A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 10

by Voltaire

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?