The page was wrong. We are not to become mahometans because we are incensed; but we must pardon a feeling young man who loved Henry IV. Master Filesac spoke according to his theology; the page

attended to his heart.

REASONABLE, OR RIGHT.

At the time that all France was carried away by the system of Law, and when he was comptroller-general, a man who was always in the right came to him one day and said:

"Sir, you are the greatest madman, the greatest fool, or the greatest rogue, who has yet appeared among us. It is saying a great deal; but behold how I prove it. You have imagined that we may increase the riches of a state ten-fold by means of paper. But this paper only represents money, which is itself only a representative of genuine riches, the production of the earth and manufacture. It follows therefore that you should have commenced by giving us ten times as much corn, wine, cloth, linen, &c.; this is not enough, they must be certain of sale. Now you make ten times as many notes as we have money and commodities; ergo, you are ten times more insane, stupid, or roguish, than all the comptrollers or superintendants who have preceded you. Behold how rapidly I will prove my major."

Scarcely had he commenced his major than he was conducted to St. Lazarus.

When he came out of St. Lazarus, where he studied much and strengthened his reason, he went to Rome. He demanded a public audience, and that he should not be interrupted in his harangue. He addressed his holiness as follows:

"Holy father, you are anti-christ, and behold how I will prove it to your holiness. I call him ante-christ or anti-christ, according to the meaning of the word, who does everything contrary to that which Christ commanded. Now Christ was poor, and you are very rich. He payed tribute, and you exact it.

He sub

mitted himself to the powers that be, and you have become one of them. He wandered on foot, and you visit Castle Gandolfo in a sumptuous carriage. He ate of all that which people were willing to give him, and you would have us eat fish on Fridays and Saturdays, even when we reside at a distance from the seas and rivers. He forbade Simon Barjonas from using the sword, and you have many swords in your service, &c. &c. In this sense therefore your holiness is antichrist. In every other sense I exceedingly revere you, and request an indulgence in articulo mortis.'

My free speaker was immediately confined in the castle of St. Angelo.

When he came out of the castle of St. Angelo, he proceeded to Venice and demanded an audience of the doge. "Your serenity," he exclaimed, "commits a great extravagance every year in marrying the sea; for in the first place, people marry only once with the same person; secondly, your marriage resembles that of harlequin, which was only half performed, as wanting the consent of one of the parties; thirdly, who has told you that some day or other the other maritime powers will not declare you incapable of consummating your marriage?"

Having thus delivered his mind, he was shut the tower of St. Mark.

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When he came out of the tower of St. Mark, he proceeded to Constantinople, where he obtained an interview with the mufti, and thus addressed him :-" Your religion contains some good points, such as the adoration of the Supreme Being, and the necessity of being just and charitable; nevertheless, it is a mere hash composed out of judaism and a wearisome heap of stories from Mother Goose. If the archangel Gabriel had brought from some planet the leaves of the Koran to Mahomet, all Arabia would have beheld his descent. Nobody saw him, therefore Mahomet was a bold im postor, who deceived weak and ignorant people."

He had scarcely pronounced these words, before he was impaled; nevertheless, he had been all along in the right.

RELICS.

By this name are designated the remains or remaining parts of the body, or clothes, of a person placed after his death by the church in the number of the blessed.

It is clear that Jesus condemned only the hypocrisy of the Jews, in saying,* *"Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous." Thus, orthodox christians have an equal veneration for the relics and images of saints, and I know not what. Doctor Henry ventures to say, that when bones or other relics are changed into worms, we must not adore these worms; the jesuit Vasquezt decided that the opinion of Henry is absurd and vain, for it signifies not in what manner corruption takes place, consequently," says he, "we can adore relics as much under the form of worms as under that of ashes."

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However this may be, St. Cyril of Alexandria avows, that the origin of relics is pagan; and this is the description given of their worship by Theodoret, who lived in the commencement of the christian era:§ "They run to the temples of martyrs,” says this learned bishop, some to demand the preservation of their health, others the cure of their maladies; and barren women for fruitfulness. After obtaining children, these women ask the preservation of them. Those who undertake voyages, pray the martyrs to accompany and conduct them; and on their return they testify to them their gratitude. They adore them not as gods, but they honour them as divine men; and conjure them to become their intercessors.

"The offerings which are displayed in their temples are public proofs that those who have demanded with faith, have obtained the accomplishment of their vows,

Matthew, xxiii. 29.

+ Book ii. of the Adoration, disp. iii. chap. viii.

Book x. against Julian. Question 51 on Exodus.

and the cure of their disorders. Some hang up artificial eyes, others feet, and others hands of gold and silver. These monuments publish the virtue of those who are buried in these tombs, as their influence publishes that the god for whom they suffered is the true God. Thus christians take care to give their children the names of martyrs, that they may be ensured their protection."

Finally, Theodoret adds, that the temples of the gods were demolished, and that the materials served for the construction of the temples of martyrs: "For the Lord," said he to the pagans, "has substituted his dead for your gods; he has shown the vanity of the latter, and transferred to others the honours paid to them." It is of this that the famous sophist of Sardis complains bitterly, in deploring the ruin of the temple of Serapis at Canopus, which was demolished by order of the emperor Theodosius I. in the year 389.

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People," says Eunapius, "who had never heard speak of war, were however very valiant against the stones of this temple; and principally against the rich offerings with which it was filled. These holy places were given to monks, an infamous and useless class of people, who, provided they wear a black and slovenly dress, hold a tyrannical authority over the minds of the people; and instead of the gods whom we acknowledged through the lights of reason, these monks give us heads of criminals, punished for their crimes, to adore, which they have salted in order to preserve them."

The people are superstitious, and it is superstition which enchains them. The miracles forged on the subject of relics, became a loadstone which attracted from all parts riches to the churches. Stupidity and credulity were carried so far, that in the year 386, the same Theodosius was obliged to make a law by which he forbad buried corpses to be transported from one place to another, or the relics of any martyr to be separated and sold.

During the three first ages of christianity, they were contented with celebrating the day of the death of

martyrs, which they called their natal day, by assembling in the cemeteries where their bodies lay, to pray for them, as we have remarked in the article MASS. They dreamed not then of a time in which christians would raise temples to them, transport their ashes and bones from one place to another, show them in shrines, and finally make a traffic of them; which excited avarice to fill the world with false relics.

But the third council of Carthage, held in the year 397, having inserted in the scriptures the Apocalypse of St. John, the authenticity of which was till then contested, this passage of chapter 6-" I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God," authorised the custom of having relics of martyrs under the altars; and this practice was soon regarded so essential, that St. Ambrose, notwithstanding the wishes of the people, would not consecrate a church where there were none: and in 692 the council of Constantinople, in Trullo, even ordered all the altars to be demolished under which it found no relics.

Another council of Carthage, on the contrary, in the year 401, ordered bishops to build altars which might be seen everywhere, in fields and on high roads, in honour of martyrs; from which were here and there dug pretended relics, on dreams and vain revelations of all sorts of people.

St. Augustin relates, that towards the year 415, Lucian, the priest of a town called Caphargamata, some miles distant from Jerusalem, three times saw in a dream the learned Gamaliel, who declared to him that his body, that of Abibas his son, of St. Stephen, and Nicodemus, were buried in a part of his parish which he pointed out to him. He commanded him, on their part and his own, to leave them no longer neglected in the tomb in which they had been for some ages, but to go and tell John, bishop of Jerusalem, to come and dig them up immediately, if he would prevent the ills with which the world was threatened. Gamaliel added, that this translation must be made in the episcopacy of John, who died about a year after.