As to our holy religion having been so often corrupted, by these infernal impulses, it is the folly of man that is to blame.

FRAUD.

WHETHER PIOUS FRAUDS ARE ALLOWABLE.

BAMBABEF, the fakir, one day met a disciple of Confutzee (Confucius), whose name was Ouang. Bambabef maintained that it is proper sometimes to deceive the people, and Ouang insisted that we ought never to deceive any one. The substance of their dispute was as follows:

Bamb. We are to imitate the Supreme Being, who does not show us things as they are: he shows us the sun in a diameter of only two or three feet, though that body be a million of times larger than the earth: he shows us the moon and the stars, as fixed on one and the same blue ground, though they are at different and immense distances: he would have a square tower appear round to us afar off: he would have fire seem hot to us, though it be neither hot nor cold: in a word, he encompasses us with errors suitable to our nature.

Quang. What you call error is no such thing. That sun, which is placed millions of millions of lis* from our globe, is not that sun we see; we cannot have any real sight, but of the sun which reflects itself on our retina in a determinate angle. Our eyes were not given us for the knowledge of dimensions and distances; this requires other instruments and operations.

[Bambabef stared at such language; but Ouang, being endowed with uncommon patience, explained to him the theory of optics; and Bambabef, having a clear head, acquiesced in the demonstrations produced by Confutzee's disciple, and then returned to the dispute in these terms.]

Bamb. If God does not deceive us by the medium of, our senses, as I thought, you must own, however, that physicians always cheat children for their good: they will tell them they are giving them sugar, when, at the same time, it is rhubarb : so that I, as a fakir, may deceive the people, they having no more knowledge or understanding than children.

Quang. I have two sons, and never have I deceived them. When they are sick I say to them, this physic is very bitter,

* A lis signifies 124 paces.

but you must pluck up a good heart and take it: the more bitter it is, the more good it will do you; were it sweet, it would hurt you. I never allowed their governesses or preceptors to frighten them with ghosts and apparitions, with hobgoblins and wizards: and thus they are grown up to be brave and sensible young men.

Bamb. The common people are not born with the like happy talents and dispositions as your family.

Ouang. All men are alike: they are born with the same propensities; it is the fakirs who vitiate human nature.

Bamb. We do teach them errors, I own; but it is for their good: we make them believe that if they do not buy of our consecrated nails, or expiate their sins by giving us money, they will in the next world be post-horses, dogs, or lizards. This terrifies them into goodness.

Quang. Are you not aware that this is perverting the poor people? Reasoning is not so scarce among them as is imagined. There are great numbers who reflect; who laugh at your nails, your miracles and superstitions; and who know better than their being changed into lizards or post-horses. What is the consequence? They have sense to see that you preach up a sophisticated religion, but not enough to raise themselves to a pure religion, free from superstition and folly, such as ours. Their passions lead them to believe there is nothing in religion, the only religion taught them being manifestly ridiculous; and thus you share in all the guilt into which they plunge themselves.

Bamb. Not in the least; for we only teach them a good morality.

Ouang. You would get yourselves stoned to death were you to preach a false morality. Men are of such a make, that amidst all their iniquity they will not bear the preaching of it to them. Absurd fables should not be intermixed with good morality; for thus by your impostures, which might as well be suppressed, you weaken that morality which, for self-preservation, you are obliged to teach.

Bamb. How! do you imagine there is any such thing as teaching truth to the people without calling in fables?

Quang. To be sure I do. Our literati are of the same texture as our tailors, weavers and farmers. They worship one God, the creator of all things; who rewards and punishes: their religion is not darkened with absurd systems, nor disfigured with fantastical ceremonies; and much less wickedness is there among the literati than among the common

people. Wherefore, then, do you not condescend to instruct your artificers as we instruct our literati?

Bamb. That would be idle indeed; as if they were to have all the good-breeding and knowledge of a counsellor that is neither possible nor proper. White bread for masters; and brown bread will go down with servants.

Quang. All men, I own, should not have an equal stock of knowledge; but some points there are necessary to all: it is necessary that all men should be just; and the surest method to make them so, is to teach them religion, without superstition.

Bamb. A specious scheme, only impracticable. Think you that for men to believe a rewarding and punishing God, will do the business? You say that the sensible part of the people are offended at my fables; and as little will they digest your bare truths. They will say, how am I certain that God punishes and rewards? Your proofs? Where is your mission? What miracles have you done for me to believe you? It is you they will flout at, and not me.

Ouang. There lies your mistake. Because they reject dangerous absurdities and fictions shocking to common sense, you fancy they will not admit a doctrine highly probable, conducive to virtue, productive of the greatest benefit to all mankind, and perfectly consonant with human reason?

The people are thorougly inclined to refer to their magistrates, when the belief recommended by these is rational, they readily close with it. Miracles are not necessary to enforce belief of a just God, to whom all hearts are open: the idea is too natural to be long opposed. To tell precisely how, and in what manner, God will punish and reward, is out of the question. Believe him just, and that is enough. I assure you, have seen whole cities with scarcely any other tenet, and no where have I observed so much virtue.

Bamb. Fair and softly: those same cities swarm with philosophers who deny both rewards and punishments.

Quang. You must withal own, that those philsophers will much more peremptorily deny your inventions; so that makes but little on your side. As for philosophers differing from my principles, they may still be good men, still as sedulous in the cultivation of virtue, which is to be embraced from love, and not out of fear. But I aver, that no philosopher can ever be assured that Providence has not in store punishments for the wicked, and recompences for the good: for should they ask me, who told me that God punishes? my answer is, who

told them that God does not punish? In short the philosopher, I dare say, instead of opposing me, would second me. Are you inclined to be a philosopher?

Bamb. Very much so: but not a word of it to the fakirs.

FREEDOM OF SENTIMENT.

In the year 1707, about the time the English gained the battle of Saragossa, protected Portugal, and gave to Spain a king, my lord Valiant, a general officer, who had been wounded in fight, had retired to Bareges, for the benefit of the waters. The count Medroso, who had fallen from his horse behind the baggage-waggons, a league and a half from the field of battle, had repaired also to the same place. The latter had been well acquainted with the inquisition, on which account his lordship entered one day, after dinner, into the following conversation with him :

Val. And so, count, you have been an officer in the inquisition? You must have been engaged in a most villanous employment.

Med. Very true, my lord; but, as I had rather be their officer than their victim, I preferred the misfortune of burning my neighbour, to that of being roasted myself.

Val. What a horrible alternative! Your countrymen were a hundred times happier under the yoke of the Moors, who permitted you to indulge yourselves freely in superstition, and, imperious as they were as conquerors, they never dreamed of exercising that strange prerogative, of enslaving souls.

Med. We are not permitted now either to write, speak, or even to think. If we speak, it is easy to misinterpret our words, and still much more so if we write. And though we cannot be condemned at an auto-da-fe, for our secret thoughts, we are threatened to lie burning for ever, by the command of God himself if we dare to think otherwise than the Dominicans. They have persuaded the government also, that if we had common sense, the state would soon be in a combustion, and the nation become the most unhappy people upon earth.

Val. And do you believe that the English are so unhappy, who cover the ocean with their ships, and came from the other and of Europe to fight your battles for you? Do you find that the Dutch, who have stripped you of almost all your discoveries in India, and who now are among your protectors, are really so abandoned by heaven for having given free

liberty to the press, and converted the thoughts of mankind into a profitable species of commerce? Was the Roman empire the less powerful for permitting Cicero to write his sentiments freely?

Med. Cicero! who is he? I never heard of his name, before. We hear nothing of your Ciceros, but of our holy father, the pope, and St. Anthony of Padua. Nay, I have hitherto been told that the Romish religion is demolished, if men once begin to think for themselves.

Val. How are you to believe this, who are assured that your church is of divine institution, and that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it? If this be true, nothing can ever destroy it.

Med. That is true; but it may be reduced to almost nothing. Thus, it is owing to this thinking, that Sweden, Denmark, England, and the greatest part of Germany, labour under the terrible misfortune of being no longer subject to the pope. It is even said, that if men thus continue to follow the light of their own mistaken understandings, they will be contented soon with the simple adoration of God, and the mere practice of moral virtue. If the gates of hell should prevail so far as this, what would become of the holy office?

Val. Had the primitive Christians been thus prohibited from thinking, Christianity would certainly never have been established.

Med. I do not rightly understand what you mean.

Val. I mean to say, that if Tiberius and the rest of the emperors had encouraged Dominicans to prevent the primitive Christians from the use of pen and ink, nay, had not the privilege of thinking freely been long enjoyed in Rome, it had been impossible for the Christians to have established their tenets. If then the first establishment of Christianity was owing to this liberty of thinking, how contradictory and absurd is it to endeavour to destroy that basis, on which your churchitself was first founded! If any proposal regarding your worldly interest be made to you, do not you consider some time before you adopt it? And what can be more interesting to a man in this world, than that of his eternal happiness or misery in the next? There are above a hundred different religions upon earth that condemn you and your tenets as absurd, impious, and damnable. Enter into an examination therefore of those tenets.

Med. How should I be able to examine them? I am no Dominican.

Val. But you are a man, and that is sufficient.