Part 21 (2/2)
”And what is the natural law?” replied the simple men. ”If that law is sufficient, why has he given any other? If it is not sufficient, why did he make it imperfect?”
”His judgments are mysteries,” said the doctors, ”and his justice is not like that of men.”
”If his justice,” replied the simple men, ”is not like ours, by what rule are we to judge of it? And, moreover, why all these laws, and what is the object proposed by them?”
”To render you more happy,” replied a doctor, ”by rendering you better and more virtuous. It is to teach man to enjoy his benefits, and not injure his fellows, that G.o.d has manifested himself by so many oracles and prodigies.”
”In that case,” said the simple men, ”there is no necessity for so many studies, nor of such a variety of arguments; only tell us which is the religion that best answers the end which they all propose.”
Immediately, on this, every group, extolling its own morality above that of all others, there arose among the different sects a new and most violent dispute.
”It is we,” said the Mussulmans, ”who possess the most excellent morals, who teach all the virtues useful to men and agreeable to G.o.d. We profess justice, disinterestedness, resignation to providence, charity to our brethren, alms-giving, and devotion; we torment not the soul with superst.i.tious fears; we live without alarm, and die without remorse.”
”How dare you speak of morals,” answered the Christian priests, ”you, whose chief lived in licentiousness and preached impurity? You, whose first precept is homicide and war? For this we appeal to experience: for these twelve hundred years your fanatical zeal has not ceased to spread commotion and carnage among the nations. If Asia, so flouris.h.i.+ng in former times, is now languis.h.i.+ng in barbarity and depopulation, it is in your doctrine that we find the cause; in that doctrine, the enemy of all instruction, which sanctifies ignorance, which consecrates the most absolute despotism in the governors, imposes the most blind and pa.s.sive obedience in the people, that has stupefied the faculties of man, and brutalized the nations.
”It is not so with our sublime and celestial morals; it was they which raised the world from its primitive barbarity, from the senseless and cruel superst.i.tions of idolatry, from human sacrifices,* from the shameful orgies of pagan mysteries; they it was that purified manners, proscribed incest and adultery, polished savage nations, banished slavery, and introduced new and unknown virtues, charity for men, their equality in the sight of G.o.d, forgiveness and forgetfulness of injuries, the restraint of all the pa.s.sions, the contempt of worldly greatness, a life completely spiritual and completely holy!”
* Read the cold declaration of Eusebius (Proep. Evang. lib.
I, p. 11,), who pretends that, since the coming of Christ, there have been neither wars, nor tyrants, nor cannibals, nor sodomites, nor persons committing incest, nor savages destroying their parents, etc. When we read these fathers of the church we are astonished at their insincerity or infatuation.
”We admire,” said the Mussulmans, ”the ease with which you reconcile that evangelical meekness, of which you are so ostentatious, with the injuries and outrages with which you are constantly galling your neighbors. When you criminate so severely the great man whom we revere, we might fairly retort on the conduct of him whom you adore; but we scorn such advantages, and confining ourselves to the real object in question, we maintain that the morals of your gospel have by no means that perfection which you ascribe to them; it is not true that they have introduced into the world new and unknown virtues: for example, the equality of men in the sight of G.o.d,--that fraternity and that benevolence which follow from it, were formal doctrines of the sect of the Hermatics or Samaneans,* from whom you descend. As to the forgiveness of injuries, the Pagans themselves had taught it; but in the extent that you give it, far from being a virtue, it becomes an immorality, a vice. Your so much boasted precept of turning one cheek after the other, is not only contrary to every sentiment of man, but is opposed to all ideas of justice. It emboldens the wicked by impunity, debases the virtuous by servility, delivers up the world to despotism and tyranny, and dissolves all society. Such is the true spirit of your doctrines. Your gospels in their precepts and their parables, never represent G.o.d but as a despot without any rules of equity; a partial father treating a debauched and prodigal son with more favor than his respectful and virtuous children; a capricious master, who gives the same wages to workmen who had wrought but one hour, as to those who had labored through the whole day; one who prefers the last comers to the first. The moral is everywhere misanthropic and antisocial; it disgusts men with life and with society; and tends only to encourage hermitism and celibacy.
* The equality of mankind in a state of nature and in the eyes of G.o.d was one of the princ.i.p.al tenets of the Samaneans, and they appear to be the only ancients that entertained this opinion.
”As to the manner in which you have practised these morals, we appeal in our turn to the testimony of facts. We ask whether it is this evangelical meekness which has excited your interminable wars between your sects, your atrocious persecutions of pretended heretics, your crusades against Arianism, Manicheism, Protestantism, without speaking of your crusades against us, and of those sacrilegious a.s.sociations, still subsisting, of men who take an oath to continue them?* We ask you whether it be gospel charity which has made you exterminate whole nations in America, to annihilate the empires of Mexico and Peru; which makes you continue to dispeople Africa and sell its inhabitants like cattle, notwithstanding your abolition of slavery; which makes you ravage India and usurp its dominions; and whether it be the same charity which, for three centuries past, has led you to harra.s.s the habitations of the people of three continents, of whom the most prudent, the Chinese and j.a.panese, were constrained to drive you off, that they might escape your chains and recover their internal peace?”
* The oath taken by the knights of the Order of Malta, is to kill, or make the Mahometans prisoners, for the glory of G.o.d.
Here the Bramins, the Rabbins, the Bonzes, the Chamans, the Priests of the Molucca islands, and the coasts of Guinea, loading the Christian doctors with reproaches: ”Yes!” cried they, ”these men are robbers and hypocrites, who preach simplicity, to surprise confidence; humility, to enslave with more ease; poverty, to appropriate all riches to themselves. They promise another world, the better to usurp the present; and while they speak to you of tolerance and charity, they burn, in the name of G.o.d, the men who do not wors.h.i.+p him in their manner.”
”Lying priests,” retorted the missionaries, ”it is you who abuse the credulity of ignorant nations to subjugate them. It is you who have made of your ministry an art of cheating and imposture; you have converted religion into a traffic of cupidity and avarice. You pretend to hold communications with spirits, and they give for oracles nothing but your wills. You feign to read the stars, and destiny decrees only your desires. You cause idols to speak, and the G.o.ds are but the instruments of your pa.s.sions. You have invented sacrifices and libations, to collect for your own profit the milk of flocks, and the flesh and fat of victims; and under the cloak of piety you devour the offerings of the G.o.ds, who cannot eat, and the substance of the people who are forced to labor.”
”And you,” replied the Bramins, the Bonzes, the Chamans, ”you sell to the credulous living, your vain prayers for the souls of the dead. With your indulgences and your absolutions you have usurped the power of G.o.d himself; and making a traffic of his favors and pardons, you have put heaven at auction; and by your system of expiations you have formed a tariff of crimes, which has perverted all consciences.”*
* As long as it shall be possible to obtain purification from crimes and exemption from punishment by means of money or other frivolous practices; as long as kings and great men shall suppose that building temples or inst.i.tuting foundations, will absolve them from the guilt of oppression and homicide; as long as individuals shall imagine that they may rob and cheat, provided they observe fast during Lent, go to confession, and receive extreme unction, it is impossible there should exist in society any morality or virtue; and it is from a deep conviction of truth, that a modern philosopher has called the doctrine of expiations la verola des societes.
”Add to this,” said the Imans, ”that these men have invented the most insidious of all systems of wickedness,--the absurd and impious obligation of recounting to them the most intimate secrets of actions and of thoughts (confessions); so their insolent curiosity has carried their inquisition even into the sanctuary of the marriage bed,* and the inviolable recesses of the heart.”
* Confession is a very ancient invention of the priests, who did not fail to avail themselves of that means of governing.
It was practised in the Egyptian, Greek, Phrygian, Persian mysteries, etc. Plutarch has transmitted us the remarkable answer of a Spartan whom a priest wanted to confess. ”Is it to you or to G.o.d I am to confess?” ”To G.o.d,” answered the priest: ”In that case,” replied the Spartan, ”man, begone!”
(Remarkable Savings of the Lacedemonians.) The first Christians confessed their faults publicly, like the Essenians. Afterwards, priests began to be established, with power of absolution from the sin of idolatry. In the time of Theodosius, a woman having publicly confessed an intrigue with a deacon, bishop Necterius, and his successor Chrysostom, granted communion without confession. It was not until the seventh century that the abbots of convents exacted from monks and nuns confession twice a year; and it was at a still later period that bishops of Rome generalized it.
The Mussulmen, who suppose women to have no souls, are shocked at the idea of confession; and say; How can an honest man think of listening to the recital of the actions or the secret thoughts of a woman? May we not also ask, on the other hand, how can an honest woman consent to reveal them?
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