VOLUME XIII (continued 2)

Here I beheld a man of mild and simple mien, who appeared to me to be about thirty-five years old. He was looking with compassion upon the distant heaps of whitened skeletons through which I had been led to the abode of the sages. I was astonished to find his feet swelled and bloody, his hands in the same state, his side pierced, and his ribs laid bare by flogging. "Good God!" said I, "is it possible that one of the just and wise should be in this state? I have just seen one who was treated in a very odious manner; but there is no comparison between his punishment and yours. Bad priests and bad judges poisoned him. Was it also by priests and judges that you were so cruelly assassinated?"

With great affability he answered—"Yes."

"And who were those monsters?"

"They were hypocrites."

"Ah! you have said all! by that one word I understand that they would condemn you to the worst of punishments. You then had proved to them, like Socrates, that the moon was not a goddess, and that Mercury was not a god?"

"No; those planets were quite out of the question. My countrymen did not even know what a planet was; they were all arrant ignoramuses. Their superstitions were quite different from those of the Greeks."

"Then you wished to teach them a new religion?"

"Not at all; I simply said to them—'Love God with all your hearts, and your neighbor as yourselves; for that is all.' Judge whether this precept is not as old as the universe; judge whether I brought them a new worship. I constantly told them that I was come, not to abolish their law, but to fulfil it; I had observed all their rites; I was circumcised as they all were; I was baptized like the most zealous of them; like them I paid the corban; like them I kept the Passover; and ate, standing, lamb cooked with lettuce. I and my friends went to pray in their temple; my friends, too, frequented the temple after my death. In short, I fulfilled all their laws without one exception."

"What! could not these wretches even reproach you with having departed from their laws?"

"Certainly not."

"Why, then, did they put you in the state in which I now see you?"

"Must I tell you?—They were proud and selfish; they saw that I knew them; they saw that I was making them known to the citizens; they were the strongest; they took away my life; and such as they will always do the same, if they can, to whoever shall have done them too much justice."

"But did you say nothing; did you do nothing, that could serve them as a pretext?"

"The wicked find a pretext in everything."

"Did you not once tell them that you were come to bring, not peace, but the sword?"

"This was an error of some scribe. I told them that I brought, not the sword, but peace. I never wrote anything; what I said might be miscopied without any ill intent."

"You did not then contribute in anything, by your discourses, either badly rendered or badly interpreted, to those frightful masses of bones which I passed on my way to consult you?"

"I looked with horror on those who were guilty of all these murders."

"And those monuments of power and wealth—of pride and avarice—those treasures, those ornaments, those ensigns of greatness, which, when seeking wisdom, I saw accumulated on the way—do they proceed from you?"

"It is impossible; I and mine lived in poverty and lowliness; my greatness was only in virtue."

I was on the point of begging of him to have the goodness just to tell me who he was; but my guide warned me to refrain. He told me that I was not formed for comprehending these sublime mysteries. I conjured him to tell me only in what true religion consisted.

"Have I not told you already?—Love God and your neighbor as yourself."

"What! Can we love God and yet eat meat on a Friday?"

"I always ate what was given me; for I was too poor to give a dinner to any one."

"Might we love God and be just, and still be prudent enough not to intrust all the adventures of one's life to a person one does not know?"

"Such was always my custom."

"Might not I, while doing good, be excused from making a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostello?"

"I never was in that country."

"Should I confine myself in a place of retirement With blockheads?"

"For my part, I always made little journeys from town to town."

"Must I take part with the Greek or with the Latin Church?"

"When I was in the world, I never made any difference between the Jew and the Samaritan."

"Well, if it be so, I take you for my only master."

Then he gave me a nod, which filled me with consolation. The vision disappeared, and I was left with a good conscience.

SECTION III.

Questions on Religion.

FIRST QUESTION.

Warburton, bishop of Gloucester, author of one of the most learned works ever written, thus expresses himself ("Divine Legation of Moses," i., 8): "A religion, a society, which is not founded on the belief of a future state, must be supported by an extraordinary Providence. Judaism is not founded on the belief of a future state; therefore, Judaism was supported by an extraordinary Providence."

Many theologians rose up against him; and, as all arguments are retorted, so was his retorted upon himself; he was told:

"Every religion which is not founded on the dogma of the immortality of the soul, and on everlasting rewards and punishments, is necessarily false. Now these dogmas were unknown to the Jews; therefore Judaism, far from being supported by Providence, was, on your own principles, a false and barbarous religion by which Providence was attacked."

This bishop had some other adversaries, who maintained against him that the immortality of the soul was known to the Jews even in the time of Moses; but he proved to them very clearly that neither the Decalogue, nor Leviticus, nor Deuteronomy, had said one word of such a belief; and that it is ridiculous to strive to distort and corrupt some passages of other books, in order to draw from them a truth which is not announced in the book of the law.

The bishop, having written four volumes to demonstrate that the Jewish law proposed neither pains nor rewards after death, has never been able to answer his adversaries in a very satisfactory manner. They said to him: "Either Moses knew this dogma, and so deceived the Jews by not communicating it, or he did not know it, in which case he did not know enough to found a good religion. Indeed, if the religion had been good why should it have been abolished? A true religion must be for all times and all places; it must be as the light of the sun, enlightening all nations and generations."

This prelate, enlightened as he is, has found it no easy task to extricate himself from so many difficulties. But what system is free from them?

SECOND QUESTION.

Another man of learning, and a much greater philosopher, who is one of the profoundest metaphysicians of the day, advances very strong arguments to prove that polytheism was the primitive religion of mankind, and that men began with believing in several gods before their reason was sufficiently enlightened to acknowledge one only Supreme Being.

On the contrary, I venture to believe that in the beginning they acknowledged one only God, and that afterwards human weakness adopted several. My conception of the matter is this:

It is indubitable that there were villages before large towns were built, and that all men have been divided into petty commonwealths before they were united in great empires. It is very natural that the people of a village, being terrified by thunder, afflicted at the loss of its harvests, ill-used by the inhabitants of a neighboring village, feeling every day its own weakness, feeling everywhere an invisible power, should soon have said: There is some Being above us who does us good and harm.

It seems to me to be impossible that it should have said: There are two powers; for why more than one? In all things we begin with the simple; then comes the compound; and after, by superior light, we go back to the simple again. Such is the march of the human mind!

But what is this being who is thus invoked at first? Is it the sun? Is it the moon? I do not think so. Let us examine what passes in the minds of children; they are nearly like those of uninformed men. They are struck, neither by the beauty nor by the utility of the luminary which animates nature, nor by the assistance lent us by the moon, nor by the regular variations of her course; they think not of these things; they are too much accustomed to them. We adore, we invoke, we seek to appease, only that which we fear. All children look upon the sky with indifference; but when the thunder growls they tremble and run to hide themselves. The first men undoubtedly did likewise. It could only be a sect of philosophers who first observed the courses of the planets, made them admired, and caused them to be adored; mere tillers of the ground, without any information, did not know enough of them to embrace so noble an error.

A village then would confine itself to saying: There is a power which thunders and hails upon us, which makes our children die; let us appease it. But how shall we appease it? We see that by small presents we have calmed the anger of irritated men; let us then make small presents to this power. It must also receive a name. The first that presents itself is that of "chief," "master," "lord." This power then is styled "My Lord." For this reason perhaps it was that the first Egyptians called their god "knef"; the Syrians, "Adonai"; the neighboring nations, "Baal," or "Bel," or "Melch," or "Moloch"; the Scythians, "Papæus"; all these names signifying "lord," "master."

Thus was nearly all America found to be divided into a multitude of petty tribes, each having its protecting god. The Mexicans, too, and the Peruvians, forming great nations, had only one god—the one adoring Manco Capak, the other the god of war. The Mexicans called their warlike divinity "Huitzilipochtli," as the Hebrews had called their Lord "Sabaoth."

It was not from a superior and cultivated reason that every people thus began with acknowledging one only Divinity; had they been philosophers, they would have adored the God of all nature, and not the god of a village; they would have examined those infinite relations among all things which prove a Being creating and preserving; but they examined nothing—they felt. Such is the progress of our feeble understanding. Each village would feel its weakness and its need of a protector; it would imagine that tutelary and terrible being residing in the neighboring forest, or on a mountain, or in a cloud. It would imagine only one, because the clan had but one chief in war; it would imagine that one corporeal, because it was impossible to represent it otherwise. It could not believe that the neighboring tribe had not also its god. Therefore it was that Jephthah said to the inhabitants of Moab: "You possess lawfully what your god Chemoth has made you conquer; you should, then, let us enjoy what our god has given us by his victories."

This language, used by one stranger to other strangers, is very remarkable. The Jews and the Moabites had dispossessed the natives of the country; neither had any right but that of force; and the one says to the other: "Your god has protected you in your usurpation; suffer our god to protect us in ours."

Jeremiah and Amos both ask what right the god Melchem had to seize the country of Gad? From these passages it is evident that the ancients attributed to each country a protecting god. We find other traces of this theology in Homer.

It is very natural that, men's imaginations being heated, and their minds having acquired some confused knowledge, they should soon multiply their gods, and speedily assign protectors to the elements, the seas, the forests, the fountains, and the fields. The more they observed the stars, the more they would be struck with admiration. How, indeed, should they have adored the divinity of a brook, and not have adored the sun? The first step being taken, the earth would soon be covered with gods; and from the stars men would at last come down to cats and onions.

Reason, however, will advance towards perfection; time at length found philosophers who saw that neither onions, nor cats, nor even the stars, had arranged the order of nature. All those philosophers—Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians, Scythians, Greeks, and Romans—admitted a supreme, rewarding, and avenging God.

They did not at first tell it to the people; for whosoever should have spoken ill of onions and cats before priests and old women, would have been stoned; whosoever should have reproached certain of the Egyptians with eating their gods would himself have been eaten—as Juvenal relates that an Egyptian was in reality killed and eaten quite raw in a controversial dispute.

What then did they do? Orpheus and others established mysteries, which the initiated swore by oaths of execration not to reveal—of which mysteries the principal was the adoration of a supreme God. This great truth made its way through half the world, and the number of the initiated became immense. It is true that the ancient religion still existed; but as it was not contrary to the dogma of the unity of God, it was allowed to exist. And why should it have been abolished? The Romans acknowledged the "Deus optimus maximus" and the Greeks had their Zeus—their supreme god. All the other divinities were only intermediate beings; heroes and emperors were ranked with the gods, i.e., with the blessed; but it is certain that Claudius, Octavius, Tiberius, and Caligula, were not regarded as the creators of heaven and earth.

In short, it seems proved that, in the time of Augustus, all who had a religion acknowledged a superior, eternal God, with several orders of secondary gods, whose worship was called idolatry.

The laws of the Jews never favored idolatry; for, although they admitted the Malachim, angels and celestial beings of an inferior order, their law did not ordain that they should worship these secondary divinities. They adored the angels, it is true; that is, they prostrated themselves when they saw them; but as this did not often happen, there was no ceremonial nor legal worship established for them. The cherubim of the ark received no homage. It is beyond a doubt that the Jews, from Alexander's time at least, openly adored one only God, as the innumerable multitude of the initiated secretly adored Him in their mysteries.

THIRD QUESTION.

It was at the time when the worship of a Supreme God was universally established among all the wise in Asia, in Europe, and in Africa, that the Christian religion took its birth.

Platonism assisted materially the understanding of its dogmas. The "Logos," which with Plato meant the "wisdom," the reason of the Supreme Being, became with us the "word," and a second person of God. Profound metaphysics, above human intelligence, were an inaccessible sanctuary in which religion was enveloped.

It is not necessary here to repeat how Mary was afterwards declared to be the mother of God; how the consubstantiality of the Father and the "word" was established; as also the proceeding of the "pneuma," the divine organ of the divine Logos; as also the two natures and two wills resulting from the hypostasis; and lastly, the superior manducation—the soul nourished as well as the body, with the flesh and blood of the God-man, adored and eaten in the form of bread, present to the eyes, sensible to the taste, and yet annihilated. All mysteries have been sublime.

In the second century devils began to be cast out in the name of Jesus; before they were cast out in the name of Jehovah or Ihaho; for St. Matthew relates that the enemies of Jesus having said that He cast out devils in the name of the prince of devils, He answered, "If I cast out devils by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out?"

It is not known at what time the Jews recognized Beelzebub, who was a strange god, as the prince of devils; but it is known, for Josephus tells us, that there were at Jerusalem exorcists appointed to cast out devils from the bodies of the possessed; that is, of such as were attacked by singular maladies, which were then in a great part of the world attributed to the malific genii.

These demons were then cast out by the true pronunciation of Jehovah, which is now lost, and by other ceremonies now forgotten.

This exorcism by Jehovah or by the other names of God, was still in use in the first ages of the church. Origen, disputing against Celsus, says to him: "If, when invoking God, or swearing by Him, you call Him 'the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,' you will by those words do things, the nature and force of which are such that the evil spirits submit to those who pronounce them; but if you call him by another name, as 'God of the roaring sea,' etc., no effect will be produced. The name of 'Israel,' rendered in Greek, will work nothing; but pronounce it in Hebrew with the other words required, and you will effect the conjuration."

The same Origen has these remarkable words: "There are names which are powerful from their own nature. Such are those used by the sages of Egypt, the Magi of Persia, and the Brahmins of India. What is called 'magic,' is not a vain and chimerical art, as the Stoics and Epicureans pretend. The names 'Sabaoth' and 'Adonai' were not made for created beings, but belong to a mysterious theology which has reference to the Creator; hence the virtue of these names when they are arranged and pronounced according to rule."

Origen, when speaking thus, is not giving his private opinion; he is but repeating the universal opinion.

All the religions then known admitted a sort of magic, which was distinguished into celestial magic, and infernal magic, necromancy and theurgy—all was prodigy, divination, oracle. The Persians did not deny the miracles of the Egyptians, nor the Egyptians those of the Persians. God permitted the primitive Christians to be persuaded of the truth of the oracles attributed to the Sibyls, and left them a few other unimportant errors, which were no essential detriment to their religion. Another very remarkable thing is, that the Christians of the primitive ages held temples, altars, and images in abhorrence. Origen acknowledges this (No. 347). Everything was afterwards changed, with the discipline, when the Church assumed a permanent form.

FOURTH QUESTION.

When once a religion is established in a state, the tribunals are all employed in perverting the continuance or renewal of most of the things that were done in that religion before it was publicly received. The founders used to assemble in private, in spite of magistrates; but now no assemblies are permitted but public ones under the eyes of the law, and all concealed associations are forbidden. The maxim formerly was, that "it is better to obey God than man"; the opposite maxim is now adopted, that "to follow the laws of the state is to obey God." Nothing was heard of but obsessions and possessions; the devil was then let loose upon the world, but now the devil stays at home. Prodigies and predictions were necessary; now they are no longer admitted: a man who in the places should foretell calamities, would be sent to a madhouse. The founders secretly received the money of the faithful; but now, a man who should gather money for his own disposal, without being authorized by the law, would be brought before a court of justice to answer for so doing. Thus the scaffoldings that have served to build the edifice are no longer made use of.

FIFTH QUESTION.

After our own holy religion, which indubitably is the only good one, what religion would be the least objectionable?

Would it not be that which should be the simplest; that which should teach much morality and very few dogmas; that which should tend to make men just, without making them absurd; that which should not ordain the belief of things impossible, contradictory, injurious to the Divinity, and pernicious to mankind; nor dare to threaten with eternal pains whosoever should possess common sense? Would it not be that which should not uphold its belief by the hand of the executioner, nor inundate the earth with blood to support unintelligible sophisms; that in which an ambiguous expression, a play upon words, and two or three supported charters, should not suffice to make a sovereign and a god of a priest who is often incestuous, a murderer, and a poisoner; which should not make kings subject to this priest; that which should teach only the adoration of one God, justice, tolerance, and humanity.

SIXTH QUESTION.

It has been said, that the religion of the Gentiles was absurd in many points, contradictory, and pernicious; but have there not been imputed to it more harm than it ever did, and more absurdities than it ever preached?

Show me in all antiquity a temple dedicated to Leda lying with a swan, or Europa with a bull. Was there ever a sermon preached at Athens or at Rome, to persuade the young women to cohabit with their poultry? Are the fables collected and adorned by Ovid religious? Are they not like our Golden Legend, our Flower of the Saints? If some Brahmin or dervish were to come and object to our story of St. Mary the Egyptian, who not having wherewith to pay the sailors who conveyed her to Egypt, gave to each of them instead of money what are called "favors," we should say to the Brahmin: Reverend father, you are mistaken; our religion is not the Golden Legend.

We reproach the ancients with their oracles, and prodigies; if they could return to this world, and the miracles of our Lady of Loretto and our Lady of Ephesus could be counted, in whose favor would be the balance?

Human sacrifices were established among almost every people, but very rarely put in practice. Among the Jews, only Jephthah's daughter and King Agag were immolated; for Isaac and Jonathan were not. Among the Greeks, the story of "Iphigenia" is not well authenticated; and human sacrifices were very rare among the ancient Romans. In short, the religion of the Pagans caused very little blood to be shed, while ours has deluged the earth. Ours is doubtless the only good, the only true one; but we have done so much harm by its means that when we speak of others we should be modest.

SEVENTH QUESTION.

If a man would persuade foreigners, or his own countrymen, of the truth of his religion, should he not go about it with the most insinuating mildness and the most engaging moderation? If he begins with telling them that what he announces is demonstrated, he will find a multitude of persons incredulous; if he ventures to tell them that they reject his doctrine only inasmuch as it condemns their passions; that their hearts have corrupted their minds; that their reasoning is only false and proud, he disgusts them; he incenses them against himself; he himself ruins what he would fain establish.

If the religion he announces be true, will violence and insolence render it more so? Do you put yourself in a rage, when you say that it is necessary to be mild, patient, beneficent, just, and to fulfil all the duties of society? No; because everyone is of your own opinion. Why, then, do you abuse your brother when preaching to him a mysterious system of metaphysics? Because his opinion irritates your self-love. You are so proud as to require your brother to submit his intelligence to yours; humbled pride produces the wrath; it has no other source. A man who has received twenty wounds in a battle does not fly into a passion; but a divine, wounded by the refusal of your assent, at once becomes furious and implacable.

EIGHTH QUESTION.

Must we not carefully distinguish the religion of the state from theological religion? The religion of the state requires that the imans keep registers of the circumcised, the vicars or pastors registers of the baptized; that there be mosques, churches, temples, days consecrated to rest and worship, rites established by law; that the ministers of those rites enjoy consideration without power; that they teach good morals to the people, and that the ministers of the law watch over the morals of the ministers of the temples. This religion of the state cannot at any time cause any disturbance.

It is otherwise with theological religion: this is the source of all imaginable follies and disturbances; it is the parent of fanaticism and civil discord; it is the enemy of mankind. A bonze asserts that Fo is a God,-that he was foretold by fakirs, that he was born of a white elephant, and that every bonze can by certain grimaces make a Fo. A talapoin says, that Fo was a holy man, whose doctrine the bonzes have corrupted, and that Sammonocodom is the true God. After a thousand arguments and contradictions, the two factions agree to refer the question to the dalai-lama, who resides three hundred leagues off, and who is not only immortal, but also infallible. The two factions send to him a solemn deputation; and the dalai-lama begins, according to his divine custom, by distributing among them the contents of his close-stool.

The two rival sects at first receive them with equal reverence; have them dried in the sun, and encase them in little chaplets which they kiss devoutly; but no sooner have the dalai-lama and his council pronounced in the name of Fo, than the condemned party throw their chaplets in the vice-god's face, and would fain give him a sound thrashing. The other party defend their lama, from whom they have received good lands; both fight a long time; and when at last they are tired of mutual extermination, assassination, and poisoning, they grossly abuse each other, while the dalai-lama laughs, and still distributes his excrement to whosoever is desirous of receiving the good father lama's precious favors.

RHYME.

Rhyme was probably invented to assist the memory, and to regulate at the same time the song and the dance. The return of the same sounds served to bring easily and readily to the recollection the intermediate words between the two rhymes. Those rhymes were a guide at once to the singer and the dancer; they indicated the measure. Accordingly, in every country, verse was the language of the gods.

We may therefore class it among the list of probable, that is, of uncertain, opinions, that rhyme was at first a religious appendage or ceremony; for after all, it is possible that verses and songs might be addressed by a man to his mistress before they were addressed by him to his deities; and highly impassioned lovers indeed will say that the cases are precisely the same.

A rabbi who gave a general view of the Hebrew language, which I never was able to learn, once recited to me a number of rhymed psalms, which he said we had most wretchedly translated. I remember two verses, which are as follows:

Hibbitu clare vena haru Ulph nehem al jeck pharu.

"They looked upon him and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed."

No rhyme can be richer than that of those two verses; and this being admitted, I reason in the following manner:

The Jews, who spoke a jargon half Phœnician and half Syriac, rhymed; therefore the great and powerful nations, under whom they were in slavery, rhymed also. We cannot help believing, that the Jews—who, as we have frequently observed, adopted almost everything from their neighbors—adopted from them also rhyme.

All the Orientals rhyme; they are steady and constant in their usages. They dress now as they have dressed for the long series of five or six thousand years. We may, therefore, well believe that they have rhymed for a period of equal duration.

Some of the learned contend that the Greeks began with rhyming, whether in honor of their gods, their heroes, or their mistresses; but, that afterwards becoming more sensible of the harmony of their language, having acquired a more accurate knowledge of prosody, and refined upon melody, they made those requisite verses without rhyme which have been transmitted down to us, and which the Latins imitated and very often surpassed.

As for us, the miserable descendants of Goths, Vandals, Gauls, Franks, and Burgundians—barbarians who are incapable of attaining either the Greek or Latin melody—we are compelled to rhyme. Blank verse, among all modern nations, is nothing but prose without any measure; it is distinguished from ordinary prose only by a certain number of equal and monotonous syllables, which it has been agreed to denominate "verse."

We have remarked elsewhere that those who have written in blank verse have done so only because they were incapable of rhyming. Blank verse originated in an incapacity to overcome difficulty, and in a desire to come to an end sooner.

We have remarked that Ariosto has made a series of forty-eight thousand rhymes without producing either disgust or weariness in a single reader. We have observed how French poetry, in rhyme, sweeps all obstacles before it, and that pleasure arose even from the very obstacles themselves. We have been always convinced that rhyme was necessary for the ears, not for the eyes; and we have explained our opinions, if not with judgment and success, at least without dictation and arrogance.

But we acknowledge that on the receipt at Mount Krapak of the late dreadful literary intelligence from Paris, our former moderation completely abandons us. We understand that there exists a rising sect of barbarians, whose doctrine is that no tragedy should henceforward be ever written but in prose. This last blow alone was wanting, in addition to all our previous afflictions. It is the abomination of desolation in the temple of the muses. We can very easily conceive that, after Corneille had turned into verse the "Imitation of Jesus Christ," some sarcastic wag might menace the public with the acting of a tragedy in prose, by Floridor and Mondori; but this project having been seriously executed by the abbé d'Aubignac, we well know with what success it was attended. We well know the ridicule and disgrace that were attached to the prose "Œdipus" of De la Motte Houdart, which were nearly as great as those which were incurred by his "Œdipus" in verse. What miserable Visigoth can dare, after "Cinna" and "Andromache," to banish verse from the theatre? After the grand and brilliant age of our literature, can we be really sunk into such degradation and opprobrium! Contemptible barbarians! Go, then, and see this your prose tragedy performed by actors in their riding-coats at Vauxhall, and afterwards go and feast upon shoulder of mutton and strong beer.

What would Racine and Boileau have said had this terrible intelligence been announced to them? "Bon Dieu"! Good God! from what a height have we fallen, and into what a slough are we plunged!

It is certain that rhyme gives a most overwhelming and oppressive influence to verses possessing mere mediocrity of merit. The poet in this case is just like a bad machinist, who cannot prevent the harsh and grating sounds of his wires and pulleys from annoying the ear. His readers experience the same fatigue that he underwent while forming his own rhymes; his verses are nothing but an empty jingling of wearisome syllables. But if he is happy in his thoughts and happy also in his rhyme, he then experiences and imparts a pleasure truly exquisite—a pleasure that can be fully enjoyed only by minds endowed with sensibility, and by ears attuned to harmony.

RESURRECTION.

SECTION I.

We are told that the Egyptians built their pyramids for no other purpose than to make tombs of them, and that their bodies, embalmed within and without, waited there for their souls to come and reanimate them at the end of a thousand years. But if these bodies were to come to life again, why did the embalmers begin the operation by piercing the skull with a gimlet, and drawing out the brain? The idea of coming to life again without brains would make one suspect that—if the expression may be used—the Egyptians had not many while alive; but let us bear in mind that most of the ancients believed the soul to be in the breast. And why should the soul be in the breast rather than elsewhere? Because, when our feelings are at all violent, we do in reality feel, about the region of the heart, a dilatation or compression, which caused it to be thought that the soul was lodged there. This soul was something aerial; it was a slight figure that went about at random until it found its body again.

The belief in resurrection is much more ancient than historical times. Athalides, son of Mercury, could die and come to life again at will; Æsculapius restored Hippolytus to life, and Hercules, Alceste. Pelops, after being cut in pieces by his father, was resuscitated by the gods. Plato relates that Heres came to life again for fifteen days only.

Among the Jews, the Pharisees did not adopt the dogma of the resurrection until long after Plato's time.

In the Acts of the Apostles there is a very singular fact, and one well worthy of attention. St. James and several of his companions advise St. Paul to go into the temple of Jerusalem, and, Christian as he was, to observe all the ceremonies of the Old Law, in order—say they—"that all may know that those things whereof they were informed concerning thee are nothing, but that thou thyself also walkest orderly and keepest the law." This is clearly saying: "Go and lie; go and perjure yourself; go and publicly deny the religion which you teach."

St. Paul then went seven days into the temple; but on the seventh he was discovered. He was accused of having come into it with strangers, and of having profaned it. Let us see how he extricated himself.

But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council—"Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee; of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question." The resurrection of the dead formed no part of the question; Paul said this only to incense the Pharisees and Sadducees against each other.

"And when he had so said there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees; and the multitude was divided.

"For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both."

It has been asserted that Job, who is very ancient, was acquainted with the doctrine of resurrection; and these words are cited: "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that one day His redemption shall rise upon me; or that I shall rise again from the dust, that my skin shall return, and that in my flesh I shall again see God."

But many commentators understand by these words that Job hopes soon to recover from his malady, and that he shall not always remain lying on the ground, as he then was. The sequel sufficiently proves this explanation to be the true one; for he cries out the next moment to his false and hardhearted friends: "Why then do you say let us persecute Him?" Or: "For you shall say, because we persecuted Him." Does not this evidently mean—you will repent of having ill used me, when you shall see me again in my future state of health and opulence. When a sick man says: I shall rise again, he does not say: I shall come to life again. To give forced meanings to clear passages is the sure way never to understand one another; or rather, to be regarded by honest men as wanting sincerity.

St. Jerome dates the birth of the sect of the Pharisees but a very short time before Jesus Christ. The rabbin Hillel is considered as having been the founder of the Pharisaïc sect; and this Hillel was contemporary with St. Paul's master, Gamaliel.

Many of these Pharisees believed that only the Jews were brought to life again, the rest of mankind not being worth the trouble. Others maintained that there would be no rising again but in Palestine; and that the bodies of such as were buried elsewhere would be secretly conveyed into the neighborhood of Jerusalem, there to rejoin their souls. But St. Paul, writing to the people of Thessalonica, says:

"For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive, and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep.

"For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first.

"Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

Does not this important passage clearly prove that the first Christians calculated on seeing the end of the world? as, indeed, it was foretold by St. Luke to take place while he himself was alive? But if they did not see this end of the world, if no one rose again in their day, that which is deferred is not lost.

St. Augustine believed that children, and even still-born infants, would rise again in a state of maturity. Origen, Jerome, Athanasius, Basil, and others, did not believe that women would rise again with the marks of their sex.

In short, there have ever been disputes about what we have been, about what we are, and about what we shall be.

SECTION II.

Father Malebranche proves resurrection by the caterpillars becoming butterflies. This proof, as every one may perceive, is not more weighty than the wings of the insects from which he borrows it. Calculating thinkers bring forth arithmetical objections against this truth which he has so well proved. They say that men and other animals are really fed and derive their growth from the substance of their predecessors. The body of a man, reduced to ashes, scattered in the air, and falling on the surface of the earth, becomes corn or vegetable. So Cain ate a part of Adam; Enoch fed on Cain; Irad on Enoch; Mahalaleel on Irad; Methuselah on Mahalaleel; and thus we find that there is not one among us who has not swallowed some portion of our first parent. Hence it has been said that we have all been cannibals. Nothing can be clearer than that such is the case after a battle; not only do we kill our brethren, but at the end of two or three years, when the harvests have been gathered from the field of battle, we have eaten them all; and we, in turn, shall be eaten with the greatest facility imaginable. Now, when we are to rise again, how shall we restore to each one the body that belongs to him, without losing something of our own?

So say those who trust not in resurrection; but the resurrectionists have answered them very pertinently.

A rabbin named Samaï demonstrates resurrection by this passage of Exodus: "I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and swore to give unto them the land of Canaan." Now—says this great rabbin—notwithstanding this oath, God did not give them that land; therefore, they will rise again to enjoy it, in order that the oath be fulfilled.

The profound philosopher Calmet finds a much more conclusive proof in vampires. He saw vampires issuing from churchyards to go and suck the blood of good people in their sleep; it is clear that they could not suck the blood of the living if they themselves were still dead; therefore they had risen again; this is peremptory.

It is also certain that at the day of judgment all the dead will walk under ground, like moles—so says the "Talmud"—that they may appear in the valley of Jehoshaphat, which lies between the city of Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. There will be a good deal of squeezing in this valley; but it will only be necessary to reduce the bodies proportionately, like Milton's devils in the hall of Pandemonium.

This resurrection will take place to the sound of the trumpet, according to St. Paul. There must, of course, be more trumpets than one; for the thunder itself is not heard more than three or four leagues round. It is asked: How many trumpets will there be? The divines have not yet made the calculation; it will nevertheless be made.

The Jews say that Queen Cleopatra, who no doubt believed in the resurrection like all the ladies of that day, asked a Pharisee if we were to rise again quite naked? The doctor answered that we shall be very well dressed, for the same reason that the corn that has been sown and perished under ground rises again in ear with a robe and a beard. This rabbin was an excellent theologian; he reasoned like Dom Calmet.

SECTION III.

Resurrection of the Ancients.

It has been asserted that the dogma of resurrection was much in vogue with the Egyptians, and was the origin of their embalmings and their pyramids. This I myself formerly believed. Some said that the resurrection was to take place at the end of a thousand years; others at the end of three thousand. This difference in their theological opinions seems to prove that they were not very sure about the matter.

Besides, in the history of Egypt, we find no man raised again; but among the Greeks we find several. Among the latter, then, we must look for this invention of rising again.

But the Greeks often burned their bodies, and the Egyptians embalmed them, that when the soul, which was a small, aerial figure, returned to its habitation, it might find it quite ready. This had been good if its organs had also been ready; but the embalmer began by taking out the brain and clearing the entrails. How were men to rise again without intestines, and without the medullary part by means of which they think? Where were they to find again the blood, the lymph, and other humors?

You will tell me that it was still more difficult to rise again among the Greeks, where there was not left of you more than a pound of ashes at the utmost—mingled, too, with the ashes of wood, stuffs and spices.

Your objection is forcible, and I hold with you, that resurrection is a very extraordinary thing; but the son of Mercury did not the less die and rise again several times. The gods restored Pelops to life, although he had been served up as a ragout, and Ceres had eaten one of his shoulders. You know that Æsculapius brought Hippolytus to life again; this was a verified fact, of which even the most incredulous had no doubt; the name of "Virbius," given to Hippolytus, was a convincing proof. Hercules had resuscitated Alceste and Pirithous. Heres did, it is true—according to Plato—come to life again for fifteen days only; still it was a resurrection; the time does not alter the fact.

Many grave schoolmen clearly see purgatory and resurrection in Virgil. As for purgatory, I am obliged to acknowledge that it is expressly in the sixth book. This may displease the Protestants, but I have no alternative:

Non tamen omne malum miseris, nec funditus omnes Corporea excedunt pestes,... Not death itself can wholly wash their stains; But long contracted filth even in the soul remains. The relics of inveterate vice they wear, And spots of sin obscene in every face appear,...

But we have already quoted this passage in the article on "Purgatory," which doctrine is here expressed clearly enough; nor could the kinsfolks of that day obtain from the pagan priests an indulgence to abridge their sufferings for ready money. The ancients were much more severe and less simoniacal than we are notwithstanding that they imputed so many foolish actions to their gods. What would you have? Their theology was made up of contradictions, as the malignant say is the case with our own.

When their purgation was finished, these souls went and drank of the waters of Lethe, and instantly asked that they might enter fresh bodies and again see daylight. But is this a resurrection? Not at all; it is taking an entirely new body, not resuming the old one; it is a metempsychosis, without any relation to the manner in which we of the true faith are to rise again.

The souls of the ancients did, I must acknowledge, make a very bad bargain in coming back to this world, for seventy years at most, to undergo once more all that we know is undergone in a life of seventy years, and then suffer another thousand years' discipline. In my humble opinion there is no soul that would not be tired of this everlasting vicissitude of so short a life and so long a penance.

SECTION IV.

Resurrection of the Moderns.

Our resurrection is quite different. Every man will appear with precisely the same body which he had before; and all these bodies will be burned for all eternity, excepting only, at most, one in a hundred thousand. This is much worse than a purgatory of ten centuries, in order to live here again a few years.

When will the great day of this general resurrection arrive? This is not positively known; and the learned are much divided. Nor do they any more know how each one is to find his own members again. Hereupon they start many difficulties.

1. Our body, say they, is, during life, undergoing a continual change; at fifty years of age we have nothing of the body in which our soul was lodged at twenty.

2. A soldier from Brittany goes into Canada; there, by a very common chance, he finds himself short of food, and is forced to eat an Iroquois whom he killed the day before. This Iroquois had fed on Jesuits for two or three months; a great part of his body had become Jesuit. Here, then, the body of a soldier is composed of Iroquois, of Jesuits, and of all that he had eaten before. How is each to take again precisely what belongs to him? and which part belongs to each?

3. A child dies in its mother's womb, just at the moment that it has received a soul. Will it rise again fœtus, or boy, or man?

4. To rise again—to be the same person as you were—you must have your memory perfectly fresh and present; it is memory that makes your identity. If your memory be lost, how will you be the same man?

5. There are only a certain number of earthly particles that can constitute an animal. Sand, stone, minerals, metals, contribute nothing. All earth is not adapted thereto; it is only the soils favorable to vegetation that are favorable to the animal species. When, after the lapse of many ages, every one is to rise again, where shall be found the earth adapted to the formation of all these bodies?

6. Suppose an island, the vegetative part of which will suffice for a thousand men, and for five or six thousand animals to feed and labor for that thousand men; at the end of a hundred thousand generations we shall have to raise again a thousand millions of men. It is clear that matter will be wanting: "Materies opus est, ut crescunt post era saecla."

7. And lastly, when it is proved, or thought to be proved, that a miracle as great as the universal deluge, or the ten plagues of Egypt, will be necessary to work the resurrection of all mankind in the valley of Jehoshaphat, it is asked: What becomes of the souls of all these bodies while awaiting the moment of returning into their cases?

Fifty rather knotty questions might easily be put; but the divines would likewise easily find answers to them all.

RIGHTS.

SECTION I.

National Rights—Natural Rights—Public Rights.

I know no better way of commencing this subject than with the verses of Ariosto, in the second stanza of the 44th canto of the "Orlando Furioso," which observes that kings, emperors, and popes, sign fine treaties one day which they break the next, and that, whatever piety they may affect, the only god to whom they really appeal, is their interest:

Fan lega oggi re, papi et imperatori Doman saran nimici capitali: Perche, qual Papparenze esteriori, Non hanno i cor, non han gli animi tali, Che non mirando al torto piu che al dritto. Attendon solamente al lor profitto.

If there were only two men on earth, how would they live together? They would assist each other; they would annoy each other; they would court each other; they would speak ill of each other; fight with each other; be reconciled to each other; and be neither able to live with nor without each other. In short, they would do as people at present do, who possess the gift of reason certainly, but the gift of instinct also; and will feel, reason, and act forever as nature has destined.

No god has descended upon our globe, assembled the human race, and said to them, "I ordain that the negroes and Kaffirs go stark naked and feed upon insects.

"I order the Samoyeds to clothe, themselves with the skins of reindeer, and to feed upon their flesh, insipid as it is, and eat dry and half putrescent fish without salt. It is my will that the Tartars of Thibet all believe what their dalai-lama shall say; and that the Japanese pay the same attention to their dairo.

"The Arabs are not to eat swine, and the Westphalians nothing else but swine.

"I have drawn a line from Mount Caucasus to Egypt, and from Egypt to Mount Atlas. All who inhabit the east of that line may espouse as many women as they please; those to the west of it must be satisfied with one.

"If, towards the Adriatic Gulf, or the marshes of the Rhine and the Meuse, or in the neighborhood of Mount Jura, or the Isle of Albion, any one shall wish to make another despotic, or aspire to be so himself, let his head be cut off, on a full conviction that destiny and myself are opposed to his intentions.

"Should any one be so insolent as to attempt to establish an assembly of free men on the banks of the Manzanares, or on the shores of the Propontis, let him be empaled alive or drawn asunder by four horses.

"Whoever shall make up his accounts according to a certain rule of arithmetic at Constantinople, at Grand Cairo, at Tafilet, at Delhi, or at Adrianople, let him be empaled alive on the spot, without form of law; and whoever shall dare to account by any other rule at Lisbon, Madrid, in Champagne, in Picardy, and towards the Danube, from Ulm unto Belgrade, let him be devoutly burned amidst chantings of the 'Miserere.'

"That which is just along the shores of the Loire is otherwise on the banks of the Thames; for my laws are universal," etc.

It must be confessed that we have no very clear proof, even in the "Journal Chrétien," nor in "The Key to the Cabinet of Princes," that a god has descended in order to promulgate such a public law. It exists, notwithstanding, and is literally practised according to the preceding announcement; and there have been compiled, compiled, and compiled, upon these national rights, very admirable commentaries, which have never produced a sou to the great numbers who have been ruined by war, by edicts, and by tax-gatherers.

These compilations closely resemble the case of conscience of Pontas. It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished who kill not in large companies, and to the sound of trumpets; it is the rule.

At the time when Anthropophagi still existed in the forest of Ardennes, an old villager met with a man-eater, who had carried away an infant to devour it. Moved with pity, the villager killed the devourer of children and released the little boy, who quickly fled away. Two passengers, who witnessed the transaction at a distance, accused the good man with having committed a murder on the king's highway. The person of the offender being produced before the judge, the two witnesses—after they had paid the latter a hundred crowns for the exercise of his functions—deposed to the particulars, and the law being precise, the villager was hanged upon the spot for doing that which had so much exalted Hercules, Theseus, Orlando, and Amadis the Gaul. Ought the judge to be hanged himself, who executed this law to the letter? How ought the point to be decided upon a general principle? To resolve a thousand questions of this kind, a thousand volumes have been written.

Puffendorff first established moral existences: "There are," said he, "certain modes which intelligent beings attach to things natural, or to physical operations, with the view of directing or restraining the voluntary actions of mankind, in order to infuse order, convenience, and felicity into human existence."

Thus, to give correct ideas to the Swedes and the Germans of the just and the unjust, he remarks that "there are two kinds of place, in regard to one of which, it is said, that things are for example, here or there; and in respect to the other, that they have existed, do, or will exist at a certain time, as for example, yesterday, to-day, or to-morrow. In the same manner we conceive two sorts of moral existence, the one of which denotes a moral state, that has some conformity with place, simply considered; the other a certain time, when a moral effect will be produced," etc.

This is not all; Puffendorff curiously distinguishes the simple moral from the modes of opinion, and the formal from the operative qualities. The formal qualities are simple attributes, but the operative are to be carefully divided into original and derivated.

In the meantime, Barbeyrac has commented on these fine things, and they are taught in the universities, and opinion is divided between Grotius and Puffendorff in regard to questions of similar importance. Take my recommendation; read Tully's "Offices."

SECTION II.

Nothing possibly can tend more to render a mind false, obscure, and uncertain than the perusal of Grotius, Puffendorff, and almost all the writers on the "jus gentium."

We must not do evil that good may come of it, says the writer to whom nobody hearkens. It is permitted to make war on a power, lest it should become too strong, says the "Spirit of Laws."

When rights are to be established by prescription, the publicists call to their aid divine right and human right; and the theologians take their part in the dispute. "Abraham and his seed," say they, "had a right to the land of Canaan, because he had travelled there; and God had given it to him in a vision." But according to the vulgate sage teachers, five hundred and forty-seven years elapsed between the time when Abraham purchased a sepulchre in the country and Joshua took possession of a small part of it. No matter, his right was clear and correct. And then prescription? Away with prescription! Ought that which once took place in Palestine to serve as a rule for Germany and Italy? Yes, for He said so. Be it so, gentlemen; God preserve me from disputing with you!

The descendants of Attila, it is said, established themselves in Hungary. Till what time must the ancient inhabitants hold themselves bound in conscience to remain serfs to the descendants of Attila?

Our doctors, who have written on peace and war, are very profound; if we attend to them, everything belongs of right to the sovereign for whom they write; he, in fact, has never been able to alienate his domains. The emperor of right ought to possess Rome, Italy, and France; such was the opinion of Bartholus; first, because the emperor was entitled king of the Romans; and, secondly, because the archbishop of Cologne is chancellor of Italy, and the archbishop of Trier chancellor of Gaul. Moreover, the emperor of Germany carries a gilded ball at his coronation, which of course proves that he is the rightful master of the whole globe.

At Rome there is not a single priest who has not learned, in his course of theology, that the pope ought to be master of this earth, seeing it is written that it was said to Simon, the son of Jonas: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church." It was well said to Gregory VII. that this treated only of souls, and of the celestial kingdom. Damnable observation! he replied; and would have hanged the observer had he been able.

Spirits, still more profound, establish this reasoning by an argument to which there is no reply. He to whom the bishop of Rome calls himself vicar has declared that his dominion is not of this world; can this world then belong to the vicar, when his master has renounced it? Which ought to prevail, human nature or the decretals? The decretals, indisputably.

If it be asked whether the massacre of ten or twelve millions of unarmed men in America was defensible, it is replied that nothing can be more just and holy, since they were not Catholic, apostolic and Roman.

There is not an age in which the declarations of war of Christian princes have not authorized the attack and pillage of all the subjects of the prince, to whom war has been announced by a herald, in a coat of mail and hanging sleeves. Thus, when this signification has been made, should a native of Auvergne meet a German, he is bound to kill, and entitled to rob him either before or after the murder.

The following has been a very thorny question for the schools: The ban, and the arrière-ban, having been ordered out in order to kill and be killed on the frontiers, ought the Suabians, being satisfied that the war is atrociously unjust, to march? Some doctors say yes; others, more just, pronounce no. What say the politicians?

When we have fully discussed these great preliminary questions, with which no sovereign embarrasses himself, or is embarrassed, we must proceed to discuss the right of fifty or sixty families upon the county of Alost; the town of Orchies; the duchy of Berg and of Juliers; upon the countries of Tournay and Nice; and, above all, on the frontiers of all the provinces, where the weakest always loses his cause.

It was disputed for a hundred years whether the dukes of Orleans, Louis XII., and Francis I., had a claim on the duchy of Milan, by virtue of a contract of marriage with Valentina de Milan, granddaughter of the bastard of a brave peasant, named Jacob Muzio. Judgment was given in this process at the battle of Pavia.

The dukes of Savoy, of Lorraine, and of Tuscany still pretend to the Milanese; but it is believed that a family of poor gentlemen exist in Friuli, the posterity in a right line from Albion, king of the Lombards, who possess an anterior claim.

The publicists have written great books upon the rights of the kingdom of Jerusalem. The Turks have written none, and Jerusalem belongs to them; at least at this present writing; nor is Jerusalem a kingdom.

CANONICAL RIGHTS—OR LAW.

General Idea of the Rights of the Church or Canon Law, by M. Bertrand, Heretofore First Pastor of the Church of Berne.

We assume neither to adopt nor contradict the principles of M. Bertrand; it is for the public to judge of them.

Canon law, or the canon, according to the vulgar opinion, is ecclesiastical jurisprudence. It is the collection of canons, rules of the council, decrees of the popes, and maxims of the fathers.

According to reason, and to the rights of kings and of the people, ecclesiastical jurisprudence is only an exposition of the privileges accorded to ecclesiastics by sovereigns representing the nation.

If two supreme authorities, two administrations, having separate rights, exist, and the one will make war without ceasing upon the other, the unavoidable result will be perpetual convulsions, civil wars, anarchy, tyranny, and all the misfortunes of which history presents so miserable a picture.

If a priest is made sovereign; if the dairo of Japan remained emperor until the sixteenth century; if the dalai-lama is still sovereign at Thibet; if Numa was at once king and pontiff; if the caliphs were heads of the state as well as of religion; and if the popes reign at Rome—these are only so many proofs of the truth of what we advance; the authority is not divided; there is but one power. The sovereigns of Russia and of England preside over religion; the essential unity of power is there preserved.

Every religion is within the State; every priest forms a part of civil society, and all ecclesiastics are among the number of the subjects of the sovereign under whom they exercise their ministry. If a religion exists which establishes ecclesiastical independence, and supports them in a sovereign and legitimate authority, that religion cannot spring from God, the author of society.

It is even to be proved, from all evidence, that in a religion of which God is represented as the author, the functions of ministers, their persons, property, pretensions, and manner of inculcating morality, teaching doctrines, celebrating ceremonies, the adjustment of spiritual penalties; in a word, all that relates to civil order, ought to be submitted to the authority of the prince and the inspection of the magistracy.

If this jurisprudence constitutes a science, here will be found the elements.

It is for the magistracy, solely, to authorize the books admissible into the schools, according to the nature and form of the government. It is thus that M. Paul Joseph Rieger, counsellor of the court, judiciously teaches canon law in the University of Vienna; and, in the like manner, the republic of Venice examined and reformed all the rules in the states which have ceased to belong to it. It is desirable that examples so wise should generally prevail.

SECTION I.

Of the Ecclesiastical Ministry.

Religion is instituted only to preserve order among mankind, and to render them worthy of the bounty of the Deity by virtue. Everything in a religion which does not tend to this object ought to be regarded as foreign or dangerous.

Instruction, exhortation, the fear of punishment to come, the promises of a blessed hereafter, prayer, advice, and spiritual consolation are the only means which churchmen can properly employ to render men virtuous on earth and happy to all eternity.

Every other means is repugnant to the freedom of reason; to the nature of the soul; to the unalterable rights of conscience; to the essence of religion; to that of the clerical ministry; and to the just rights of the sovereign.

Virtue infers liberty, as the transport of a burden implies active force. With constraint there is no virtue, and without virtue no religion. Make me a slave and I shall be the worse for it.

Even the sovereign has no right to employ force to lead men to religion, which essentially presumes choice and liberty. My opinions are no more dependent on authority than my sickness or my health.

In a word, to unravel all the contradictions in which books on the canon law abound, and to adjust our ideas in respect to the ecclesiastical ministry, let us endeavor, in the midst of a thousand ambiguities, to determine what is the Church.

The Church, then, is all believers, collectively, who are called together on certain days to pray in common, and at all times to perform good actions.

Priests are persons appointed, under the authority of the State, to direct these prayers, and superintend public worship generally.

A numerous Church cannot exist without ecclesiastics; but these ecclesiastics are not the Church.

It is not less evident that if the ecclesiastics, who compose a part of civil society, have acquired rights which tend to trouble or destroy such society, such rights ought to be suppressed.

It is still more obvious that if God has attached prerogatives or rights to the Church, these prerogatives and these rights belong exclusively neither to the head of the Church nor to the ecclesiastics; because these are not the Church itself, any more than the magistrates are the sovereign, either in a republic or a monarchy.

Lastly; it is very evident that it is our souls only which are submitted to the care of the clergy, and that for spiritual objects alone.

The soul acts inwardly; its inward acts are thought, will, inclination, and an acquiescence in certain truths, all which are above restraint; and it is for the ecclesiastical ministry to instruct, but not to command them.

The soul acts also outwardly. Its exterior acts are submission to the civil law; and here constraint may take place, and temporal or corporeal penalties may punish the violations of the law.

Obedience to the ecclesiastical order ought, consequently, to be always free and voluntary; it ought to exact no other. On the contrary, submission to the civil law may be enforced.

For the same reason ecclesiastical penalties, always being spiritual, attach in this world to those only who are inwardly convinced of their error. Civil penalties, on the contrary, accompanied by physical evil produce physical effects, whether the offender acknowledge the justice of them or not.

Hence it manifestly results that the authority of the clergy can only be spiritual—that it is unacquainted with temporal power, and that any co-operative force belongs not to the administration of the Church, which is essentially destroyed by it.

It moreover follows that a prince, intent not to suffer any division of his authority, ought not to permit any enterprise which places the members of the community in an outward or civil dependence on the ecclesiastical corporation.

Such are the incontestable principles of genuine canonical right or law, the rules and the decisions of which ought at all times to be submitted to the test of eternal and immutable truths, founded upon natural rights and the necessary order of society.

SECTION II.

Of the Possessions of Ecclesiastics.

Let us constantly ascend to the principles of society, which, in civil as in religious order, are the foundations of all right.

Society in general is the proprietor of the territory of a country, and the source of national riches. A portion of this national revenue is devoted to the sovereign to support the expenses of government. Every individual is possessor of that part of the territory, and of the revenue, which the laws insure him; and no possession or enjoyment can at any time be sustained, except under the protection of law.

In society we hold not any good, or any possession as a simple natural right, as we give up our natural rights and submit to the order of civil society, in return for assurance and protection. It is, therefore, by the law that we hold our possessions.

No one can hold anything on earth through religion, neither lands nor chattels; since all its wealth is spiritual. The possessions of the faithful, as veritable members of the Church, are in heaven; it is there where their treasures are laid up. The kingdom of Jesus Christ, which He always announced as at hand, was not, nor could it be, of this world. No property, therefore, can be held by divine right.

The Levites under the Hebrew law had, it is true, their tithe by a positive law of God; but that was under a theocracy which exists no longer—God Himself acting as the sovereign. All those laws have ceased, and cannot at present communicate any title to possession.

If any body at present, like that of the priesthood, pretend to possess tithes or any other wealth by positive right divine, it must produce an express and incontestable proof enregistered by divine revelation. This miraculous title would be, I confess, an exception to the civil law, authorized by God, who says: "All persons ought to submit to the powers that be, because they are ordained of God and established in His name."

In defect of such a title, no ecclesiastical body whatever can enjoy aught on earth but by consent of the sovereignty and the authority of the civil laws. These form their sole title to possession. If the clergy imprudently renounce this title, they will possess none at all, and might be despoiled by any one who is strong enough to attempt it. Its essential interest is, therefore, to support civil society, to which it owes everything.

For the same reason, as all the wealth of a nation is liable without exception to public expenditure for the defence of the sovereign and the nation, no property can be exempt from it but by force of law, which law is always revocable as circumstances vary. Peter cannot be exempt without augmenting the tax of John. Equity, therefore, is eternally claiming for equality against surcharges; and the State has a right, at all times, to examine into exemptions, in order to replace things in a just, natural, proportionate order, by abolishing previously granted immunities, whether permitted or extorted.

Every law which ordains that the sovereign, at the expense of the public, shall take care of the wealth or possessions of any individual or a body, without this body or individual contributing to the common expenses, amounts to a subversion of law.

I moreover assert that the quota, whether the contribution of a body or an individual, ought to be proportionately regulated, not by him or them, but by the sovereign or magistracy, according to the general form and law. Thus the sovereign or state may demand an account of the wealth and of the possessions of everybody as of every individual.

It is, therefore, once more on these immutable principles that the rules of the canon law should be founded which relate to the possessions and revenue of the clergy.

Ecclesiastics, without doubt, ought to be allowed sufficient to live honorably, but not as members of or as representing the Church, for the Church itself claims neither sovereignty nor possession in this world.

But if it be necessary for ministers to preside at t the altar, it is proper that society should support them in the same manner as the magistracy and soldiers. It is, therefore, for the civil law to make a suitable provision for the priesthood.

Even when the possessions of the ecclesiastics have been bestowed on them by wills, or in any other manner, the donors have not been able to denationalize the property by abstracting it from public charges and the authority of the laws. It is always under the guarantee of the laws, without which they would not possess the insured and legitimate possessions which they enjoy.

It is, therefore, still left to the sovereign, or the magistracy in his name, to examine at all times if the ecclesiastical revenues be sufficient; and if they are not, to augment the allotted provision; if, on the contrary, they are excessive, it is for them to dispose of the superfluity for the general good of society.

But according to the right, commonly called canonical, which has sought to form a State within the State, "imperium in imperio," ecclesiastical property is sacred and intangible, because it belongs to religion and the Church; they have come of God, and not of man.

In the first place, it is impossible to appropriate this terrestrial wealth to religion, which has nothing temporal. They cannot belong to the Church, which is the universal body of the believers, including the king, the magistracy, the soldiery, and all subjects; for we are never to forget that priests no more form the Church than magistrates the State.

Lastly, these goods come only from God in the same sense as all goods come from Him, because all is submitted to His providence.

Therefore, every ecclesiastical possessor of riches, or revenue, enjoys it only as a subject and citizen of the State, under the single protection of the civil law.

Property, which is temporal and material, cannot be rendered sacred or holy in any sense, neither literally nor figuratively. If it be said that a person or edifice is sacred, it only signifies that it has been consecrated or set apart for spiritual purposes.

The abuse of a metaphor, to authorize rights and pretensions destructive to all society, is an enterprise of which history and religion furnish more than one example, and even some very singular ones, which are not at present to my purpose.

SECTION III.

Of Ecclesiastical or Religious Assemblies.

It is certain that nobody can call any public or regular assembly in a state but under the sanction of civil authority.

Religious assemblies for public worship must be authorized by the sovereign, or civil magistracy, before they can be legal.

In Holland, where the civil power grants the greatest liberty, and very nearly the same in Russia, in England, and in Prussia, those who wish to form a church have to obtain permission, after which the new church is in the states, although not of the religion of the states. In general, as soon as there is a sufficient number of persons, or of families, who wish to cultivate a particular mode of worship, and to assemble for that purpose, they can without hesitation apply to the magistrate, who makes himself a judge of it; and once allowed, it cannot be disturbed without a breach of public order. The facility with which the government of Holland has granted this permission has never produced any disorder; and it would be the same everywhere if the magistrate alone examined, judged, and protected the parties concerned.

The sovereign, or civil power, possesses the right at all times of knowing what passes within these assemblies, of regulating, them in conformity with public order, and of preventing such as produce disorder. This perpetual inspection is an essential portion of sovereignty, which every religion ought to acknowledge.

Everything in the worship, in respect to form of prayer, canticles, and ceremonies, ought to be open to the inspection of the magistrate. The clergy may compose these prayers; but it is for the State to approve or reform them in case of necessity. Bloody wars have been undertaken for mere forms, which would never have been waged had sovereigns understood their rights.

Holidays ought to be no more established without the consent and approbation of the State, who may at all times abridge and regulate them. The multiplication of such days always produces a laxity of manners and national impoverishment.

A superintendence over oral instruction and books of devotion, belongs of right to the State. It is not the executive which teaches, but which attends to the manner in which the people are taught. Morality above all should be attended to, which is always necessary; whereas disputes concerning doctrines are often dangerous.

If disputes exist between ecclesiastics in reference to the manner of teaching, or on points of doctrine, the State may impose silence on both parties, and punish the disobedient.

As religious congregations are not permitted by the State in order to treat of political matters, magistrates ought to repress seditious preachers, who heat the multitude by punishable declamation: these are pests in every State.

Every mode of worship presumes a discipline to maintain order, uniformity, and decency. It is for the magistrate to protect this discipline, and to bring about such changes as times and circumstances may render necessary.

For nearly eight centuries the emperors of the East assembled councils in order to appease religious disputes, which were only augmented by the too great attention paid to them. Contempt would have more certainly terminated the vain disputation, which interest and the passions had excited. Since the division of the empire of the West into various kingdoms, princes have left to the pope the convocation of these assemblies. The rights of the Roman pontiff are in this respect purely conventional, and the sovereigns may agree in the course of time, that they shall no longer exist; nor is any one of them obliged to submit to any canon without having examined and approved it. However, as the Council of Trent will most likely be the last, it is useless to agitate all the questions which might relate to a future general council.

As to assemblies, synods, or national councils, they indisputably cannot be convoked except when the sovereign or State deems them necessary. The commissioners of the latter ought therefore to preside, direct all their deliberations, and give their sanction to the decrees.

There may exist periodical assemblies of the clergy, to maintain order, under the authority of the State, but the civil power ought uniformly to direct their views and guide their deliberations. The periodical assembly of the clergy of France is only an assembly of regulative commissioners for all the clergy of the kingdom.

The vows by which certain ecclesiastics oblige themselves to live in a body according to certain rules, under the name of monks, or of religieux, so prodigiously multiplied in Europe, should always be submitted to the inspection and approval of the magistrate. These convents, which shut up so many persons who are useless to society, and so many victims who regret the liberty which they have lost; these orders, which bear so many strange denominations, ought not to be valid or obligatory, unless when examined and sanctioned by the sovereign or the State.

At all times, therefore, the prince or State has a right to take cognizance of the rules and conduct of these religious houses, and to reform or abolish them if held to be incompatible with present circumstances, and the positive welfare of society.

The revenue and property of these religious bodies are, in like manner, open to the inspection of the magistracy, in order to judge of their amount and of the manner in which they are employed. If the mass of the riches, which is thus prevented from circulation, be too great; if the revenues greatly exceed the reasonable support of the regulars; if the employment of these revenues be opposed to the general good; if this accumulation impoverish the rest of the community; in all these cases it becomes the magistracy, as the common fathers of the country, to diminish and divide these riches, in order to make them partake of the circulation, which is the life of the body politic; or even to employ them in any other way for the benefit of the public.

Agreeably to the same principles, the sovereign authority ought to forbid any religious order from having a superior who is a native or resident of another country. It approaches to the crime of lèse-majesté.

The sovereign may prescribe rules for admission into these orders; he may, according to ancient usage, fix an age, and hinder taking vows, except by the express consent of the magistracy in each instance. Every citizen is born a subject of the State, and has no right to break his natural engagements with society without the consent of those who preside over it.

If the sovereign abolishes a religious order, the vows cease to be binding. The first vow is that to the State; it is a primary and tacit oath authorized by God; a vow according to the decrees of Providence; a vow unalterable and imprescriptible, which unites man in society to his country and his sovereign. If we take a posterior vow, the primitive one still exists; and when they clash, nothing can weaken or suspend the force of the primary engagement. If, therefore, the sovereign declares this last vow, which is only conditional and dependent on the first, incompatible with it, he does not dissolve a vow, but decrees it to be necessarily void, and replaces the individual in his natural state.

The foregoing is quite sufficient to dissipate all the sophistry by which the canonists have sought to embarrass a question so simple in the estimation of all who are disposed to listen to reason.

SECTION IV.

On Ecclesiastical Penalties.

Since neither the Church, which is the body of believers collectively, nor the ecclesiastics, who are ministers in the Church in the name of the sovereign and under his authority, possess any coactive strength, executive power, or terrestrial authority, it is evident that these ministers can inflict only spiritual punishments. To threaten sinners with the anger of heaven is the sole penalty that a pastor is entitled to inflict. If the name of punishment or penalty is not to be given to those censures or declamations, ministers of religion have none at all to inflict.

May the Church eject from its bosom those who disgrace or who trouble it? This is a grand question, upon which the canonists have not hesitated to adopt the affirmative. Let us repeat, in the first place, that ecclesiastics are not the Church. The assembled Church, which includes the State or sovereign, doubtless possesses the right to exclude from the congregations a scandalous sinner, after repeated charitable and sufficient warnings. The exclusion, even in this case, cannot inflict any civil penalty, any bodily evil, or any merely earthly privation; but whatever right the Church may in this way possess, the ecclesiastics belonging to it can only exercise it as far as the sovereign and State allow.

It is therefore still more incumbent on the sovereign, in this case, to watch over the manner in which this permitted right is exercised, vigilance being the more necessary in consequence of the abuse to which it is liable. It is, consequently, necessary for the supreme civil power to consult the rules for the regulation of assistance and charity, to prescribe suitable restrictions, without which every declaration of the clergy, and all excommunication, will be null and without effect, even when only applicable to the spiritual order. It is to confound different eras and circumstances, to regulate the proceedings of present times from the practice of the apostles. The sovereign in those days was not of the religion of the apostles, nor was the Church included in the State, so that the ministers of worship could not have recourse to the magistrates. Moreover, the apostles were ministers extraordinary, of which we now perceive no resemblance. If other examples of excommunication, without the authority of the sovereign, be quoted, I can only say that I cannot hear, without horror, of examples of excommunication insolently fulminated against sovereigns and magistrates; I boldly reply, that these denunciations amount to manifest rebellion, and to an open violation of the most sacred duties of religion, charity, and natural right.

Let us add, in order to afford a complete idea of excommunication, and of the true rules of canonical right or law in this respect, that excommunication, legitimately pronounced by those to whom the sovereign, in the name of the Church, expressly leaves the power, includes privation only of spiritual advantages on earth, and can extend to nothing else: all beyond this will be abuse, and more or less tyrannical. The ministers of the Church can do no more than declare that such and such a man is no more a member of the Church. He may still, however, enjoy notwithstanding the excommunication, all his natural, civil, and temporal rights as a man and a citizen. If the magistrate steps in and deprives such a man, in consequence, of an office or employment in society, it then becomes a civil penalty for some fault against civil order.

Let us suppose that which may very likely happen, as ecclesiastics are only men, that the excommunication which they have been led to pronounce has been prompted by some error or some passion; he who is exposed to a censure so precipitate is clearly justified in his conscience before God; the declaration issued against him can produce no effect upon the life to come. Deprived of exterior communion with the true Church, he may still enjoy the consolation of the interior communion. Justified by his conscience, he has nothing to fear in a future existence from the judgment of God, his only true judge.

It is then a great question, as to canonical rights, whether the clergy, their head, or any ecclesiastical body whatever, can excommunicate the sovereign or the magistracy, under any pretext, or for any abuse of their power? This question is essentially scandalous, and the simple doubt a direct rebellion. In fact, the first duty of man in society is to respect the magistrate, and to advance his respectability, and you pretend to have a right to censure and set him aside. Who has given you this absurd and pernicious right? Is it God, who governs the political world by delegated sovereignty, and who ordains that society shall subsist by subordination?

The first ecclesiastics at the rise of Christianity—did they conceive themselves authorized to excommunicate Tiberius, Nero, Claudius, or even Constantine, who was a heretic? How then have pretensions thus monstrous, ideas thus atrocious, wicked attempts equally condemned by reason and by natural and religious rights, been suffered to last so long? If a religion exists which teaches like horrors, society ought to proscribe it, as directly subversive of the repose of mankind. The cry of whole nations is already lifted up against these pretended canonical laws, dictated by ambition and by fanaticism. It is to be hoped that sovereigns, better instructed in their rights, and supported by the fidelity of their people, will terminate abuses so enormous, and which have caused so many misfortunes. The author of the "Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations" has been the first to forcibly expose the atrocity of enterprises of this nature.

SECTION V.

Of the Superintendence of Doctrine.

The sovereign is not the judge of the truth of doctrine; he may judge for himself, like all other men; but he ought to take cognizance of it in respect to everything which relates to civil order, whether in regard to purport or delivery.

This is the general rule from which magistrates ought never to depart. Nothing in a doctrine merits the attention of the police, except as it interests public order: it is the influence of doctrine upon manners that decides its importance. Doctrines which have a distant connection only with good conduct can never be fundamental. Truths which conduce to render mankind gentle, humane, obedient to the laws and to the government, interest the State, and proceed evidently from God.

SECTION VI.

Superintendence of the Magistracy Over the Administration of the Sacraments.

The administration of the sacraments ought to be submitted to the careful inspection of the magistrates in everything which concerns public order.

It has already been observed that the magistrate ought to watch over the form of the public registry of marriages, baptisms, and deaths, without any regard to the creed of the different inhabitants of the State.

Similar reasons in relation to police and good government—do they not require an exact registry in the hands of the magistracy of all those who make vows, and enter convents in those countries in which convents are permitted?

In the sacrament of repentance, the minister who refuses or grants absolution is accountable for his judgment only to God; and in the same manner, the penitent is accountable to God alone, whether he consummates it all, or does so well or ill.

No pastor, himself a sinner, ought to have the right of publicly refusing, on his own private authority, the eucharist to another sinner. The sinless Jesus Christ refused not the communion to Judas.

Extreme unction and the viaticum, if demanded or requested by the sick, should be governed by the same, rule. The simple right of the minister is to exhort the sick person, and it is the duty of the magistrate to take care that the pastor abuse not circumstances, in order to persecute the invalid.

Formerly, it was the Church collectively which called the pastors, and conferred upon them the right of governing and instructing the flock. At present, ecclesiastics alone consecrate others, and the magistracy ought to be watchful of this privilege.

It is doubtless a great, though ancient abuse, that of conferring orders without functions; it is depriving the State of members, without adding to the Church. The magistrate is called upon to reform this abuse.

Marriage, in a civil sense, is the legitimate union of a man with a woman for the procreation of children, to secure their due nurture and education, and in order to assure unto them their rights and properties under the protection of the laws. In order to confirm and establish this union, it is accompanied by a religious ceremony, regarded by some as a sacrament, and by others as a portion of public worship; a genuine logomachy, which changes nothing in the thing. Two points are therefore to be distinguished in marriage—the civil contract, or natural engagement, and the sacrament, or sacred ceremony. Marriage may therefore exist, with all its natural and civil effects, independently of the religious ceremony. The ceremonies of the Church are only essential to civil order, because the State has adopted them. A long time elapsed before the ministers of religion had anything to do with marriage. In the time of Justinian, the agreement of the parties, in the presence of witnesses, without any ceremonies of the Church, legalized marriages among Christians. It was that emperor who, towards the middle of the sixth century, made the first laws by which the presence of priests was required, as simple witnesses, without, however, prescribing any nuptial benediction. The emperor Leo, who died in 886, seems to have been the first who placed the religious ceremony in the number of necessary conditions. The terms of the law itself indeed, which ordains it, prove it to have been a novelty.

From the correct idea which we now form of marriage, it results in the first place, that good order, and even piety, render religious forms adopted in all Christian countries necessary. But the essence of marriage cannot be denationalized, and this engagement, which is the principal one in society, ought uniformly, as a branch of civil and political order, to be placed under the authority of the magistracy.

It follows, therefore, that a married couple, even educated in the worship of infidels and heretics, are not obliged to marry again, if they have been united agreeably to the established forms of their own country; and it is for the magistrate in all such instances to investigate the state of the case.

The priest is at present the magistrate freely nominated by the law, in certain countries, to receive the pledged faith of persons wishing to marry. It is very evident, that the law can modify or change as it pleases the extent of this ecclesiastical authority.

Wills and funerals are incontestably under the authority of the civil magistracy and the police. The clergy have never been allowed to usurp the authority of the law in respect to these. In the age of Louis XIV. however, and even in that of Louis XV., striking examples have been witnessed of the endeavors of certain fanatical ecclesiastics to interfere in the regulation of funerals. Under the pretext of heresy, they refused the sacraments, and interment; a barbarity which Pagans would have held in horror.

SECTION VII.

Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction.

The sovereign or State may, without doubt, give up to an ecclesiastical body, or a single priest, a jurisdiction over certain objects and certain persons, with a power suitable to the authority confided. I examine not into the prudence of remitting a certain portion of civil authority into the hands of any body or person who already enjoys an authority in things spiritual. To deliver to those who ought to be solely employed in conducting men to heaven, an authority upon earth, is to produce a union of two powers, the abuse of which is only too easy; but at least it is evident that any man, as well as an ecclesiastic, may be intrusted with the same jurisdiction. By whomsoever possessed, it has either been conceded by the sovereign power, or usurped; there is no medium. The kingdom of Jesus Christ is not of this world; he refused to be a judge upon earth, and ordered that men should give unto Cæsar the things which belonged unto Cæsar: he forbade all dominations to his apostles, and preached only humility, gentleness, and dependence. From him ecclesiastics can derive neither power, authority, domination, nor jurisdiction in this world. They can therefore possess no legitimate authority, but by a concession from the sovereign or State, from which all authority in a society can properly emanate.

There was a time in the unhappy epoch of the feudal ages in which ecclesiastics were possessed in various countries with the principal functions of the magistracy: the authority of the lords of the lay fiefs, so formidable to the sovereign and oppressive to the people, has been since bounded; but a portion of the independence of the ecclesiastical jurisdictions still exists. When will sovereigns be sufficiently informed and courageous to take back from them the usurped authority and numerous privileges which they have so often abused, to annoy the flock which they ought to protect?

It is by this inadvertence of princes that the audacious enterprises of ecclesiastics against sovereigns themselves have originated. The scandalous history of these attempts has been consigned to records which cannot be contested. The bull "In cœna Domini," in particular, still remains to prove the continual enterprises of the clergy against royal and civil authority.

Extract from the Tariff of the Rights Exacted in France by the Court of Rome for Bulls, Dispensations, Absolutions, etc., which Tariff was Decreed in the King's Council, Sept. 4, 1691, and Which is Reported Entire in the Brief of James Lepelletier, Printed at Lyons in 1699, with the Approbation and Permission of the King. Lyons: Printed for Anthony Boudet, Eighth Edition.

1. For absolution for the crime of apostasy, payable to the pope, twenty-four livres.

2. A bastard wishing to take orders must pay twenty-five livres for a dispensation; if desirous to possess a benefice, he must pay in addition one hundred and eighty livres; if anxious that his dispensation should not allude to his illegitimacy, he will have to pay a thousand and fifty livres.