of the world; but now, when so many sects are balanced by their power, what side must we take among them? Every sect, we know, is a mere title of error: while there is no sect of geometricians, of algebraists, of arithmeticians; because all the propositions of geometry, algebra, and arithmetic, are true. In all the other sciences one may be mistaken. What Thomist or Scotist theologian can venture to assert seriously that he goes upon sure grounds?

If there is any sect which reminds one of the time of the first Christians, it is undeniably that of the Quakers. The apostles received the spirit; the Quakers receive the spirit. The apostles and disciples spoke three or four at once in the assembly in the third story; the Quakers do as much on the ground floor. Women were permitted to preach, according to St. Paul, and they were forbidden, according to the same St. Paul: the Quakeresses preach by virtue of the first permission. The apostles and disciples swore by yea and nay; the Quakers will not swear in any other form.

There was no rank, no difference of dress, among apostles and disciples; the Quakers have sleeves without buttons, and are all clothed alike.

Jesus Christ baptised none of his apostles; the Quakers are never baptised.

It would be easy to push the parallel farther; it would be still easier to demonstrate how much the Christian religion of our day differs from the religion which Jesus practised. Jesus was a Jew, and we are not Jews. Jesus abstained from pork, because it is uncleanly, and from rabbit, because it ruminates and its foot is not cloven; we fearlessly eat pork, because it is not uncleanly for us, and we eat rabbit which has the cloven foot and does not ruminate.

Jesus was circumcised, and we retain our foreskin. Jesus eat the paschal lamb with lettuce, he celebrated the feast of the tabernacles; and we do nothing of this. He observed the Sabbath, and we have changed it; he sacrificed, and we never sacrifice.

Jesus always concealed the mystery of his incarnation and his dignity; he never said he was equal to God. 2 B

VOL. VI.

St. Paul says expressly, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, that God created Jesus inferior to the angels; and in spite of St. Paul's words, Jesus was acknowledged as God at the council of Nice.

Jesus has not given the pope either the march of Ancona or the duchy of Spoletto; and notwithstanding, the pope possesses them by divine right.

Jesus did not make a sacrament either of marriage or of deaconry; and with us marriage and deaconry are sacraments.

If we would attend closely to the fact, the catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion is, in all its ceremonies and in all its dogmas, the reverse of the religion of Jesus!

But what! must we all judaise, because Jesus judaised all his life?

If it were allowed to reason logically in matters of religion, it is clear that we ought all to become Jews, since Jesus Christ our Saviour was born a Jew, lived a Jew, and died a Jew, and since he expressly said, that he accomplished, and fulfilled, the Jewish religion. But it is still more clear that we ought mutually to tolerate one another, because we are all weak, irrational, and subject to change and error. A reed prostrated by the wind in the mire,-ought it to say to a neighbouring reed placed in a contrary direction, Creep after my fashion, wretch, or I will present a request for you to be seized and burnt?

SECTION III.

My friends, when we have preached toleration in prose and in verse, in some of our pulpits, and in all our societies; when we have made these true human voices * resound in the organs of our churches,—we have done something for nature, we have re-established humanity in its rights; there will no longer be an exjesuit or an ex-jansenist who dares to say-I am intolerant.

* There is a musical stop in certain organs which is called vox humane (voix humaine).

There will always be barbarians and cheats who will foment intolerance; but they will not avow it-and that is something gained.

Let us always bear in mind, my friends-let us repeat (for we must repeat, for fear it should be forgotten) the words of the bishop of Soissons, not Languet, but Fitzjames-Stuart, in his mandate of 1757:We ought to regard the Turks as our brethren."

Let us consider, that throughout English America, which constitutes nearly the fourth part of the known world, entire liberty of conscience is established; and provided a man believes in a God, every religion is well received; notwithstanding which, commerce flourishes and population increases.

Let us always reflect, that the first law of the empire of Russia, which is greater than the Roman empire, is the toleration of every sect.

The Turkish empire, and the Persian, always allowed the same indulgence. Mahomet II. when he took Constantinople, did not force the Greeks to abandon their religion, although he looked upon them as idolaters. Every Greek father of a family got off for five or six crowns a-year. Many prebends and bishopricks were preserved for them; and even at this day the Turkish sultan makes canons and bishops, without the pope having ever made an iman or a mollah.

My friends, there are only some monks, and some protestants as barbarous as those monks, who are still intolerant.

We have been so infected with this furor, that in our voyages of long duration, we have carried it to China, to Tonquin, and Japan. We have introduced the plague to those beautiful climes. The most indulgent of mankind have been taught by us to be the most inflexible. We said to them at the outset, in return for their kind welcome,-Know that we alone upon the earth are in the right, and that we ought to be masters everywhere. Then they drove us away for This lesson, which has cost seas of blood, ought

ever.

to correct us.

SECTION IV.

The author of the preceding article is a worthy man who would sup with a Quaker, an Anabaptist, a Socinian, a Mussulman, &c. I would push this civility farther; I would say to my brother the Turk,-Let us eat together a good hen with rice, invoking Allah; your religion seems to me very respectable; you adore but one God; you are obliged to give the fortieth part of your revenue every day in alms, and to be reconciled with your enemies on the day of the bairam. Our bigots, who calumniate the world, have said a hundred times, that your religion succeeded only because it was wholly sensual. They have lied, poor fellows! Your religion is very austere; it commands prayer five times a-day; it imposes the most rigorous fast; it denies you the wine and the liquors which our spiritual directors encourage; and if it permits only four wives to those who can support them (who are very few) it condemns by this restriction the Jewish incontinence, which allowed eighteen wives to the homicide David, and seven hundred to Solomon, the assassin of his brother, without reckoning concubines.

I will say to my brother the Chinese, Let us sup together without ceremony, for I dislike grimaces; but I like your law, the wisest of all, and perhaps the most ancient. I will say nearly as much to my brother the Indian.

But what shall I say to my brother the Jew? Shall I invite him to supper? Yes, on condition that during the repast Balaam's ass does not take it into its head to bray; that Ezekiel does not mix his dinner with our supper; that a fish does not swallow up one of the guests and keep him three days in his belly; that a serpent does not join in the conversation, in order to seduce wife; my that a prophet does not think proper to sleep with her, as the worthy man Hosea did for five francs and a bushel of barley; above all, that no Jew parades through my house to the sound of the trumpet, causes the walls to fall down, and cuts the throats of myself, my father, my mother, my wife, my

children, my cat and my dog, according to the ancient practice of the Jews. Come, my friends, let us have peace, and say our benedicite.

TOPHET.

TOPHET was, and is still, a precipice near Jerusalem, in the valley of Hinnon, which is a frightful place, abounding only in flints. It was in this dreary solitude that the Jews immolated their children to their god, whom they then called Moloch; for we have observed, that they always bestowed a foreign name upon their god. Shadai was Syrian; Adonai, Phenician; Jehovah was also Phenician; Eloi, Elohim, Eloa, Chaldean; and in the same manner the names of all their angels were Chaldean or Persian. This we have remarked very particularly.

All these different names equally signify the Lord in the jargon of the petty nations bordering upon Palestine. The word Moloch is evidently derived from Melk, which was the same as Melcom or Melcon, the divinity of the thousand women in the seraglio of Solomon; to wit, seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. All these names signify Lord: each village had its lord.

Some sages pretend, that Moloch was more particularly the god of fire; and that it was on that account the Jews burned their children in the hollow of the idol of this same Moloch. It was a large statue of copper, rendered as hideous as the Jews could make it. They heated this statue red hot, in a large fire, although they had very little fuel, and cast their children into the belly of this god, as our cooks cast living lobsters into the boiling water of their cauldrons.

Such were the ancient Celts and Tudescans, when they burned children in honour of Teutates and Hirminsule. Such the Gallic virtue, and the German freedom!

Jeremiah wished, in vain, to detach the Jewish people from this diabolical worship. In vain he reproaches them with having built a sort of temple to Moloch in