Note 244 — Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT—(Continued)

When he comes to the question of immortality he grows overtly irreverent. Asked by the interlocutor in the last dialogue to give his views on the immortality of the soul, he begs to be excused, protesting: “I have vowed to my God that that question shall not be handled by me till I become old, rich, and a German.” And without overt irreverence he is ever and again unserious. Perfectly transparent is the irony of the appeal, “Let us give faith to the prescripts of the Church, and due honour to the sacrosanct Gregorian apparitions,”244 and the protestation, “I will not invalidate the powers of holy water, to which Alexander, Doctor and Pontifex of the Christians, and interpreter of the divine will, accorded such countless privileges.”245 And even in the Amphitheatrum, with all the parade of defending the faith, there is a plain balance of cogency on the side of the case for the attack,246 and a notable disposition to rely finally on lines of argument to which faith could never give real welcome. The writer’s mind, it is clear, was familiar with doubt. In the malice of orthodoxy there is sometimes an instinctive perception of hostility; and though Vanini had written, among other things,247 an Apologia pro lege mosaïcâ et christianâ, to which he often refers, and an Apologia pro concilio Tridentino, he can be seen even in the hymn to deity with which he concludes his Amphitheatrum to have no part in evangelical Christianity.