Note 12 — THE WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH AND CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION.

[3] In 1768 Voltaire wrote as follows to the Marquis de Villevielle:—“No, my dear Marquis, no, the modern Socrates will not drink the hemlock. The Socrates of Athens was, between you and me, a pitiless caviller, who made himself a thousand enemies and who braved his judges very foolishly.

“Our modern philosophers are more adroit. They have not the foolish and dangerous vanity to put their names to their works. Theirs are the invisible hands which pierce fanaticism from one end of Europe to the other with the arrows of truth. Damilaville recently died. He was the author of ‘Christianism unveiled,’ and many other writings. No one ever knew him. His friends preserved the secret of his name as long as he lived with a fidelity worthy of philosophy. No one yet knows who is the author of the work given under the name of Pieret. In Holland, during the last two years, they have printed more than sixty volumes against superstition. The authors of them are absolutely unknown, although they could boldly proclaim themselves. The Italian who has written the ‘Reform of Italy,’ has not cared to present his work to the Pope, but his book has a prodigious effect. A thousand pens write and a hundred thousand voices arise against abuses and in favour of tolerance. Be assured that the revolution which has taken place in minds during the past twelve years has served, and not a little, to drive the Jesuits from so many States, and to strongly encourage princes to strike at the idol of Rome which caused them all to tremble at another epoch. The people are very stupid and, nevertheless, the light has penetrated even to them. Be very sure, for example, that there are not twenty persons in Geneva who do not abjure Calvin as well as the Pope, and that there are philosophers even in the shops of Paris.

“I shall die consoled in seeing the true religion, that of the heart, established on the ruins of affectations. I have never preached but the adoration of one God, beneficence and indulgence. With these sentiments I brave the devil who does not exist and the true devils who exist only too much.”