I have sought this passage in Massillon's sermons, but it certainly is not in the edition which I possess. I will venture to say more—it is not in his style.
The author of the "Christiade" should have informed us where he picked up this rhapsody of Massillon's, as he should have told us where he read that the Albigenses dared to impute to Jesus Christ an unworthy intercourse with Mary Magdalen.
As for the marchioness, she is not again mentioned in the work. The author spares us her voyage to Marseilles with Lazarus, and the rest of her adventures.
What could induce a man of learning, and sometimes of eloquence, as the author of the "Christiade" appears to be, to compose this pretended poem? It was, as he tells us in his preface, the example of Milton; but we well know how deceitful are examples. Milton, who—be it observed—did not hazard that weakly monstrosity, a poem in prose—Milton, who in his Paradise Lost, has, amid the multitude of harsh and obscure lines of which it is full, scattered some very fine blank verse—could not please any but fanatical Whigs, as the Abbé Grécourt says:
En chantant l'univers perdu pour une pomme,
Et Dieu pour le damner créant le premier homme.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By singing
How God made man on purpose for hell-fire,
And how a stolen apple damned us all.
He might delight the Presbyterians by making Sin cohabit with Death; by firing off twenty-four pounders in heaven; by making dryness fight with damp, and heat with cold; by cleaving angels in two, whose halves immediately joined again; by building a bridge over chaos; by representing the Messiah taking from a chest in heaven a great pair of compasses to describe the circuit of the earth, etc. Virgil and Horace would, perhaps, have thought these ideas rather strange. But if they succeeded in England by the aid of some very happy lines, the author of the "Christiade" was mistaken in expecting his romance to succeed without the assistance of fine verses, which are indeed very difficult to make.
But, says our author, one Jerome Vida, bishop of Alba, once wrote a very powerful "Christiade" in Latin verse, in which he transcribes many lines from Virgil. Well, my friend, why did you write yours in French prose? Why did not you, too, imitate Virgil?
But the late M. d'Escorbiac, of Toulouse, also wrote a "Christiade." Alas! why were you so unfortunate as to become the ape of M. d'Escorbiac?
But Milton, too, wrote his romance of the New Testament, his "Paradise Regained," in blank verse, frequently resembling the worst prose. Leave it, then, to Milton to set Satan and Jesus constantly at war. Let it be his to cause a drove of swine to be driven along by a legion of devils; that is, by six thousand seven hundred, who take possession of these swine—there being three devils and seven-twentieths per pig—and drown them in a lake. It well becomes Milton to make the devil propose to God that they shall take a good supper together. In Milton, the devil may at his ease cover the table with ortolans, partridges, soles, sturgeons, and make Hebe and Ganymede hand wine to Jesus Christ. In Milton, the devil may take God up a little hill, from the top of which he shows him the capital, the Molucca Islands, and the Indian city; the birthplace of the beauteous Angelica, who turned Orlando's brain; after which he may offer to God all this, provided that God will adore him. But even Milton labored in vain; people have laughed at him. They have laughed at poor brother Berruyer, the Jesuit. They have laughed at you. Bear it with patience!