What is a persecutor? He whose wounded pride and fanaticism irritate princes and magistrates into fury against innocent men, whose only crime is that of being of a different opinion. Impudent man! you have worshipped God; you have preached and practised virtue; you have served and assisted man; you have protected the orphan, have succored the poor; you have changed deserts, in which slaves dragged on a miserable existence, into fertile districts peopled with happy families; but I have discovered that you despise me, and have never read my controversial work. I will, therefore, seek the confessor of the prime minister, or the magistrate; I will show them, with outstretched neck and twisted mouth, that you hold an erroneous opinion in relation to the cells in which the Septuagint was studied; that you have even spoken disrespectfully for these ten years past of Tobit's dog, which you assert to have been a spaniel, whilst I maintain that it was a greyhound. I will denounce you as the enemy of God and man! Such is the language of the persecutor; and if these words do not precisely issue from his lips, they are engraven on his heart with the graver of fanaticism steeped in the gall of envy.
It was thus that the Jesuit Letellier dared to persecute Cardinal de Noailles, and that Jurieu persecuted Bayle. When the persecution of the Protestants commenced in France, it was not Francis I., nor Henry II., nor Francis II., who sought out these unfortunate people, who hardened themselves against them with reflective bitterness, and who delivered them to the flames in the spirit of vengeance. Francis I. was too much engaged with the Duchess d'Étampes; Henry II., with his ancient Diana, and Francis II. was too much a child. Who, then, commenced these persecutions? Jealous priests, who enlisted in their service the prejudices of magistrates and the policy of ministers.
If these monarchs had not been deceived, if they had foreseen that these persecutions would produce half a century of civil war, and that the two parts of the nation would mutually exterminate each other, they would have extinguished with their tears the first piles which they allowed to be lighted. Oh, God of mercy! if any man can resemble that malignant being who is described as actually employed in the destruction of Your works, is it not the persecutor?
PETER (SAINT).
Why have the successors of St. Peter possessed so much power in the West and none in the East? This is just the same as to ask why the bishops of Würzburg and Salzburg obtained for themselves regal prerogatives in a period of anarchy, while the Greek bishops always remained subjects. Time, opportunity, the ambition of some, and the weakness of others, have done and will do everything in the world. We always except what relates to religion. To this anarchy, must be added opinion; and opinion is the queen of mankind. Not that, in fact, they have any very clear and definite opinion of their own, but words answer the same end with them.
"I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven." The zealous partisans of the bishop of Rome contended, about the eleventh century, that whoever gives the greater gives the less; that heaven surrounded the earth; and that, as Peter had the keys of the container, he had also the keys of what was contained. If by heaven we understand all the stars and planets, it is evident, according to Tomasius, that the keys given to Simon Barjonas, surnamed Peter, were a universal passport. If we understand by heaven the clouds, the atmosphere, the ether, and the space in which the planets revolve, no smith in the world, as Meursius observes, could ever make a key for such gates as these. Railleries, however, are not reasons.
Keys in Palestine were wooden latches with strings to them. Jesus says to Barjonas, "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven." The pope's clergy concluded from these words, that the popes had received authority to bind and unbind the people's oath of fidelity to their kings, and to dispose of kingdoms at their pleasure. This certainly was concluding magnificently. The Commons in the states-general of France, in 1302, say, in their memorial to the king, that "Boniface VIII. was a b—— for believing that God bound and imprisoned in heaven what Boniface bound on earth." A famous German Lutheran—the great Melancthon—could not endure the idea of Jesus having said to Simon Barjonas, Cepha or Cephas, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my assembly, my church." He could not conceive that God would use such a play of words, and that the power of the pope could have been established on a pun. Such a doubt, however, can be indulged only by a Protestant.
Peter has been considered as having been bishop of Rome; but it is well known that, in the apostolic age, and long after, there was no particular and appropriate bishopric. The society of Christians did not assume a regular form until about the middle of the second century. It may be true that Peter went to Rome, and even that he was crucified with his head downwards, although that was not the usual mode of crucifixion; but we have no proof whatever of all this. We have a letter under his name, in which he says that he is at Babylon: acute and shrewd canonists have contended that, by Babylon, we ought to understand Rome; and on the same principle, if he had dated at Rome, we might have concluded that the letter had been written at Babylon. Men have long been in the habit of drawing such reasonable and judicious inferences as these; and it is in this manner that the world has been governed.
There was once a clergyman who, after having been made to pay extortionately for a benefice at Rome—an offence known by the name of simony—happened to be asked, some time afterwards, whether he thought Simon Peter had ever been in that city? He replied, "I do not think that Peter was ever there, but I am sure Simon was."