in it, because, after all, women are curious; and afterwards, the first thing she says when he enters is: "My dear, have you tortured anybody to-day?" The French, who are considered, I know not why, a very humane people, are astonished that the English, who have had the inhumanity to take all Canada from us, have renounced the pleasure of putting the question.
When the Chevalier de Barre, the grandson of a lieutenant-general of the army, a young man of much sense and great expectations, but possessing all the giddiness of unbridled youth, was convicted of having sung impious songs, and even of having dared to pass before a procession of Capuchins without taking his hat off, the judges of Abbeville, men comparable to Roman senators, ordered not only that his tongue should be torn out, that his hands should be torn off, and his body burned at a slow fire, but they further applied the torture, to know precisely how many songs he had sung, and how many processions he had seen with his hat on his head.
It was not in the thirteenth or fourteenth century that this affair happened; it was in the eighteenth. Foreign nations judge of France by its spectacles, romances, and pretty verses; by opera girls who have very sweet manners, by opera dancers who posssess grace; by Mademoiselle Clairon, who declaims delightfully. They know not that, under all, there is not a more cruel nation than the French. The Russians were considered barbarians in 1700; this is only the year 1769; yet an empress has just given to this great state laws which would do honor to Minos, Numa, or Solon, if they had had intelligence enough to invent them. The most remarkable is universal tolerance; the second is the abolition of torture. Justice and humanity have guided her pen; she has reformed all. Woe to a nation which, being more civilized, is still led by ancient atrocious customs! "Why should we change our jurisprudence?" say we. "Europe is indebted to us for cooks, tailors, and wig-makers; therefore, our laws are good."
Protestants, and above all, philosophical Protestants, regard transubstantiation as the most signal proof of extreme impudence in monks, and of imbecility in laymen. They hold no terms with this belief, which they call monstrous, and assert that it is impossible for a man of good sense ever to have believed in it. It is, say they, so absurd, so contrary to every physical law, and so contradictory, it would be a sort of annihilation of God, to suppose Him capable of such inconsistency. Not only a god in a wafer, but a god in the place of a wafer; a thousand crumbs of bread become in an instant so many gods, which an innumerable crowd of gods make only one god. Whiteness without a white substance; roundness without rotundity of body; wine changed into blood, retaining the taste of wine; bread changed into flesh and into fibres, still preserving the taste of bread—all this inspires such a degree of horror and contempt in the enemies of the Catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion, that it sometimes insensibly verges into rage.
Their horror augments when they are told that, in Catholic countries, are monks who rise from a bed of impurity, and with unwashed hands make gods by hundreds; who eat and drink these gods, and reduce them to the usual consequences of such an operation. But when they reflect that this superstition, a thousand times more absurd and sacrilegious than those of Egypt, produces for an Italian priest from fifteen to twenty millions of revenue, and the domination of a country containing a hundred thousand square leagues, they are ready to march with their arms in their hands and drive away this priest from the palace of Cæsar. I know not if I shall be of the party, because I love peace; but when established at Rome, I will certainly pay them a visit.—By M. GUILLAUME, a Protestant minister.
The first among the Westerns who spoke of the Trinity was Timæus of Locri, in his "Soul of the World." First came the Idea, the perpetual model or archetype of all things engendered; that is to say, the first "Word," the internal and intelligible "Word." Afterwards, the unformed mode, the second word, or the word spoken. Lastly, the "son," or sensible world, or the spirit of the world. These three qualities constitute the entire world, which world is the Son of God "Monogenes." He has a soul and possessed reason; he is "empsukos, logikos."
God, wishing to make a very fine God, has engendered one: "Touton epoie theon genaton."
It is difficult clearly to comprehend the system of Timæus, which he perhaps derived from the Egyptians or Brahmins. I know not whether it was well understood in his time. It is like decayed and rusty medals, the motto of which is effaced: it could be read formerly; at present, we put what construction we please upon it.
It does not appear that this sublime balderdash made much progress until the time of Plato. It was buried in oblivion, and Plato raised it up. He constructed his edifice in the air, but on the model of Timæus. He admits three divine essences: the Father, the Supreme Creator, the Parent of other gods, is the first essence. The second is the visible God, the minister of the invisible one, the "Word," the understanding, the great spirit. The third is the world.
It is true, that Plato sometimes says quite different and even quite contrary things; it is the privilege of the Greek philosophers; and Plato has made use of his right more than any of the ancients or moderns. A Greek wind wafted these philosophical clouds from Athens to Alexandria, a town prodigiously infatuated with two things—money and chimeras. There were Jews in Alexandria who, having made their fortunes, turned philosophers.
Metaphysics have this advantage, that they require no very troublesome preliminaries. We may know all about them without having learned anything; and a little to those who have at once subtle and very false minds, will go a great way. Philo the Jew was a philosopher of this kind; he was contemporary with Jesus Christ; but he has the misfortune of not knowing Him any more than Josephus the historian. These two considerable men, employed in the chaos of affairs of state, were too far distant from the dawning light. This Philo had quite a metaphysical, allegorical, mystical head. It was he who said that God must have formed the world in six days; he formed it, according to Zoroaster, in six times, "because three is the half of six and two is the third of it; and this number is male and female."
This same man, infatuated with the ideas of Plato, says, in speaking of drunkenness, that God and wisdom married, and that wisdom was delivered of a well-beloved son, which son is the world. He calls the angels the words of God, and the world the word of God—"logon tou Theou."
As to Flavius Josephus, he was a man of war who had never heard of the logos, and who held to the dogmas of the Pharisees, who were solely attached to their traditions. From the Jews of Alexandria, this Platonic philosophy proceeded to those of Jerusalem. Soon, all the school of Alexandria, which was the only learned one, was Platonic; and Christians who philosophized, no longer spoke of anything but thelogos.
We know that it was in disputes of that time the same as in those of the present. To one badly understood passage, was tacked another unintelligible one to which it had no relation. A second was inferred from them, a third was falsified, and they fabricated whole books which they attributed to authors respected by the multitude. We have seen a hundred examples of it in the article on "Apocrypha."
Dear reader, for heaven's sake cast your eyes on this passage of Clement the Alexandrian: "When Plato says, that it is difficult to know the Father of the universe, he demonstrates by that, not only that the world has been engendered, but that it has been engendered as the Son of God."
Do you understand these logomachies, these equivoques? Do you see the least light in this chaos of obscure expressions? Oh, Locke! Locke! come and define these terms. In all these Platonic disputes I believe there was not a single one understood. They distinguished two words, the "logos endiathetos"—the word in thought, and the word produced—"logos prophorikos." They had the eternity from one word, and the prolation, the emanation from another word.
The book of "Apostolic Constitutions," an ancient monument of fraud, but also an ancient depository of these obscure times, expresses itself thus: "The Father, who is anterior to all generation, all commencement, having created all by His only Son, has engendered this Son without a medium, by His will and His power."
Afterwards Origen advanced, that the Holy Spirit was created by the Son, by the word. After that came Eusebius of Cæsarea, who taught that the spirit paraclete is neither of Father nor Son. The advocate Lactantius flourished in that time.
"The Son of God," says he, "is the word, as the other angels are the spirits of God. The word is a spirit uttered by a significant voice, the spirit proceeding from the nose, and the word from the mouth. It follows, that there is a difference between the Son of God and the other angels; those being emanated like tacit and silent spirits; while the Son, being a spirit proceeding from the mouth, possesses sound and voice to preach to the people."
It must be confessed, that Lactantius pleaded his cause in a strange manner. It was truly reasoning a la Plato, and very powerful reasoning. It was about this time that, among the very violent disputes on the Trinity, this famous verse was inserted in the First Epistle of St. John: "There are three that bear witness in earth—the word or spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three are one."
Those who pretend that this verse is truly St. John's, are much more embarrassed than those who deny it; for they must explain it. St. Augustine says, that the spirit signifies the Father, water the Holy Ghost, and by blood is meant the Word. This explanation is fine, but it still leaves a little confusion.
St Irenæus goes much farther; he says, that Rahab, the prostitute of Jericho, in concealing three spies of the people of God, concealed the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; which is strong, but not consistent. On the other hand, the great and learned Origen confounds us in a different way. The following is one of many of his passages: "The Son is as much below the Father as He and the Holy Ghost are above the most noble creatures."
What can be said after that? How can we help confessing, with grief, that nobody understands it? How can we help confessing, that from the first—from the primitive Christians, the Ebionites, those men so mortified and so pious, who always revered Jesus though they believed Him to be the son of Joseph—until the great controversy of Athanasius, the Platonism of the Trinity was always a subject of quarrels. A supreme judge was absolutely required to decide, and he was at last found in the Council of Nice, which council afterwards produced new factions and wars.
EXPLANATION OF THE TRINITY, ACCORDING TO ABAUZIT.
"We can speak with exactness of the manner in which the union of God and Jesus Christ exists, only by relating the three opinions which exist on this subject, and by making reflections on each of them.
"Opinion of the Orthodox.
"The first opinion is that of the orthodox. They establish, 1st—A distinction of three persons in the divine essence, before the coming of Jesus Christ into the world; 2nd—That the second of these persons is united to the human nature of Jesus Christ; 3rd—That the union is so strict, that by it Jesus Christ is God; that we can attribute to Him the creation of the world, and all divine perfections; and that we can adore Him with a supreme worship.
"Opinion of the Unitarians.
"The second is that of the Unitarians. Not conceiving the distinction of persons in the Divinity, they establish, 1st—That divinity is united to the human nature of Jesus Christ; 2nd—That this union is such that we can say, that Jesus Christ is God; that we can attribute to Him the creation of the world, and all divine perfections, and adore Him with a supreme worship.
"Opinion of the Socinians.
"The third opinion is that of the Socinians, who, like the Unitarians, not conceiving any distinction of persons in the Divinity, establish, 1st—That divinity is united to the human nature of Jesus Christ; 2nd—That this union is very strict; 3rd—That it is not such that we can call Jesus Christ God, or attribute divine perfections and the creation to Him, or adore Him with a supreme worship; and they think that all the passages of Scripture may be explained without admitting any of these things.
"Reflections on the First Opinion.
"In the distinction which is made of three persons in the Divinity, we either retain the common idea of persons, or we do not. If we retain the common idea of persons, we establish three gods; that is certain. If we do not establish the ordinary idea of three persons, it is no longer any more than a distinction of properties; which agrees with the second opinion. Or if we will not allow that it is a distinction of persons, properly speaking, we establish a distinction of which we have no idea. There is no appearance, that to imagine a distinction in God, of which we can have no idea, Scripture would put men in danger of becoming idolaters, by multiplying the Divinity. It is besides surprising that this distinction of persons having always existed, it should only be since the coming of Jesus Christ that it has been revealed, and that it is necessary to know them.
"Reflections on the Second Opinion.
"There is not, indeed, so great danger of precipitating men into idolatry in the second opinion as in the first; but it must be confessed that it is not entirely exempt from it. Indeed, as by the nature of the union which it establishes between divinity and the human nature of Jesus Christ, we can call him God and worship him, but there are two objects of adoration—Jesus Christ and God. I confess it may be said, that it is God whom we should worship in Jesus Christ; but who knows not the extreme inclination which men have to change invisible objects of worship into objects which fall under the senses, or at least under the imagination?—an inclination which they will here gratify without the least scruple, since they say that divinity is personally united to the humanity of Jesus Christ.
"Reflections on the Third Opinion.
"The third opinion, besides being very simple, and conformable to the ideas of reason, is not subject to any similar danger of throwing men into idolatry. Though by this opinion Jesus Christ can be no more than a simple man, it need not be feared that by that He can be confounded with prophets or saints of the first order. In this sentiment there always remains a difference between them and Him. As we can imagine, almost to the utmost, the degrees of union of divinity with humanity, so we can conceive, that in particular the union of divinity with Jesus Christ has so high a degree of knowledge, power, felicity, perfection, and dignity, that there is always an immense distance between him and the greatest prophets. It remains only to see whether this opinion can agree with Scripture, and whether it be true that the title of God, divine perfections, creation, and supreme worship, are not attributed to Jesus Christ in the Gospels."
It was for the philosopher Abauzit to see all this. For myself I submit, with my heart and mouth and pen, to all that the Catholic church has decided, and to all that it may decide on any other such dogma. I will add but one word more on the Trinity, which is a decision of Calvin's that we have on this mystery. This is it:
"In case any person prove heterodox, and scruples using the words Trinity and Person, we believe not that this can be a reason for rejecting him; we should support him without driving him from the Church, and without exposing him to any censure as a heretic."
It was after such a solemn declaration as this, that John Calvin—the aforesaid Calvin, the son of a cooper of Noyon—caused Michael Servetus to be burned at Geneva by a slow fire with green fagots.
"Pilate therefore said unto him, 'Art thou a king then?' Jesus answered, 'Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto truth: every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.' Pilate saith unto him, 'What is truth?' and when he had said this, he went out," etc.—St. John, chap. xviii.
It is a pity for mankind that Pilate went out, without hearing the reply: we should then have known what truth is. Pilate was not very curious. The accused, brought before him, told him that he was a king, that he was born to be a king, and he informs himself not how this can be. He was supreme judge in the name of Cæsar, he had the power of the sword, his duty was to penetrate into the meaning of these words. He should have said: Tell me what you understand by being king? how are you born to be king, and to bear witness unto the truth? It is said that you can only arrive at the ear of kings with difficulty; I, who am a judge, have always had extreme trouble in reaching it. Inform me, while your enemies cry outside against you; and you will render me the greatest service ever rendered to a judge. I would rather learn to know the truth, than condescend to the tumultuous demand of the Jews, who wish me to hang you.
We doubtless dare not pretend to guess what the Author of all truth would have said to Pilate. Would he have said: "Truth is an abstract word which most men use indifferently in their books and judgments, for error and falsehood"? This definition would be wonderfully convenient to all makers of systems. Thus the word wisdom is often taken for folly, and wit for nonsense. Humanly speaking, let us define truth, to better understand that which is declared—such as it is.
Suppose that six months only had been taken to teach Pilate the truths of logic he would doubtless have made this concluding syllogism: A man's life should not have been taken away who has only preached a good doctrine; now he who is brought before me, according even to his enemies, has often preached an excellent doctrine; therefore, he should not be punished with death.
He might also have inferred this other argument: My duty is to dissipate the riots of a seditious people, who demand the death of a man without reason or juridical form; now such are the Jews on this occasion; therefore I should send them away, and break up their assembly. We take for granted that Pilate knew arithmetic; we will not therefore speak of these kinds of truths.
As to mathematical truths, I believe that he would have required three years at least before he would have been acquainted with transcendent geometry. The truths of physics, combined with those of geometry, would have required more than four years. We generally consume six years in studying theology; I ask twelve for Pilate, considering that he was a Pagan, and that six years would not have been too many to root out all his old errors, and six more to put him in a state worthy to receive the bonnet of a doctor. If Pilate had a well organized head, I would only have demanded two years to teach him metaphysical truths, and as these truths are necessarily united with those of morality, I flatter myself that in less than nine years Pilate would have become a truly learned and perfectly honest man.
Historical Truths.
I should afterwards have said to Pilate: Historical truths are but probabilities. If you have fought at the battle of Philippi, it is to you a truth, which you know by intuition, by sentiment; but to us who live near the desert of Syria, it is merely a probable thing, which we know by hearsay. How can we, from report, form a persuasion equal to that of a man, who having seen the thing, can boast of feeling a kind of certainty?
He who has heard the thing told by twelve thousand ocular witnesses, has only twelve thousand probabilities equal to one strong one, which is not equal to certainty. If you have the thing from only one of these witnesses, you are sure of nothing—you must doubt. If the witness is dead, you must doubt still more, for you can enlighten yourself no further. If from several deceased witnesses, you are in the same state. If from those to whom the witnesses have only spoken, the doubt is still augmented. From generation to generation the doubt augments, and the probability diminishes, and the probability is soon reduced to zero.
Of the Degrees of Truth, According to Which the Accused are Judged.
We can be made accountable to justice either for deeds or words. If for deeds, they must be as certain as will be the punishment to which you will condemn the prisoner; if, for example, you have but twenty probabilities against him, these twenty probabilities cannot equal the certainty of his death. If you would have as many probabilities as are required to be sure that you shed not innocent blood, they must be the fruit of the unanimous evidences of witnesses who have no interest in deposing. From this concourse of probabilities, a strong opinion will be formed, which will serve to excuse your judgment; but as you will never have entire certainty, you cannot flatter yourself with knowing the truth perfectly. Consequently you should always lean towards mercy rather than towards rigor. If it concerns only facts, from which neither manslaughter nor mutilation have resulted, it is evident that you should neither cause the accused to be put to death nor mutilated.