There have been some minds so constituted that they have been enchanted by the miracles of Moses and Joshua, but have not entertained for those of Jesus Christ the respect to which they are entitled. Their imagination—raised by the grand spectacle of the sea opening a passage through its depths, and suspending its waves that a horde of Hebrews might safely go through; by the ten plagues of Egypt, and by the stars that stopped in their course over Gibeon and Ajalon, etc.—could not with ease and satisfaction be let down again, so as to admire the comparatively petty miracles of the water changed into wine, the withered fig-tree, and the swine drowned in the little lake of Gadara. Vaghenseil said that it was like hearing a rustic ditty after attending a grand concert.
The Talmud pretends that there have been many Christians who, after comparing the miracles of the Old Testament with those of the New Testament, embraced Judaism; they consider it impossible that the Sovereign Lord of Nature should have wrought such stupendous prodigies for a religion He intended to annihilate. What! they exclaim, can it possibly be, that for a series of ages He should have exhibited a train of astonishing and tremendous miracles in favor of a true religion that was to become a false one? What! can it be that God Himself has recorded that this religion shall never perish, and that those who attempt to destroy it shall be stoned to death, and yet that He has nevertheless sent His own Son, Who is no other than Himself, to annihilate what He was employed so many ages in erecting?
There is much more to be added to these remarks; this Son, they continue, this Eternal God, having made Himself a Jew, adheres to the Jewish religion during the whole of His life; He performs all the functions of it, He frequents the Jewish temple, He announces nothing contrary to the Jewish law, and all His disciples are Jews and observe the Jewish ceremonies. It most certainly is not He who established the Christian religion. It was established by the dissident Jews who united with the Platonists. There is not a single dogma of Christianity that was preached by Jesus Christ.
Such is the reasoning of these rash men, who, with minds at once hypocritical and audacious, dare to criticise the works of God, and admit the miracles of the Old Testament for the sole purpose of rejecting those of the New Testament.
Of this number was the unfortunate priest of Pont-à-Mousson in Lorraine, called Nicholas Anthony; he was known by no other name. After he had received what is called "the four minors" in Lorraine, the Calvinistic preacher Ferri, happening to go to Pont-à-Mousson, raised in his mind very serious scruples, and persuaded him that the four minors were the mark of the beast. Anthony, driven almost to distraction by the thought of carrying about him the mark of the beast, had it immediately effaced by Ferri, embraced the Protestant religion, and became a minister at Geneva about the year 1630.
With a head full of rabbinical learning, he thought that if the Protestants were right in reference to the Papists, the Jews were much more so in reference to all the different sects of Christianity whatever. From the village of Divonne, where he was pastor, he went to be received as a Jew at Venice, together with a young apprentice in theology whom he had persuaded to adopt his own principles, but who afterwards abandoned him, not experiencing any call to martyrdom.
At first the minister, Nicholas Anthony, abstained from uttering the name of Jesus Christ in his sermons and prayers; in a short time, however, becoming animated and emboldened by the example of the Jewish saints, who confidently professed Judaism before the princes of Tyre and Babylon, he travelled barefooted to Geneva, to confess before the judges and magistrates that there is only one religion upon earth, because there is only one God; that that religion is the Jewish; that it is absolutely necessary to become circumcised; and that it is a horrible crime to eat bacon and blood pudding. He pathetically exhorted all the people of Geneva, who crowded to hear him, no longer to continue children of Belial, but to become good Jews, in order to deserve the kingdom of heaven. He was apprehended, and put in chains.
The little Council of Geneva, which at that period did nothing without consulting the council of preachers, asked their advice in this emergency. The most sensible of them recommended that poor Anthony should be bled in the cephalic vein, use the bath, and be kept upon gruel and broths; after which he might perhaps gradually be induced to pronounce the name of Jesus Christ, or at least to hear it pronounced, without grinding his teeth, as had hitherto been his practice. They added, that the laws bore with Jews; that there were eight thousand of them even in Rome itself; that many merchants are true Jews, and therefore that as Rome admitted within its walls eight thousand children of the synagogue, Geneva might well tolerate one. At the sound of "toleration" the rest of the pastors, who were the majority, gnashing their teeth still more than Anthony did at the name of Jesus Christ, and also eager to find an opportunity to burn a man, which could not be done every day, called peremptorily for the burning. They resolved that nothing could serve more to establish genuine Christianity; that the Spaniards had obtained so much reputation in the world only by burning the Jews every year, and that after all, if the Old Testament must prevail over the New Testament, God would not fail to come and extinguish the flames of the pile, as he did at Babylon for Shadrach, Meshac, and Abednego; in which case all must go back again to the Old Testament; but that, in the meantime, it was indispensable to burn Nicholas Anthony. On the breaking up of the meeting, they concluded with the observation: "We must put the wicked out of the way"—the very words they used.
The long-headed syndics, Sarasin and Godefroi, agreed that the reasoning of the Calvinistic sanhedrim was admirable, and by the right of the strongest party, condemned Nicholas Anthony, the weakest of men, to die the same death as Calanus and the counsellor Dubourg. This sentence was carried into execution on April 20, 1632, in a very beautiful lawn or meadow, called Plain-Palais, in the presence of twenty thousand persons, who blessed the new law, and the wonderful sense of the syndics Sarasin and Godefroi.
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not renew the miracle of the furnace of Babylon in favor of poor Anthony.