The Works of Voltaire, Vol. IV of XLIII. / Romances, Vol. III of III, and A Treatise on Toleration.

by Voltaire

“There is an immense edifice whose foundation I laid with my own hands. It was at once solid and simple; all mankind might have entered into it with safety, but they, in seeking to ornament, overloaded it with useless and fantastic decorations. The building is continually falling to decay, and they gather up the stones to throw at one another; while I am incessantly calling out to them, ‘Hold, madmen! clear away the ruins with which you are surrounded, and which you yourselves have made; come and live with me in uninterrupted tranquillity within my mansion, that is not to be shaken.’”

• FOOTNOTES TO A TREAT­ISE ON TOL­ER­A­TION
  • [2] 12 October, 1761.
  • [3] After the body was carried to the town-house, indeed, there was found a little scratch upon the end of the nose, and a small black and blue spot upon the breast; but these were probably occasioned by some carelessness in removing the corpse.
  • [4] I know of but two instances in history of fathers having murdered their children on the score of religion; the first is the father of St. Barbara, as she is called; it seems he had ordered two windows to be made in his bathing-room. St. Barbara in his absence took it into her head to make a third in honor of the Holy Trinity; she also with the end of her finger made the sign of the cross upon the marble pillars, which remained deeply impressed thereon; her father, in a violent fury to have his room thus marked, runs after her with his sword in his hand with an intention to kill her; she flies towards a mountain, which very complaisantly opens upon her approach to give her a passage. Her father finds himself obliged to go round about, and at length gets hold of his fugitive daughter, whom he strips and prepares to scourge; but God envelops her with a white cloud; however, after all, her father caused her head to be struck off. This is the story as we find it related in the book called “The Flower of Saints.”
  • The second instance is of Prince Hermenegildus, who raised a rebellion against the king, his father, and gave him battle in the year 584, but was himself defeated and slain by one of his father’s generals; however, he has been placed among the martyrs, because his father was an Arian.
  • [5] It is necessary for the English reader to understand that in Paris it is customary for the great lawyers or counsellors employed in any remarkable case to publish their pleadings on each side. On this occasion, however, our author observes, “that these publications were pirated in several towns, by which Mrs. Calas lost the advantage that was intended her by this act of generosity.”
  • [6] Dévot, or as we call it in English, devotee, comes from the Latin word devotus. The devoti of ancient Rome were such persons who devoted themselves to death for the safety or good of the republic, as the Curtii and Decii.
  • [7] They revived the opinion of Berengarius, concerning the eucharist; they denied that a body can exist in a thousand different places at one time, even by all the exertion of divine omnipotence; they also denied that attributes can subsist without a subject; they held that it was absolutely impossible that what appears to be simple bread and wine to the sight, the taste, and the stomach, can in the very instant of its existence be annihilated or changed into another substance; in a word, they maintained all those errors for which Berengarius was formerly condemned. They founded their belief on several passages of the ancient fathers of the church, and particularly of St. Justin, who says expressly in his Dialogue against Typhon, “That the offering of fine flour is the figure of the eucharist, which Christ has ordered us to make in commemoration of his passion;
  • χαὶ ἡ τῆς σεμιδαλέως, &c., τύπος ἦν τοῦ ἄρτου τῆς εὐχαριστίας, ὃν είς ἀνάμνμησιν τοῦ πάθους, &c. Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς ὁ χύριος ἡμῶν παρέδωχε ποιεῖν.”
  • They revived all that had been advanced in the first ages against the worship of relics, and brought these words of Vigilantius for their authority: “What necessity is there for your paying adoration or even respect to a mass of vile dust? Can it be supposed that the souls of deceased martyrs retain after their death an affection for their ashes? The customs of the ancient idolaters are now introduced into the Church; we begun to light tapers at noonday; we may, indeed, during our lifetime, mutually pray for each other; but of what service can such prayers be after death?”
  • [8] The candid and venerable President de Thou expresses himself thus concerning these innocent and unfortunate persons: “Homines esse qui trecentis circiter abhinc annis asperum & incultum solum vectigale a dominis acceperint, quod improbo labore & assiduo cultu frugum ferax & aptum pecori reddiderint; patientissimos eos laboris & inediæ, a litibus abhorrentes, erga, egenos munificos, tributa principi & sua jura dominis sedulo & summa fide pendere; Dei cultum assiduis precibus & morum innocentiam præ se ferre, ceterum raro divorum templa adire, nisi si quando ad vicina suis finibus oppida mercandi aut negotiorum causa divertant; quo si quandoque pedem inferant, non dei, divorumque statuis advolvi, nec cereos eis aut donaria ulla ponere; non sacerdotes ab eis rogari ut pro se, aut propinquorum manibus rem divinam faciant, non cruce frontem insigniri uti aliorum moris est; cum cœlum intonant non se lustrali aqua aspergere, sed sublatis in cœlum oculis dei opem implorare; non religionis ergo peregre proficisci, non per vias ante crucium simulacra caput aperire; sacra alio ritu, & populari lingua celebrare; non denique Pontifici aut Episcopis honorem deferre, sed quosdam e suo numero delectos pro antistibus & doctoribus habere. Hæc uti ad Franciscum relata VI.” Id. Feb. anni &c.
  • Madame de Cental, who was proprietor of part of the lands thus laid waste and drenched in the blood of their quondam inhabitants, applied for redress to Henry II., who referred her to the Parliament of Paris. The solicitor-general of Provence, whose name was Guerin and who had been the principal author of these massacres, was condemned to lose his head, and was the only one who suffered on this occasion the punishment due to the other accomplices in his guilt, because, says de Thou, aulicorum favore destituertur, he had not friends at court.
  • [9] Francis Gomar was a Protestant divine; he maintained, in contradiction to Arminius, his colleague, that God has, from all eternity, predestined the greatest part of mankind to burn in everlasting flames: this infernal doctrine was supported in the manner most suitable to it, by persecution. The grand pensionary Barneveldt, who was of the party which opposed Gomar, was beheaded on the 13th of May, 1619, at the age of seventy-two, “for having” (says his sentence) “used his uttermost endeavors to vex the Church of God.”
  • [10] A pompous writer, in his apology for the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, speaking of England, has these words: “These were the natural fruits of a false religion; there remained only one to be brought to perfection, which these islanders, justly the contempt of all nations, have cherished, and adapted to themselves.” Certainly this author has been a little unfortunate in choosing his time for representing the English as a people despicable and despised by all the world; for surely, when a nation gives the most signal proofs of its bravery and generosity, and when its victorious ensigns wave in the four parts of the world, no great credit is to be given to the writer who shall represent it as contemptible and contemned. But we must observe that it is in a chapter in favor of persecution that we meet with this extraordinary passage; and none but such as preach persecution can write thus. This detestable book, which seems the work of a madman, was composed by a person who has no ecclesiastical cure; for what real pastor would write in such a manner? The author has even carried his enthusiastic fury to such a length as to justify the massacre of St. Bartholomew. It might be supposed that a production full of such shocking paradoxes would be in the hands of almost every one, were it only on account of its singularity, and yet it seems to be hardly known.
  • [11] See Ricaut.
  • [12] See Kempfer, and all the accounts of Japan.
  • [13] M. de la Bourdonnaie, intendant of Rouen, says that the manufacture of hats at Caudebec and Neufchâtel has greatly fallen off since the refugees left that county. M. Foucaut, intendant of Caen, says that trade in general has declined through the whole district; and M. de Maupeou, intendant of Poitiers, that the manufacture of druggets is quite lost. M. de Bezons complains that there is now hardly any trade stirring in Clérac and Nérac. M. Miroménil, intendant of Touraine, says that the trade of Tours has diminished near ten millions per annum, and all this through the persecution raised in that part of the kingdom. (See the Memorials of the Intendants in the year 1698.) To this, if we add the number of land and sea officers and common sailors who have been forced to engage in foreign services, frequently with fatal consequences to their own country, we shall then see whether or no persecution has been fatal to the state.
  • We will not here presume to offer any hints to those ministers whose conduct and capacity are sufficiently known, and whose greatness of soul and nobleness of sentiment do honor to their illustrious birth; they will of themselves readily perceive that the restoration of our marine will require some indulgence at least to be shown to the inhabitants of our sea-coasts.
  • [14] These disabilities no longer exist in Protestant countries.
  • [15] Chap. xxi., xxii.
  • [16] Acts xxv.
  • [17] Acts xxvi.
  • [18] Though the power of life and death in criminal matters had been taken from the Jews after the banishment of Archelaus into the country of the Allobroges and that Judæa had been governed as a province, nevertheless the Romans frequently winked at the exertion of a judicial power by these people on any particular occasion that related merely to those of their own sect, such as, for instance, when in any sudden tumult they out of zeal stoned to death the person whom they thought guilty of blasphemy.
  • [19] Ulpianus I. tit. II. Eis qui jud­aicam super­sti­tion­em se­quun­tur, honores adi­pisci per­miser­unt, &c.
  • [20] Tacitus’ words are: Quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat.
  • It is hardly probable that the name of Christian was already known in Rome. Tacitus wrote in the reigns of the Emperors Vespasian and Domitian, and he speaks of the Christians in the manner that was customary in his time. And here I must venture to assert that the words Odio humani generis convicti, may equally well be rendered agreeably to the style of this writer, Convicted of being hated by mankind, as Convicted of hating all mankind.
  • And indeed, what was the employment of these first missionaries in Rome? They labored to gain a few proselytes by preaching a pure and simple moral doctrine; the humility of their hearts, and the modesty of their manners were equal to the lowliness of their condition and circumstances. Having been so lately separated from the Jews, they were hardly known in the world as a different sect; how then could they be hated by, or convicted of hating all mankind, to whom they were in a manner unknown?
  • The Roman Catholics have been accused as the incendiaries of the city of London in the year 1666, but not till they had first occasioned civil wars on account of religion; and after several of that faith, though unworthy to be so, had been legally convicted of the Gunpowder Plot.
  • But surely the case of the primitive Christians in the time of Nero was very different. It is no easy matter to clear up the obscurities of history. Even Tacitus himself says nothing that can afford a reason to suspect Nero of having set fire to Rome; and we might, with a greater appearance of probability, charge Charles II. with having lighted up the flames that laid London in ashes, to avenge the blood of his father, that had been so lately shed upon the scaffold to satisfy a rebellious people who thirsted for that blood. Charles had at least some excuse for such an action, whereas Nero had neither excuse, pretence, nor interest for the deed attributed to him. Reports of this kind have been common in every country among the populace, and even our own times have furnished us with some equally false and ridiculous.
  • Tacitus, who was so well acquainted with the disposition of princes, could not have been a stranger to that of the common people, who are ever vain, inconstant, and violent in the opinions they adopt, incapable of discerning truth from falsehood, and ready to believe, assert, and forget everything.
  • Philo says that “Sejanus persecuted the Jews under Tiberius, but that after the death of Sejanus, the emperor reinstated them in all their privileges,” one of which was, that of being denizens of Rome, notwithstanding the contempt they were held in by the Romans. As such, they had a share in the distribution of corn, and whenever such distribution happened to be made on the day that was their Sabbath, the portion allotted them was put by till the next day; this indulgence might probably be granted them in favor of the great sums of money with which they furnished the state; for they have purchased toleration in every country at a pretty high rate, though, it must be confessed, that they have soon found means to reimburse themselves.
  • This passage of Philo’s clearly explains one in Tacitus, where he says that “Four thousand Jews or Egyptians were banished to Sardinia, where, if they had all perished, through the badness of the climate, it would have been no great loss.” Vile damnum.
  • Before I close this note, I shall observe that Philo speaks of Tiberius as a wise and just prince. I am very ready to believe that he was so, only where the being such was agreeable to his interest; but the good character given him here by Philo makes me at the same time greatly suspect the truth of those terrible crimes with which Tacitus and Suetonius reproach him. Nor can I think it likely that an infirm old man of seventy would have retired into the island of Caprera to indulge himself in the uninterrupted exercise of a refined debauchery, which appears to be hardly natural, and was, even in those days of licentiousness, unknown to the most abandoned of the Roman youth. Neither Tacitus nor Suetonius was acquainted with that emperor; but took these stories upon the credit of vulgar reports; Octavius and Tiberius Cæsar, and their successors, had been detested for reigning over a free people without their consent. All historians have taken a delight in bespattering their characters, and the world has taken them at their words for want of authentic memorials or chronicles in those times. Besides, as these writers do not quote any authority for what they advance, who could contradict them? They blackened whom they pleased, and wantonly directed the judgment of posterity. The wise and impartial reader will, however, readily perceive how far the veracity of historians is to be depended on, and what degree of credit is due to public facts attested by authors of reputation, born in a learned and enlightened nation, as well as what bounds to set to our belief of anecdotes, when related by these same authors, without any authority to support them.
  • [21] We most certainly have a proper deference for whatever the Holy Church has made the objects of our reverence; accordingly, we invoke the blessed martyrs; but at the same time that we pay St. Laurence all due respect, may we not be permitted to doubt that St. Sixtus said to him: “You will follow me in three days.” That, during this short interval, the prefect of Rome made him demand a sum of money of the Christians; that Laurence had time to assemble all the poor people in that city; that he walked before the prefect, to show him the place where they were assembled; that he was afterwards tried and condemned to the torture; that the prefect ordered the smith to make a gridiron large enough to broil a man upon; that the principal magistrate of Rome assisted in person at this strange execution; and lastly that St. Laurence, while upon the gridiron, called out to him, “I am done enough on this side, let them turn me on the other, if you have a mind to eat me.” This same gridiron seems to have very little of the Roman genius in it; and besides, how happens it that we do not find a word of this story in any of the heathen writers?
  • [22] We have only to open Virgil to be convinced that the Romans acknowledged one Supreme Being, the lord and master of all other heavenly beings.
  • O! quis res hominumque deumque
  • Æternis regis imperiis, & fulmine terres,
  • O pater, o hominum divumque æterna potestas, &c.
  • And Horace expresses himself still more strongly:
  • Unde nil majus generatur ipso,
  • Nec viget quidquam simile, aut secundum.
  • In those mysteries into which almost all the Roman youths were initiated, nothing else was sung but the unity of God. See the noble hymn of Orpheus, and the letter of Maximus of Modarum to St. Augustine, in which he says that “None but fools can possibly deny a Supreme Being.” Longinus, who was a heathen, writes also to St. Augustine that “God is one, in­comp­re­hens­ible, in­ef­fable.” Even Lac­tant­ius, who certainly cannot be charged with being too indulgent, acknowledges in his fifth book that “The Romans subjected all the other deities to the one supreme God;” illos subjecit & mancipat Deo. Tertullian also in his Apology confesses that “The whole empire acknowledged one God, ruler of the world, and infinite in power and majesty:” Principem mundi perfectæ potentiæ & majestatis. Again, if we look into Plato, who taught Cicero his philosophy, we shall there find him thus express himself: “There is but one God, whom we all ought to love and adore, and labor to resemble Him in integrity and holiness.” Epictetus in a dungeon, and Mark Antoninus on a throne, tell us the same in a hundred different passages of their writings.
  • [23] Chap. 39.
  • [24] Chap. 35.
  • [25] Chap. iii.
  • [26] This assertion requires to be proved. It cannot be denied that from the time that history succeeded to fiction, the Egyptians have constantly appeared to be a people as dastardly as they were superstitious. Cambyses made the conquest of their country in a single battle; Alexander gave them laws without striking a stroke, or without one of their cities daring to wait a siege. The Ptolemies subdued them with as little trouble, nor did Octavius and Augustus Cæsar find more difficulty in bringing them under their obedience. Omar overran all Egypt in one single campaign; the Mamelukes, who inhabited Colchis and the regions of Mount Caucasus, became their masters afterwards; and it was these people, and not the Egyptians, who defeated the army of St. Louis, and took that king prisoner. At length the Mamelukes having, in process of time, become Egyptians, that is to say, effeminate, cowardly, lazy, and dissipated, like the original natives of the climate, they were in three months’ time brought under the yoke of Selim I., who caused their Soldan to be hanged, and made their kingdom a province of the Turkish Empire, and such it will remain till other barbarians may hereafter make themselves masters of it.
  • Herodotus relates that in the fabulous ages a king of Egypt called Sesostris left his country in order to go and make the conquest of the world; it is evident that such a design could only be worthy of a Don Quixote; and not to mention that the name Sesostris is not Egyptian, we may rank this event, like many others of the same date, among the romances and fairy tales. Nothing is more common among a conquered people than to tell strange stories of their former grandeur, just as, in some countries, certain wretched families, in want of the common necessaries of life, pride themselves upon being descended from ancient sovereigns. The Egyptian priests told Herodotus that this king, whom he called Sesostris, went on an expedition to conquer Colchis, which is much the same as if we were to say that a king of France set out from Touraine to conquer Norway.
  • It avails not that these stories are found repeated in a thousand different writers; it makes them not a whit more probable; it is much more natural to suppose that the fierce and athletic inhabitants of Mount Caucasus, of Colchis, and the other parts of Scythia, who so often made incursions upon and ravaged Asia, might have penetrated as far as Egypt; and although the priests of Colchis might afterwards have carried back with them the form of circumcision, yet that is no kind of proof that they were ever conquered by the Egyptians. Diodorus Siculus tells us that all the kings who were conquered by Sesostris came every year from their own kingdoms to bring him their respective tributes, when Sesostris made them draw the chariot in which he went in triumph to the temples of his gods. These old women’s stories we see every day gravely copied by other writers; it must be confessed that these kings were very complaisant, to come every year so far to be made hackney horses of.
  • As to their pyramids, and other monuments of antiquity, they prove nothing but the pride and bad taste of the Egyptian princes, and the wretched slavery of a weak people, who employed their strength, which was their only support, in pleasing the barbarous ostentation of their masters. The polity of these people, even in those times which are so much cried up, appears to have been both absurd and tyrannical; they pretended that the whole universe belonged to their monarchy. It well became such an abject race to set up for conquerors of the world!
  • The profound learning which we find attributed to the Egyptian priests is also one of the most ridiculous absurdities in ancient history, that is to say, in fable. People who pretended that in a revolution of eleven thousand years the sun had risen twice in the west and set twice in the east in beginning his course anew were doubtless curious astronomers. The religion of these priests, who governed the state, was inferior even to that of the most savage people of America; every one knows that crocodiles, monkeys, cats, and onions were the objects of their adoration; and there is not perhaps in the world so absurd a worship, excepting that of the Great Lama.
  • Their arts were as mean as their religion; there is not one ancient Egyptian statue fit to be seen; and whatever they had amongst them of any merit came from Alexandria in the times of the Ptolemies and Cæsars and was the work of Grecian artists; nay, they were even obliged to send to Greece for masters to teach them geometry.
  • The illustrious Bossuet, in his discourse upon universal history, dedicated to the son of Louis the Fourteenth, runs wild in his encomiums upon the merits of the Egyptians; this may dazzle the understanding of a young prince, but will never satisfy men of learning. This production is a very fine piece of eloquence, but a historian should be more of the philosopher than the orator. The reflections here offered concerning the Egyptians are merely conjectural; for by what other name can we call anything that is said concerning antiquity?
  • [27] Though we do not presume to doubt the suffering of St. Ignatius, yet, can any man of common understanding, who reads the account of his martyrdom, prevent some doubts from rising in his mind? The unknown author of this narrative says: “Trajan thought his glory would not be complete unless he subjected the God of the Christians to his obedience.” What a thought! Was Trajan the kind of man who could desire to triumph over the gods? The emperor is said to have thus accosted Ignatius when he was brought before him: “Who art thou, unclean spirit?” It is very unlikely that an emperor would have discoursed with a prisoner, or have passed sentence upon him himself; it is not customary for sovereign princes to do so. Trajan might possibly cause Ignatius to be brought before him, but he would not say to him, “Who art thou?” since he knew very well who he was. And as to the term “unclean spirit,” could it possibly have been used by such a man as Trajan? Is it not evident that this is an expression used in exorcising, and put by a Christian into the emperor’s mouth? Good heavens! what a style for Trajan.
  • Can we imagine that Ignatius answered him that he was called Theophorus, because he carried Jesus in his heart, and that Trajan entered into a long conversation with him concerning Christ? They make Trajan say at the end of this conference: “We command that Ignatius, who glories in carrying within him the crucified man, be thrown into prison loaded with chains,” etc. A sophist, a foe to Christianity, might call Jesus Christ the crucified man; but it is hardly probable that such a term would have been used in a decree. The punishment of the cross was so common among the Romans that they could not in their law style think of distinguishing by the words “crucified man” the object of the Christians’ worship; nor is it in this manner that the laws or the emperors pronounced sentence.
  • They afterwards make Ignatius write a long letter to the Christians of Rome. “I write to you,” says he, “though loaded with chains.” Certainly, if he was allowed to write to the Christians of Rome, those Christians were not considered as the objects of persecution; consequently, Trajan could have no design to subject their God to his obedience; or, on the other hand, if these Christians were actually liable to persecution, Ignatius was guilty of very great imprudence in regard to them, since this was betraying them to their enemies and making himself an informer against them.
  • Surely those who had the compiling of these facts should have had greater regard to probability and the circumstances of the times. The martyrdom of St. Polycarp also occasions some doubts. It is said that a voice called to him from heaven, saying: “Courage, Polycarp!” that this voice was distinctly heard by the Christians, but by no other of the attendants: we are told also, that when Polycarp was tied to the stake, and the fire lighted round him, the flames parted asunder, and a dove flew out from the midst of them; and that this saint, to whom the fire showed so much respect, exhaled an aromatic odor that perfumed the whole assembly; nevertheless, he whom the fire dared not to approach, could not resist the edge of the sword. Surely we may hope for pardon if we discover more piety than truth in these relations.
  • [28] Hist. Ecclesiast. lib. viii.
  • [29] The Catholic priests are now numbered by thousands in Great Britain and Ireland.
  • [30] See Mr. Locke’s excellent letter upon toleration.
  • [31] The Jesuit Busembaum, and his commentator, the Jesuit La Croix, tell us, that it “is lawful to kill any prince excommunicated by the Pope, of whatsoever country, because the whole world belongs to the Pope; and that whoever accepts of or executes such commission does a meritorious and charitable act.” It is this maxim which seems to have been invented in the madhouses of hell, that has almost stirred up all France against the Jesuits, who are now more than ever reproached for this doctrine, which they have so often preached, and as often disavowed. They have endeavored to justify themselves by producing nearly the same maxims in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and several Dominicans.* It is true, indeed, that this St. Thomas, the angelic Doctor and Interpreter of the Divine Will, advances that an apostate prince loses his right to the crown, and forfeits the obedience due to him from his subjects;† that the Church may condemn him to death; that the Emperor Julian was permitted to reign only because he was too powerful to be resisted: that we ought to kill every heretic:‡ that those who deliver a people from the government of a tyrannical prince, etc., etc. We have, * Peruse, if you can get it, the let­ter of a lay­man to a di­vine on the sub­ject of St. Thom­as, a Jes­uit­ical pamph­let pub­lished in 1762. † Lib. ii. part ii. ques­tion 12. ‡ Ibid. Ques­tions 11 and 12. doubt­less, a great res­pect for the an­gel of the schools; but if he had preached up such maxims in France at the time of his brother James Cle­ment, and the men­di­cant Rav­aillac, his an­gel­i­cal doc­tor­ship would have met with but a scurvy reception.
  • It must be confessed that John Ger­son, chanc­ellor of the Un­i­vers­ity, car­ried the mat­ter yet furth­er than St. Thom­as; and John Petit, the Fran­ciscan, still fur­ther than Ger­son. Sev­eral of the or­der openly maintained the detestable maxims of their brother Petit. It must be acknowledged that this hellish doctrine of king-killing proceeds wholly from the ridiculous notion which has so long prevailed amongst all orders of monks, that the Pope is a God upon earth, and can dispose of the crowns and lives of sovereigns at his pleasure. In this respect, we are inferior even to those Tartarian idolaters who held the Grand Lama to be immortal; greedily gather the contents of his close-stool, dry these precious relics with great care, enclose them in rich cases, and kiss them with the warmest devotion. For my part, I confess that I had rather, for the good of my country, and the sake of public tranquillity, carry those relics constantly about my neck, than to give my assent to the Pope’s having in any case whatsoever an authority over the temporals of kings, or even those of a private person.
  • [32] Chap. ii. 11–14.
  • [33] Deut. xiv.
  • [34] Agreeable to my intention of making some useful notes upon this treatise, I shall here observe that although God is said to have made a covenant with Noah, and with all the beasts of the field, yet he permits him to eat of every thing that has the breath of life, excepting only the eating of blood, which he positively prohibits; and moreover adds that “the Lord will take vengeance of every beast by whom man’s blood shall be shed.”
  • From these passages and several others of the like tenor, we may infer, with all the sages of ancient and present times, and with every person of enlightened conceptions, that beasts are endowed with some knowledge. We do not find God making a covenant with trees or with stones that have no sense; but He does with the beasts, whom it has pleased Him to endow with senses, frequently more exquisite than our own, and consequently with those ideas that are necessarily connected with sense. It is for this reason that He prohibits the barbarous custom of feeding upon their blood, the blood being the source of life, and consequently of sense. Take away all the blood from an animal and all his organs will immediately cease from action. It is therefore with the greatest justice that we find it said in so many different parts of the Holy Scripture, that the soul, that is to say, what was called the sensitive soul, is in the blood; an opinion perfectly agreeable to nature, and as such received by all nations.
  • It is upon this opinion that we found that pity which we ought to show to all animals. It is one of the seven precepts of the Noachides that were adopted by the Jews, that no one shall eat the limb of a living animal. This precept is a proof that mankind had formerly the cruelty to mutilate animals in order to feast upon the limbs so cut off, and to leave the creatures living, in order to feed successively upon the other parts of their bodies; a custom which we find to have actually subsisted among some barbarous nations—witness the sacrifices offered in the island of Chios to Bacchus Omadios, or the eater of raw flesh. God, by permitting the flesh of animals to serve us for food, seems to recommend them to our humanity. It must be confessed that there is great cruelty in putting them to torture, and that nothing but custom could have lessened in us the natural abhorrence of slaughtering an animal that we have fed with our own hands. There have in all times been sects who have made a religious scruple of such practices, as do to this day all the inhabitants of the Peninsula of the Ganges. The whole sect of Pythagoreans, both in Greece and Italy, constantly abstained from the eating of flesh. And Porphyry, in his book upon “Abstinence,” reproaches his disciples with having quitted their sect only for the sake of indulging an inhuman appetite.
  • It is in my opinion a giving up of the light of reason, to pretend to assert that beasts are no more than mere machines; for is it not a manifest contradiction to acknowledge that God has given them the organs of sense, and then to affirm that they have no sense?
  • Besides, I think one must never have made any observation upon animals, not to distinguish in them the different cries of want, suffering, joy, fear, love, anger, and indeed all other affections of the mind or body; surely, it would be very strange that they should so well express what they have no sense of!
  • This remark may furnish abundant matter of reflection to inquisitive minds, in relation to the power and goodness of the Creator, who has been pleased to bestow life, sense, ideas, and memory on those beings whose organs he has formed with His own all-powerful hand. As to us, we neither know how these organs are formed, how they are unfolded, in what manner we receive life, nor by what laws sense, ideas, memory, and will are annexed to that life; and yet in this dark and ternal state of ignorance inherent to our natures, we are perpetually disputing with, and persecuting one another, like the bulls of the field, who fight with their horns, without knowing for what use, or in what manner those horns were given them.
  • [35] Amos v. 26.
  • [36] Jer. vii. 22.
  • [37] Acts vii. 42.
  • [38] Deut. xii. 8.
  • [39] Several writers have too rashly concluded from this passage that the chapter concerning the golden calf—which is no other than the Egyptian god Apis—has, as well as many other chapters, been added to the books of Moses.
  • Eben-Ezra was the first who undertook to prove that the Pentateuch—or the five books of Moses—was written in the times of the Kings. Wollaston, Collins, Tindal, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and many others have asserted that in those ages men had no other way of committing their thoughts to writing but by engraving them upon polished stone, brick, lead, or wood; and tell us that in the time of Moses the Chaldæans and Egyptians had no other way of writing, and that then they could engrave but in a very abridged manner, and by hieroglyphics, the substance only of such things as they thought worthy of being transmitted to posterity, and could never form any regular histories; then it was next to an impossibility to engrave books of any considerable bulk in the wilderness, where they were continually changing their habitation; where they had no person to furnish them with clothing, to make that clothing for them, or even to mend their sandals, and where God was obliged to perform a miracle to preserve the garments of His people entire. They say that it is hardly probable that there should have been so many engravers among them, at the time that they were so deficient in the more necessary arts of life, and did not know even how to make bread; and if we answer to this, that the pillars of the tabernacle were of brass, and their chapiters of massy silver they reply, that though the order for this might have been given in the wilderness, it was not executed till after they were settled in perfect tranquillity.
  • They cannot conceive, they say, how the Israelites, who were a poor and vagabond people, could have asked for a calf of massy gold to be erected for the object of their adoration, at the foot of the very mountain where God was then talking with Moses, and in the very midst of the thunder and lightning, and the sound of the heavenly trumpet, which were heard and seen by all present. They profess their astonishment that it should have been only the day before Moses descended from the mountain, that all the people should have addressed themselves to his brother Aaron to raise this golden calf; or how it was possible for Aaron to have cast such an image in one single day; and still more, how Moses could have reduced it into an impalpable powder. They say that it is impossible for any artist to make a statue of gold in less than three months, and that not all the possible efforts of the chemical art are sufficient to reduce such a mass into a powder that may be swallowed, and consequently, that the prevarication of Aaron and this operation of Moses must have been two miracles.
  • Deceived by the humanity and goodness of their hearts, they cannot believe that Moses slaughtered three and twenty thousand souls to expiate this crime; nor, that so many men would have tamely suffered themselves to be murdered without a third miracle. Lastly, they think it very extraordinary that Aaron, who was the most guilty of all, should have been rewarded for that very crime for which the rest underwent so dreadful a punishment, by being created high-priest, and go to offer sacrifice at the high altar, while the bodies of three and twenty thousand of his slaughtered brethren lay bleeding round him.
  • They start the same difficulties concerning the eighty thousand Israelites who were slain by order of Moses, to atone for the crime of a single one of them, for being surprised with a Moabite woman; and seeing that Solomon, and so many other of the Jewish kings did, without being punished for it, take to themselves strange wives, they cannot conceive what great crime there could be in an individual making an alliance with one Moabite woman.
  • Ruth was a Moabitess, though her family was originally of Bethlehem; the Scripture always distinguishes her by the name of Ruth the Moabitess; and yet she went and laid herself by the side of Boaz, received six measures of barley from him, was afterwards married to him, and was the grandmother of David. Rahab was not only a stranger, but also a common prostitute, or a harlot, as she is called in Scripture; yet she was taken to wife by Solomon, a prince of Judæa; from whom also David was descended. This Rahab is taken to be a type of the Christian church by several of the ancient fathers; and especially by Origen, in his seventh homily on Joshua.
  • Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, by whom David begat Solomon, was a Hittite. And if we go farther back, we shall find that the patriarch Judah married a Canaanitess; and his sons lay with Thamar, who was of the race of Aaron; and the woman with whom Judah, without knowing it, committed incest, was not of the Israelitish race.
  • Thus then was our Lord Jesus Christ pleased to take upon him flesh in a family descended from five aliens, to show that all nations should partake of his inheritance. The rabbi Eben-Ezra was, as we have already observed, the first who undertook to prove that the Pentateuch was compiled long after the time of Moses; and for his authority quotes several passages in those books; and amongst others the following: “The Canaanite then dwelt in that land. The mountain of Moriah, called the Mountain of God. The bed of Og, king of Bashan, is still to be seen in Rabah. And the country of Bashan is called the villages of Jaiar unto this day. Never was there a prophet seen in Israel like unto Moses. These are the kings who reigned in Edom, before any king reigned over Israel.” He pretends that these passages, in which mention is made of events that happened long after the time of Moses, could never have been written by Moses himself. To this it is replied, that these passages were added long after by way of notes by the transcribers.
  • Newton, whose name ought on every other occasion to be mentioned with respect, but who, as a man, may have been liable to error, in the introduction to his commentaries upon Daniel and St. John, ascribes the five books of Moses, Joshua, and Judges to holy writers of much later date; and founds his opinion on the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis, the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twenty-first chapters of Judges, the eighth chapter of Samuel, the second chapter of Chronicles, and the fourth chapter of the book of Ruth; and indeed, considering that in the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis we find mention made of Kings, and that David is spoken of in the books of Judges and that of Ruth, it should seem that those books were compiled in the times of the Kings. This is also the opinion of several divines, at the head of whom is the famous Le Clerc. But there are very few of those who are followers of this opinion, that have had the curiosity to fathom these mysteries; a curiosity which certainly makes no part of the duty of man. For when the learned and the ignorant, the prince and the peasant, shall, after this short life, appear together before the throne of Eternal Majesty, every one of us then will wish to have been just and humane, generous and compassionate; and no one will pride himself in having known exactly the year in which the Pentateuch was written, or in having been able to distinguish the true text from the additional notes in use among the Scribes. God will not ask us whether we were of the opinion of the Masorites against the Talmud, or whether we may not have mistaken a Caph for a Beth, a Yod for a Vau, or a Daleth for a Resh. No, certainly; but he will judge us according to our deeds, and not according to our knowledge of the Hebrew language. Let us therefore abide firmly by the decision of the Church, so far as is agreeable to the reasonable duty of a believer.
  • We will conclude this note with an important passage from Leviticus, a book composed after the time of the golden calf. The Jews are there commanded no more to offer their sacrifices to goats with whom they have gone a-whoring.* We cannot say whether this strange worship came from Egypt, the country of sorcery and superstition; but there is reason to believe, that the custom of our pretended magicians of keeping a Sabbath apart, for adoring a goat, and committing such detestable uncleanliness with it as is shocking to conception, came from the ancient Jews, as it is certain that they first taught a part of Europe the practice of magic. What a detestable people! Surely * Leviticus vii. and xviii. 22. such infamous and unnatural practices deserve the punishment at least equal to that which befell them for worshipping the golden calf; and yet, we find the lawgiver contents himself with simply prohibiting those practices. We have quoted this subject only to show what the Jewish nation was; the sin of bestiality must certainly have been very common amongst them, since they are the only people we know among whom there was a necessity for any law to prohibit that crime, the commission of which was not even suspected by any other legislators.
  • There is reason to believe that on account of the fatigues and distresses which the Jews suffered in the deserts of Paran, Horeb, and Kadash-Barnea, the female species, which is always the weakest, might have failed amongst them; and it is certain that the Jews were greatly in want of women, since we find them almost always commanded, when they conquered any town or village, to the right or left of the lake Asphaltes, to put all the inhabitants to the sword, excepting only the young women who were of an age to know man.
  • The Arabs, who still inhabit a part of these deserts, stipulate to this day in the treaties which they make with the caravans, that they shall furnish them with marriageable women; so that it is not improbable but that the young men of those barren countries might have carried the depravation of human nature so far as to have had carnal commerce with goats, as is related of the shepherds of Calabria.
  • It is still, however, uncertain whether any monsters were produced by this unnatural copulation, and whether there is any foundation for the ancient stories of satyrs, fauns, centaurs, and minotaurs; history says there is; but natural philosophy has not yet cleared up to us this monstrous circumstance.
  • [40] Num. xxi 9.
  • [41] Midian was not included in the Land of Promise; it is a little canton of Idumæa, in Arabia Petræa, beginning to the northward of the torrent of Arron, and ending at the torrent of Zared, in the midst of rocks on the eastern border of the lake Asphaltes. This country is inhabited by a small Arabian horde or tribe, and may be about eight leagues long and about seven in breadth.
  • [42] Num. xxxi.
  • [43] Num. xxxi. 40.
  • [44] It is plain by the text that Jephthah did actually sacrifice his daughter. Doctor Calmet; in his dissertation upon Jephthah’s vow, says, that “God did not approve these vows; but when once any one had made them, he insisted upon their being fulfilled, was it only to punish those who made them, and to put a check upon them in the doing it by fear of being obliged to perform them.” This action of Jephthah is condemned by St. Augustine and almost all the fathers, although the Scripture says that he was filled with the spirit of God; and St. Paul in the eleventh chapter of his Epistle to the Hebrews, greatly praises Jephthah, exalting him even above Samuel and David.
  • St. Jerome, in his Epistle to Julian, expresses himself thus; “Jephthah sacrificed his daughter to the Lord, and therefore the Apostle has placed him among the saints.” Here now is a diversity in opinions, concerning which it is not permitted us to pronounce a decision; nay, it is even dangerous to have any opinion of our own.
  • [45] The death of Agag, king of the Amalekites, may be looked upon as a real sacrifice. Saul had made this prince a prisoner of war, and had admitted him to a capitulation notwithstanding that the priest and the prophet Samuel had charged him to spare no one; saying to him expressly: “Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”—“And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord at Gilgal.”
  • “The zeal with which this prophet was animated,” says Calmet, “put a sword into his hand on this occasion, to revenge the honor of God, and to confound Saul.”
  • In this melancholy adventure, we have a vow, a priest, and a victim; consequently, it is a real sacrifice. We find from history that most nations, the Chinese excepted, were wont to sacrifice human victims to the Deity; Plutarch says, that this custom prevailed even among the Romans at some certain times. Cæsar in his “Commentaries” tells us that the Germans were going to sacrifice two of his officers, whom he had sent to confer with their king, Ariovistus, had not Cæsar delivered them by beating the German army. I have in another place observed,* that this violation of the laws of nations, and the offering of human victims, which was rendered more horrible by its being done by the hands of their women, seems a little to contradict Tacitus’s panegyric on them in his treatise “De Moribus Germanorum,” which seems rather to have been designed as a satire upon the Roman people, than to praise the Germans, to whom he was an utter stranger. And here we may observe by the way, that Tacitus was fonder of satire than of truth; he labors to throw everything, even the most indifferent actions, into an odious point of light; and his malice pleases us as much as his style, because we are naturally fond of wit and slander.
  • But to return to the subject of human sacrifices. This custom prevailed as much among our forefathers as with * Additions to Gen­e­ral His­tory, part i., of Vol­taire. the Germans; it is the lowest degree of debasement to which human nature can fall when left to herself, and is one of the effects of the weakness of mortal understanding, which reasons thus: We ought to offer to God whatever we have of most pleasing or valuable; there is nothing more valuable than our children; therefore we ought to select the youngest and most beautiful to sacrifice them to the Deity.
  • Philo says that the Canaanites used to offer their children in sacrifice, before God had commanded Abraham, as a trial of his faith, to offer up his only son, Isaac.
  • Sanchoniathon, as quoted by Eusebius, says that the Phœnicians, when threatened with any great danger or distress, offered up the most favorite of their children, and that Ilus sacrificed his son, Jehud, much about the same time that God made the trial of Abraham’s faith. It is very difficult to penetrate into the dark recesses of early antiquity; but it is too melancholy a truth that these horrible sacrifices were almost everywhere in use; and men have laid them aside, only in proportion as they have become civilized. So true is it that civilization is the nurse of humanity.
  • [46] Ezek. xxxix. 49.
  • [47] Judges ix. 24.
  • [48] Judges xvii. last verse.
  • [49] Judges xviii. 11–29.
  • [50] Judges xviii. 11–39.
  • [51] The author evidently confounds Elisha and Elijah.
  • [52] Those who are unacquainted with the customs of antiquity, and who judge only from what they see about them, may possibly be astonished at this odd command; but they should reflect, that at those times it was the custom in Egypt, and most part of Assyria, to express things by hieroglyphical figures, signs, and types.
  • The prophets, who were called seers by the Egyptians and Jews, not only expressed themselves in allegories, but also represented by signs those events which they foretold. Thus we find Isaiah, the chief of the four greater prophets, taking a roll and writing therein, “Maher-Shalal-Hashbaz,” that is, “Make haste to the spoil”; and going in unto the prophetess, she conceived and bare a son, whom the Lord called Maher-Shalal-Hashbaz. This is a type of the evils which were to be brought upon the Jews by the people of Egypt and Assyria.
  • The prophet also says: “Before that the child shall be of an age to eat butter and honey, to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that they abhorred shall be delivered of both her kings; and the Lord will hiss to the flies of Egypt, and for the bees of Assyr, and the Lord will shave with a razor that is hired, the beard and the hair of the feet of the king of Assyria.”*
  • This prophecy of the bees, and of the shaving of the beard, and of the hair of the feet, can be understood only by those who know that it was a custom to call the swarms of bees together by the sound of a flageolet or pipe, or some other rustic instrument; that the greatest affront that could be done to any man was to cut off his beard; and that the hair on the private parts was called the hair of the feet, which was never shaven but in cases of leprosy, or other unclean disorders. All these figures, which would appear so strange in our style, signify nothing more than that the Lord will, in the course of a few years, deliver His people from captivity.
  • We find the same prophet walking naked and barefoot to show that the king of Assyria shall lead away the Egyptians and Ethiopians captives, without their having wherewithal to cover their nakedness.†
  • The prophet Ezekiel eats the roll of parchment which God had given him; afterwards he eats his bread covered with excrement, and continues to lie on his left side three hundred and ninety days, and forty days on his right side, to show that the Jews should want bread, and as a type of the number of years they were to remain in captivity. He loads himself with chains, as a figure of those that they are to wear; and he cuts off the hair of his head and of his beard, and divides them into three parts; the first of these portions is a type of those who are to perish in the city of Jerusalem; the second, of such as are to be slain without the walls; and the third, of those who are to be carried away to Babylon.‡
  • The prophet Hosea takes to himself a woman who is an adulteress, and whom he purchases for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an homer and a half of barley, and says unto her: “Thou shalt abide for me many days, thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be for another man, for so shall the children of Israel abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim”;§ in a word, the seers or pro­phets scarcely ever foretell any­thing with­out using a type or sign of the thing fore­told.
  • Jeremiah therefore only conformed to the usual cus­tom when he bound him­self with cords, and put bonds and yokes * Isaiah vii. 15–18. † Isaiah xx. ‡ Ezek. iv. seq. § Hosea iii. upon his neck, as fig­ures of the ap­proach­ing slav­ery of those to whom he sent them, and if we at­tend prop­er­ly to these things, we shall find the times here spoken of to be like those of an old world, dif­fer­ing in ev­ery­thing from the new so­cie­ty. The laws, the man­ner of ma­king war, were all ab­so­lute­ly dif­fer­ent; and if we on­ly open Homer and the first book of Hero­do­tus, we need no­thing more to con­vince us that there is not the least re­semb­lance be­tween the peo­ple of early an­tiq­ui­ty and our­selves; hence we ought to dis­trust our own judgment, when we attempt to compare their manners with ours. Even nature herself is not now the same she was then; magicians and sorcerers had at that time a power over her which they no longer possess; they enchanted serpents, they raised the dead out of their tombs, etc. God sent dreams, and men interpreted them. The gift of prophecy was common. And we read of several metamorphoses, such as of Nebuchadnezzar into an ox, of Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, and of five whole cities changed in an instant into a burning lake.
  • There were likewise several species of men that no longer exist. The race of giants, Rephaim, Emim, Nephilim, and Enacim, have totally disappeared. St. Augustine, in his fifth book “De Civitate Dei,” says that he saw a tooth of one of those ancient giants that was at least a hundred times as large as one of our grinders. Ezekiel speaks of pygmies (Gamadim), not above a cubit high, who fought at the siege of Tyre; and almost all writers, sacred and profane, have agreed in the truth of these relations.
  • In fine, the ancient world was so different from ours that there is no drawing any rule for our conduct from it; and if in the earliest ages of antiquity we find mankind mutually persecuting and destroying one another on account of their different faiths, far be it from us, who live under the enlightened law of grace, to copy after such originals.
  • [53] Jer. xxvii. xxviii.
  • [54] Isaiah xliv. and xlv.
  • [55] Malachi i. 1.
  • [56] Deut. xxviii. 28 and seq.
  • [57] There is but one passage in the whole Mosaic law from which one might conclude that Moses was acquainted with the reigning opinion among the Egyptians, that the soul did not die with the body. This passage is very particular, and is in the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy: “There shall not be found among you any one that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits (Python), or a wizard, or a necromancer.” From this passage it appears that by invoking the souls of the dead this pretended necromancy supposed a permanency of the soul. It might also happen that the necromancers of whom Moses speaks, being but ignorant deceivers, might not have a distinct idea of the magic they operated. They made people believe that they forced the dead to speak, and by the power of their art restored the body to the same state as when living; without once examining whether their ridiculous operations might authorize the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The ancient magicians were never philosophers; they were at best but a set of stupid jugglers, who played their tricks before as illiterate spectators.
  • But what is very strange and worthy of observation is that the word “python” should be found in Deuteronomy so long before that Greek term was known to the Hebrews; and indeed this word is not to be found in the Hebrew, of which we have never had a good translation.
  • There are many insurmountable difficulties in this language; it is a mixture of Phœnician, Egyptian, Syriac, and Arabic, and has undergone many alterations to the present time. The Hebrew verbs had only two moods, the present and the future; the rest were to be guessed at by the sense. The different vowels were frequently expressed by the same characters, or rather, indeed, they were not expressed at all; and the inventors of points have only increased the difficulties they meant to remove. Every adverb had twenty different significations, and the same word had frequently several contrary senses. Add to this that the language was in itself very dry and barren; for the Jews, not being acquainted with the arts, could not express what they knew nothing of. In a word, the Hebrew is to the Greek what the language of a pedant is to that of an academic.
  • [58] Ezek. xviii. 20.
  • [59] The opinion of Ezekiel was at length the prevailing one of the synagogue; not but that there were always some Jews who, though they believed in a state of eternal punishment, yet believed at the same time that God punished the sins of the fathers upon the children. At present, indeed, they are punished even beyond the fiftieth generation, and yet are in danger of eternal punishment. It may be asked how the offsprings of those Jews who were not concerned in putting Christ to death can be temporarily punished in the persons of their children, who were as innocent as themselves. This temporal punishment, or rather this manner of living, so different from all other people, and of trading over the whole earth without having any country of their own, cannot be considered as a punishment, compared with what they are to expect hereafter on account of their unbelief, and which they might avoid by a sincere repentance.
  • [60] Ezek. xx. 25.
  • [61] Those who have thought to discover the doctrine of hell and heaven, such as it is now believed by us, in the Mosaic books, have been strangely mistaken; their error is owing entirely to an idle dispute about words: the Vulgate having translated the Hebrew word Sheol, the pit, by the Latin word infernum, and this latter having been rendered in French by enfer, hell, they have taken occasion from this equivocal translation to establish a belief that the ancient Hebrews had a notion of the Hades and Tartarus of the Greeks, known to other nations before them by different appellations.
  • We are told in the sixteenth chapter of Numbers, that the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up Korah, Dathan, and Abiron, and they and all that appertained to them went down alive into the pit, or grave; now certainly there is nothing said in this passage concerning the souls of these three persons, nor yet of the torments of hell, nor of eternal punishments.
  • It is very extraordinary that the authors of the “Dictionnaire Encyclopédique” under the word hell (enfer) should say that the ancient Hebrews believed in its existence. If this be true, there would be an insurmountable contradiction in the Pentateuch; for why should Moses have spoken of the punishment after death in one single passage only, of all his works. On this occasion they quote the thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy; but after a mutilated manner. The whole passage is as follows: “They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God, they have provoked me to anger with their vanities, and I will move them to jealousy with those that are not a people, I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. For a fire is kindled in my anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell; and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat and with bitter destruction; I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.”
  • But have any or all of these expressions the least relation to the idea of hell-torments? On the contrary, it seems as if these words were purposely inserted to prove that our hell was unknown to the ancient Jews.
  • The author of this article quotes also the following passage from the twenty-fourth chapter of Job: “The eye of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, no eye shall see me, and disguiseth his face. In the dark they dig through houses which they had marked for themselves in the daytime. They know not the light, for the morning is to them as the shadow of death; if one know them, they are in the terrors of the shadow of death. He is swift as the waters, their portion is cursed in the earth, he beholdeth not the way of the vineyards. Drought and heat consume the snow-waters, so doth the grave those who have sinned.”
  • I quote these passages entire, otherwise it will be impossible to form a true idea of them. But let me ask if there is the least expression here from which one may conclude that Moses ever taught the Jews the clear and simple doctrine of eternal rewards and punishments?
  • Not to mention that the Book of Job has nothing to do with the Mosaic law, there is great reason to believe that Job himself was not a Jew; this is the opinion of St. Jerome in his “Hebrew Questions upon Genesis.” The word Satan, which occurs in Job, was not known to the Jews, nor is it anywhere to be found in the five books of Moses. This name, as well as those of Gabriel and Raphael, were entirely unknown to the Jews before their captivity in Babylon. It would appear, then, that Job is very improperly quoted in this place.
  • But the last chapter of Isaiah is likewise brought in, where it is said: “And it shall come to pass that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord. And they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.”
  • Certainly, the casting out of these bodies to the view of all passengers, even to abhorring, and their being eaten by worms, can never mean that Moses taught the Jews the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; and the words “the fire shall not be quenched” can as little signify that the bodies so exposed to public view were to suffer eternal torments in hell.
  • How can any one quote a passage in Isaiah to prove that the Jews in the time of Moses had adopted the doctrine of the immortality of the soul? According to the Hebrew computation, Isaiah prophesied about the year of the world 3380. Moses lived about the year 2500; therefore there was a distance of eight centuries between the one and the other. Now it is an insult to common sense, a downright mockery, thus to abuse the licence of quoting, by pretending to prove that a writer was of this or that opinion from a passage in another writer who lived eight hundred years after him, and who has not even made any mention of such opinion. It is beyond contradiction that the immortality of the soul, and rewards and punishments after death, are clearly and positively expressed and declared in the New Testament, and it is equally certain, that nothing concerning them is to be found in any one part of the five books of Moses.
  • Notwithstanding that the Jews did afterwards embrace this doctrine, they were far from having a proper idea of the spirituality of the soul; they thought, in common with most other nations, that the soul was an uncompounded aerial light substance that retained the appearance of the body it had formerly animated; and hence came the term apparition, manes of the dead. Several fathers of the Church were of the same opinion. Tertullian, in his twenty-second chapter “De Anima,” expresses himself thus: “Definimus animam Dei flatu natam, immortalem, corporalem, effigiatam, substantia simplicem”; that is, “We define the soul a substance, formed by the breath of God; of an immortal, corporeal, figurative, and simple nature.”
  • St. Irenæus, in the thirty-fourth chapter of his second book, says: “Incorporales sunt animæ quantum ad comparationem mortalium corporum.” “Souls are incorporeal in comparison of mortal bodies.” Adding, “Christ has taught us that the soul retains the image of the body”; “Caracterem corporum in quo adoptantur,” etc. Christ does not appear ever to have taught such a doctrine, and it is difficult to understand what St. Irenæus means in this passage.
  • St. Hilarius, in his commentary on St. Matthew, is still more express and positive; he roundly asserts the soul to have a corporeal substance, “Corpoream naturæ suæ substantiam sortiuntur.”
  • St. Ambrose on Abraham, book ii. chap. viii., will have it that there is nothing free from matter, unless it be the substance of the Blessed Trinity.
  • These reverend fathers seem to have been very indifferent philosophers; but there is the greatest reason to believe that their divinity was in the main very sound, inasmuch as, notwithstanding their ignorance of the incomprehensible nature of the soul, they asserted it to be immortal, and endeavored to make it Christian.
  • We know that the soul is of a spiritual nature, but we do not at all know what spirit is. We are very imperfectly acquainted with matter; nor is it possible for us to have a distinct idea of what is not matter. Hardly capable of understanding what effects our senses have, we cannot of ourselves know anything of what surpasses the bound of those senses. We carry some few words of our common language into the inexplorable depths of metaphysics and divinity, in order to acquire some slight idea of those things, which we could never conceive or express; and we use those words as props to support the steps of our feeble understandings in travelling through those unknown regions.
  • Thus we make use of the word spirit, which is the same as breath or air, to express something which is not matter; and this word breath, air, spirit, inspiring us insensibly with an idea of an uncompounded and light substance, we still refine upon this as much as possible, in order to obtain a proper conception of pure and simple spirituality; but we shall never be able to obtain a distinct notion of this, we do not even know what we say, when we pronounce the word substance; in its literal signification, it signifies something beneath, and thereby shows us that it is incomprehensible; for what is meant by that which is beneath? The knowledge of the secrets of God is not to be acquired in this life. Plunged as we are in mortal obscurity, we fight against one another, and strike at random in the darkness with which we are surrounded, without precisely knowing for what we are fighting.
  • If mankind would consider all this with attention, every reasonable person will be ready to conclude that we ought to have the greatest indulgence for the opinions of others, and by our conduct endeavor to merit the same from them.
  • The above remarks are not at all foreign to the principal point in question, which is to know whether men are bound to tolerate one another; inasmuch as by proving that in all times those of different opinions have been alike mistaken, it appears to have been the duty of all mankind in every age to treat each other with kindness and forbearance.
  • [62] The doctrine of predestination is of long standing and universal; we find it in Homer. Jupiter was desirous to save the life of his son Sarpedon; but destiny had marked him for death, and Jupiter was obliged to submit. Destiny was, with the philosophers, either the necessary concatenation of causes and effects necessarily produced by nature, or that same concatenation ordained by Providence; the latter of which is most reasonable. We find the whole system of fatality or predestination, comprised in this line of Annæus Seneca: “Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.” It has always been acknowledged that God governs the universe by eternal, universal and immutable laws; this truth gave rise to the many unintelligible disputes concerning free-will, which had never been defined before the great philosopher Locke arose, who has proved it to be the power of acting. God bestows this power, and man, acting freely according to the eternal decrees of Providence, is one of the wheels of the great machine of the universe. Free-will has been a subject of disputation from all antiquity; but no one until of late times was ever persecuted on this subject. How horrible, how absurd is it to have imprisoned and banished on account of this dispute a Pompone d’Andilly, an Arnauld, a Nicole, a Sacy, and so many others who were the shining lights of France!
  • [63] The theological romance of the Me­temp­sy­chosis came from India, a part of the world to which we are indebted for many more fables than is generally believed. We find this doctrine explained by that beautiful poet Ovid, in the twelfth book of his “Metamorphoses.” It has been received in almost every part of the world, and has everywhere met with its opposers; nevertheless, we do not find that any priest among the ancients ever caused a disciple of Pythagoras to be sent to prison.
  • [64] Neither the ancient Jews, the Egyptians, nor the Greeks, their contemporaries, believed that the soul of man went to heaven after death. The Jews thought that the sun and moon were placed some leagues above us in the same circle, and that the firmament was a thick and solid vault, that supported the weight of the waters, which, however, sometimes ran out through the crevices in this vault. The ancient Greeks placed the palace of their gods upon Mount Olympus. And the abode of heroes after death was, in Homer’s time, thought to be in an island beyond the ocean. This likewise was the opinion of the Essenians.
  • After Homer, planets were assigned to the gods; but there was no more reason for men to place a god in the moon than for the inhabitants of the moon to place a god in our planet of the earth. Juno and Iris had no other palaces assigned them but the clouds, where there was no place to rest the soles of their feet. Among the Sabæans every deity had its star. But as the stars are little suns, it would be impossible to live there without partaking of the nature of fire. Upon the whole, then, it is needless to inquire what the ancients thought of heaven; since the best answer that can be given is, they thought nothing about it.
  • [65] Matthew xxii. 1–13.
  • [66] St. Luke xiv.
  • [67] It was indeed very difficult, not to say impossible, for the Jews to comprehend, without an immediate revelation, the ineyable mystery of the incarnation of God, the Son of God. In the sixth chapter of Genesis we find the sons of great men called “the sons of God.” In like manner the royal Psalmist calls the tall cedars “the cedars of God.” Samuel says, “The fear of God fell upon the people”; that is, a violent fear seized them. A great tempest is called the wind of the Lord, and Saul’s distemper, the melancholy of the Lord. Nevertheless, the Jews seemed to have clearly understood that our Saviour called Himself the Son of God in the proper sense of that word; and if they looked upon this as a blasphemous expression, it is an additional proof of their ignorance of the incarnation, and of God, the Son of God, being sent upon earth for the redemption of mankind.
  • [68] Matthew xxvi. 61–64.
  • [69] See that excellent book, entitled, “The Manual of the Inquisition.”
  • [70] Now Bona, a town of Constantine in Africa. St. Augustine was bishop of this see above forty years. It now belongs to Algiers.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Original printed spelling and grammar are retained, with a few exceptions noted below. The original page numbers have been removed. The four illustrations were originally printed full page, with their captions printed alone on an adjacent page. In this edition, the captions are combined appropriately with the illustrations, which are moved to locations near their original locations, but between paragraphs of text. Scans of the original book may be found at archive.org—search for “works­of­vol­taire­04volt­iala”. The transcriber created the cover image, and hereby assigns it to the public domain.

[to CONTENTS]

There were seventy level-one footnotes, some ex­tend­ing over sev­eral pages, and nine level-two foot­notes anchored within level-one foot­notes. The sixty-nine level-one foot­notes associated with the Trea­tise on Tol­era­tion were re­num­bered, and are moved to the end of the book. The nested footnotes and the one other level-one footnote remain near their anchors.

Page 229: A matching right double quotation mark was added to the phrase “as God being their King, and ex­er­cis­ing jus­tice im­med­iate­ly upon them, according to their trans­gres­sion or obedience, found it not neces­sary to reveal to them a doc­trine which He reserved for after-times, when He should no longer so directly govern His people.