A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 10. Voltaire
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heads; they shall be overwhelmed by misfortunes, which shall be the forerunners of their final and unhappy end; after which they shall be cast into everlasting flames, where they shall suffer endless pains – the just punishment reserved for their crimes.
"On the other hand, such of you as shall make a holy use of the warnings of God, given them in this letter, shall appease His wrath, and shall obtain from Him, after a sincere confession of their faults, the remission of their sins, how great soever they may be.
"With permission, Bourges, July 30, 1771.
"DE BEAUVOIR, Lieut. – Gen. of Police.
"This letter must be carefully kept, in honor of our Lord Jesus Christ."
N.B. – It must be observed that this piece of absurdity was printed at Bourges, without there having been, either at Tréguier or at Paimpole, the smallest pretence that could afford occasion for such an imposture. However, we will suppose that in a future age some miracle-finder shall think fit to prove a point in divinity by the appearance of Jesus Christ on the altar at Paimpole, will he not think himself entitled to quote Christ's own letter, printed at Bourges "with permission"? Will he not prove, by facts, that in our time Jesus worked miracles everywhere? Here is a fine field opened for the Houtevilles and the Abadies.
A Fresh Instance of the Most Horrible Superstition.
The thirty conspirators who fell upon the king of Poland, in the night of November 3, of the present year, 1771, had communicated at the altar of the Holy Virgin, and had sworn by the Holy Virgin to butcher their king.
It seems that some one of the conspirators was not entirely in a state of grace, when he received into his stomach the body of the Holy Virgin's own Son, together with His blood, under the appearance of bread; and that while he was taking the oath to kill his king, he had his god in his mouth for only two of the king's domestics. The guns and pistols fired at his majesty missed him; he received only a slight shot-wound in the face, and several sabre-wounds, which were not mortal. His life would have been at an end, but that humanity at length combated superstition in the breast of one of the assassins named Kosinski. What a moment was that when this wretched man said to the bleeding prince: "You are, however, my king!" "Yes," answered Stanislaus Augustus, "and your good king, who has never done you any harm." "True," said the other; "but I have taken an oath to kill you."
They had sworn before the miraculous image of the virgin at Czentoshova. The following is the formula of this fine oath: "We – who, excited by a holy and religious zeal, have resolved to avenge the Deity, religion, and our country, outraged by Stanislaus Augustus, a despiser of laws both divine and human, a favorer of atheists and heretics, do promise and swear, before the sacred and miraculous image of the mother of God, to extirpate from the face of the earth him who dishonors her by trampling on religion… So help us God!"
Thus did the assassins of Sforza, of Medici, and so many other holy assassins, have masses said, or say them themselves, for the happy success of their undertaking.
The letter from Warsaw which gives the particulars of this attempt, adds: "The religious who employ their pious ardor in causing blood to flow and ravaging their country, have succeeded in Poland, as elsewhere, in inculcating on the minds of their affiliated, that it is allowable to kill kings."
Indeed, the assassins had been hidden in Warsaw for three days in the house of the reverend Dominican fathers; and when these accessory monks were asked why they had harbored thirty armed men without informing the government of it, they answered, that these men had come to perform their devotions, and to fulfil a vow.
O ye times of Châtel, of Guinard, of Ricodovis, of Poltrot, of Ravaillac, of Damiens, of Malagrida, are you then returning? Holy Virgin, and Thou her holy Son, let not Your sacred names be abused for the commission of the crime which disgraced them!
M. Jean Georges le Franc, bishop of Puy-en-Velay, says, in his immense pastoral letter to the inhabitants of Puy, pages 258-9, that it is the philosophers who are seditious. And whom does he accuse of sedition? Readers, you will be astonished; it is Locke, the wise Locke himself! He makes him an accomplice in the pernicious designs of the earl of Shaftesbury, one of the heroes of the philosophical party.
Alas! M. Jean Georges, how many mistakes in a few words! First, you take the grandson for the grandfather. The earl of Shaftesbury, author of the "Characteristics" and the "Inquiry Into Virtue," that "hero of the philosophical party," who died in 1713, cultivated letters all his life in the most profound retirement. Secondly, his grandfather, Lord-Chancellor Shaftesbury, to whom you attribute misdeeds, is considered by many in England to have been a true patriot. Thirdly, Locke is revered as a wise man throughout Europe.
I defy you to show me a single philosopher, from Zoroaster down to Locke, that has ever stirred up a sedition; that has ever been concerned in an attempt against the life of a king; that has ever disturbed society; and, unfortunately, I will find you a thousand votaries of superstition, from Ehud down to Kosinski, stained with the blood of kings and with that of nations. Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy extinguishes them. Perhaps these poor philosophers are not devoted enough to the Holy Virgin; but they are so to God, to reason, and to humanity.
Poles! if you are not philosophers, at least do not cut one another's throats. Frenchmen! be gay, and cease to quarrel. Spaniards! let the words "inquisition" and "holy brotherhood" be no longer uttered among you. Turks, who have enslaved Greece – monks, who have brutalized her – disappear ye from the face of the earth.
Drawn from Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch.
Nearly all that goes farther than the adoration of a supreme being, and the submission of the heart to his eternal orders, is superstition. The forgiveness of crimes, which is attached to certain ceremonies, is a very dangerous one.
Et nigras mactant pecudes, et manibu', divis,
Inferias mittunt.
O faciles nimium, qui tristia crimina cœdis,
Fluminea tolli posse putatis aqua!
You think that God will forget your homicide, if you bathe in a river, if you immolate a black sheep, and a few words are pronounced over you. A second homicide then will be forgiven you at the same price, and so of a third; and a hundred murders will cost you only a hundred black sheep and a hundred ablutions. Ye miserable mortals, do better; but let there be no murders, and no offerings of black sheep.
What an infamous idea, to imagine that a priest of Isis and Cybele, by playing cymbals and castanets, will reconcile you to the Divinity. And what then is this priest of Cybele, this vagrant eunuch, who lives on your weakness, and sets himself up as a mediator between heaven and you? What patent has he received from God? He receives money from you for muttering words; and you think that the Being of Beings ratifies the utterance of this charlatan!
There are innocent superstitions; you dance on festival days, in honor of Diana or Pomona, or some one of the secular divinities of which your calendar is full; be it so. Dancing is very agreeable; it is useful to the body; it exhilarates the mind; it does no harm to any one; but do not imagine that Pomona and Vertumnus are much pleased at your having jumped in honor of them, and that they may punish you for having failed to jump. There are no Pomona and Vertumnus but the gardener's spade and hoe. Do not be so imbecile as to believe that your garden will be hailed upon, if you have missed dancing the pyrrhic or the cordax.
There is one superstition which is perhaps pardonable, and even encouraging to virtue – that of placing among the gods great men who have been benefactors to mankind. It were doubtless better to confine ourselves to regarding them simply as venerable men, and above all, to imitating them. Venerate, without worshipping, a Solon, a Thales, a Pythagoras; but do not adore a Hercules for having cleansed the stables of Augeas, and for having lain with fifty women in one night.
Above all, beware of establishing a worship for vagabonds who have no merit but ignorance, enthusiasm, and filth; who have made idleness and beggary their duty