* Epistle to Tim. Chap. i. ver. 20.
It is doubtless nothing but a lively faith, which can reconcile the violent conduct of this great Apostle, with the charity which he incessantly recommends. It appears at least difficult to have a sincere regard for men whom zeal obliges us to hate, either as our own enemies, or as the enemies of God. The subtle theology of the Christians, can alone reconcile these incompatible dispositions.
It is only the ministers of the Church, who have the talent of proving, that without a violation of Christian charity, it is lawful to harass, persecute, and destroy ones neighbours. They can in fact clearly show that we may burn the body of a man, out of tenderness for his soul. They think they have a right to excommunicate a man, or anathematize him, that is to say, exclude him for ever from spiritual grace, to put him in short into the road to damnation, to deliver him to Satan, for the destruction of the flesh, in order to save him, according to the spirit. This conduct is not the least inconceivable mystery of the Christian religion; faith is doubtless necessary to find it either charitable or intelligible. How can we conceive, for example, that the desire of saving the soul of an heretic, or an impious man, can determine the inquisition or Christian magistrates to consign him to the flames, even while be persists in those opinions, which they suppose must plunge him into hell?
CHAPTER XV. Of the Deceptions or Apostacy of St. Paul
By the aid of faith we never find any thing to condemn in the conduct of those, whom we have been accustomed to regard as saints; their obstinacy, seditious spirit, pride, even their ferocity, are justified, by saying that they are animated with a holy zeal. In a word, a saint may violate with impunity, the most sacred rules of morality, without his bigoted admirers permitting themselves to criticise his conduct. Saints have always been in the habit of terming those chastisements, which they have drawn upon themselves (oftentimes justly) by their unruly passions or indiscreet zeal, persecution. Those whom a devout phrensy excites to tumult and disorder are honoured as confessors and martyrs, and we find the Jews and Pagans were the most unjust and cruel of men, for having treated the Christians, whom they could not consider but as disturbers of the public peace, in the same manner as the Christians now treat the Jews, heretics, and infidels. Bigots, accustom themselves to regard their saints as irreproachable characters, or if they cannot justify their conduct, they say that God has permitted them to sin, to humiliate them, in order that he might have an opportunity of pardoning them. It is thus that every good Christian regards a brigand in revolt against his legitimate sovereign, an usurper, a monster of cruelty, an infamous adulterer, an assassin, in a word, a David, as a great saint; or even by excellence, as the man after God's own heart! Faith in the mind of a bigot, is able to reverse, even the most simple rules of morality and virtue. Religion encourages the most perverse men to give themselves up to the blackest crimes, the most shameful vices, and the most shocking irregularities, by setting before them the examples of scoundrels, who were nevertheless the friends of God.
It cannot be pretended that St. Paul of whom we are now speaking, was guilty of excesses, similar to those committed by the king of the Jews, whose whole history is a series of horrors: but without faith it is difficult to consider our Apostle as an irreproachable character; though the historian, whoever he be, to whom we are indebted for the Acts of the Apostles, has designed to hold him up as a model of virtue, we find that by a singular oversight he did not seem aware, that he made him tell an untruth in public, and in the most solemn manner in presence of the Sanhedrim or great council of the Jews. In fact as we have already remarked, perceiving that his audience was composed of Sadducees and Pharisees, with the view of dividing them and gaining friends, Paul cried out that he was a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee, and that they sought to kill him, because of his hope in the resurrection.
In this assertion we may detect two deceptions. In the first place Paul was not a Pharisee, at the moment he spoke he was a Christian, he was an Apostle, he preached Jesus Christ, he laboured effectually to make proselytes to his sect, he had disgusted the Jews in announcing to them a new law, contrary to that of Moses, he had procured in the council at Jerusalem the abolition of the practice of circumcision so strictly ordained by their law. In a word he preached Christianity and not Judaism in the same moment that he declared himself a Pharisee. On this occasion his conduct was in fact that of an apostate, at least it cannot be denied, that he conducted himself as a coward, who did not care to acknowledge his real belief in the presence of the council, and who had recourse to an artifice to outwit his Judges. In fact the conduct of Paul on this occasion has no resemblance to that of a great number of martyrs, who freely acknowledge themselves Christians at the risk of their lives, and boldly confessed Jesus Christ, in the presence of their persecutors and executioners. The presence of the High Priest and council so much imposed on St. Paul, that he declared himself a Pharisee; fear troubled his memory to such a degree, that he forgot he had just acknowledged himself a Christian, and missionary of Jesus to the Gentiles in the presence of the people collected before the gate of the fortress, who indignant at his discourse, cried out, "away with such a fellow from the earth for it is not fit that he should live." Nothing then but theological subtilty, can clear Paul from deception, apostacy, and cowardice on this occasion.
In the second place it was not true, that it was because of the hope of another life, and of the resurrection of the dead, that Paul was persecuted by the Jews. It was for having preached a new doctrine, contrary to the law of Moses; this great legislator has in no part taught us what we ought to believe concerning the resurrection of the dead or of another life. The Jews without ceasing to be Jews, embraced respecting it whatever opinion they pleased, the Sadducees rejected it without however being on that account, excluded from the synagogue, and without ceasing to observe the Judaic law; the Pharisee admitted it without its appearing to cause a schism between them, ami those who did not think, as they did. It is true that Paul had preached the resurrection, but it was that of Jesus, on which he endeavoured to establish a new sect very different from the Jewish religion. Thus the words of St. Paul were merely a subterfuge unworthy of a man, whom grace ought to have endued with sufficient courage to maintain before the council, at the peril of his liberty and his life, the same sentiments that he had taught the people and preached in all those places where he had planted the faith. It was then for having preached Christianity, and for having (in spite even of his brethren the apostles) desired in favour of the Gentiles the abolition of the Jewish customs, that Paul was persecuted, the priests were doubtless irritated against a man who sought to abrogate a law and a priesthood which a divine revelation had so many times taught them was to endure eternally, whilst the authors of the Epistle to the Hebrews formerly assures us that they have been set. aside by the Gospel.