The Philosophy of Voltaire - Collected Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato's Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable…. Вольтер
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the Divinity and quite different from what happened to other men. We will even venture to advance that the death of these fifty thousand and seventy men is one of the least surprising things in the Old Testament.
We are struck with astonishment still more reverential when Eve's serpent and Balaam's ass talk; when the waters of the cataracts are swelled by rain fifteen cubits above all the mountains; when we behold the plagues of Egypt, and the six hundred and thirty thousand fighting Jews flying on foot through the divided and suspended sea; when Joshua stops the sun and moon at noonday; when Samson slays a thousand Philistines with the jaw-bone of an ass.... In those divine times all was miracle, without exception, and we have the profoundest reverence for all these miracles—for that ancient world which was not our world; for that nature which was not our nature; for a divine book, in which there can be nothing human.
But we are astonished at the liberty which Dr. Kennicott takes of calling those deists and atheists, who, while they revere the Bible more than he does, differ from him in opinion. Never will it be believed that a man with such ideas is of the Academy of Medals and Inscriptions. He is, perhaps, of the Academy of Bedlam, the most ancient of all, and whose colonies extend throughout the earth.
BILHAH—BASTARDS
Bilhah, servant to Rachel, and Zilpah, servant to Leah, each bore the patriarch Jacob two children, and, be it observed, that they inherited like legitimate sons, as well as the eight other male children whom Jacob had by the two sisters Leah and Rachel. It is true that all their inheritance consisted in a blessing; whereas, William the Bastard inherited Normandy.
Thierri, a bastard of Clovis, inherited the best part of Gaul, invaded by his father. Several kings of Spain and Naples have been bastards. In Spain bastards have always inherited. King Henry of Transtamare was not considered as an illegitimate king, though he was an illegitimate child, and this race of bastards, founded in the house of Austria, reigned in Spain until Philip V.
The line of Aragon, who reigned in Naples in the time of Louis XII., were bastards. Count de Dunois signed himself "the bastard of Orleans," and letters were long preserved of the duke of Normandy, king of England, which were signed "William the Bastard."
In Germany it is otherwise; the descent must be pure; bastards never inherit fiefs, nor have any estate. In France, as has long been the case, a king's bastard cannot be a priest without a dispensation from Rome, but he becomes a prince without any difficulty as soon as the king acknowledges him to be the offspring of his sire, even though he be the bastard of an adulterous father and mother. It is the same in Spain. The bastard of a king of England may be a duke but not a prince. Jacob's bastards were neither princes nor dukes; they had no lands, the reason being that their father had none, but they were afterwards called patriarchs, which may be rendered arch-fathers.
It has been asked whether the bastards of the popes might be popes in turn. Pope John XI. was, it is true, a bastard of Pope Sergius III., and of the famous Marozia; but an instance is not a law.
BISHOP.
Samuel Ornik, a native of Basle, was, as is well known, a very amiable young man, who, moreover, knew his German and Greek New Testament by heart. At the age of twenty his parents sent him to travel. He was commissioned to carry books to the coadjutor at Paris in the time of the Fronde. He arrived at the archbishop's gate and was told by the Swiss that monseigneur saw no one. "My dear fellow," said Ornik, "you are very rude to your countrymen; the apostles allowed every one to approach, and Jesus Christ desired that little children should come unto him. I have nothing to ask of your master; on the contrary, I bring him something." "Enter, then," said the Swiss.
He waited an hour in the first ante-chamber. Being quite artless he attacked with questions a domestic who was very fond of telling all he knew about his master. "He must be pretty rich," said Ornik, "to have such a swarm of pages and footmen running in and out of the house." "I don't know," answered the other, "what his income is, but I hear Joli and the Abbé Charier say that he is two millions in debt." "But who is that lady who came out of a cabinet and is passing by?" "That is Madame de Pomereu, one of his mistresses." "She is really very pretty, but I have not read that the apostles had such company in their bedchambers in a morning." "Ah! that, I believe, is monsieur, about to give audience." "Say sa grandeur, monseigneur." "Well, with all my heart...." Ornik saluted sa grandeur, presented his books, and was received with a most gracious smile. Sa grandeur said three words to him, and stepped into his carriage, escorted by fifty horsemen. In stepping in, monseigneur dropped a sheath and Ornik was astonished that monseigneur should carry so large an inkhorn. "Do you not see," said the talker, "that it is his dagger? every one that goes to parliament wears his dagger?" Ornik uttered an exclamation of astonishment, and departed.
He went through France and was edified by town after town. From thence he passed into Italy. In the papal territories he met a bishop with an income of only a thousand crowns, who went on foot. Ornik, being naturally kind, offered him a place in his cambiatura. "Signor, you are no doubt going to comfort the sick?" "Sir, I am going to my master." "Your master? He, no doubt, is Jesus Christ." "Sir, he is Cardinal Azolino; I am his almoner. He gives me a very poor salary, but he has promised to place me with Donna Olimpia, the favorite sister-in-law of nostro signore." "What! are you in the pay of a cardinal? But do you not know that there were no cardinals in the time of Jesus Christ and St. John?" "Is it possible!" exclaimed the Italian prelate. "Nothing is more true; you have read it in the Gospel." "I have never read it," replied the bishop; "I know only the office of Our Lady." "I tell you there were neither cardinals nor bishops, and when there were bishops the priests were almost their equals, as St. Jerome, in several places, assures us." "Holy Virgin" said the Italian, "I knew nothing about it; and what of the popes?" "There were no popes either." The good bishop crossed himself, thinking he was with the evil one, and leaped from the side of his companion.
BLASPHEMY.
This is a Greek word signifying an attack on reputation. We find blasphemia in Demosthenes. In the Greek Church it was used only to express an injury done to God. The Romans never made use of this expression, apparently not thinking that God's honor could be offended like that of men.
There scarcely exists one synonym. Blasphemy does not altogether convey the idea of sacrilege. We say of a man who has taken God's name in vain, who, in the violence of anger, has sworn—as it is expressed—by the name of God, that he has blasphemed; but we do not say that he has committed sacrilege. The sacrilegious man is he who perjures himself on the gospel, who extends his rapacity to sacred things, who imbrues his hands in the blood of priests.
Great sacrileges have always been punished with death in all nations, especially those accompanied by bloodshed. The author of the "Institutes au Droit Criminel" reckons among divine high treasons in the second degree, the non-observance of Sundays and holidays. He should have said the non-observance attended with marked contempt, for simple negligence is a sin, but not, as he calls it, a sacrilege. It is absurd to class together, as this author does, simony, the carrying off of a nun, and the forgetting to go to vespers on a holiday. It is one great instance of the errors committed by writers on jurisprudence, who, not having been called upon to make laws, take upon themselves to interpret those of the state.
Blasphemies uttered in intoxication, in anger, in the excess of debauchery, or in the heat of unguarded conversation have been subjected by legislators to much lighter penalties. For instance, the advocate whom we have already cited says that the laws of France condemn simple blasphemers to a fine for the first offence, which is doubled for the second, tripled for the third, and quadrupled