Chapter XXI: Section II (1)

What is virtue? Beneficence towards your neighbor. Can I call virtue anything but that which does good! I am indigent, thou art liberal. I am in danger, thou succorest me. I am deceived, thou tellest me the truth. I am neglected, thou consolest me. I am ignorant, thou teachest me. I can easily call thee virtuous, but what will become of the cardinal and theological virtues? Some will remain in the schools.

What signifies it to me whether thou art temperate? It is a precept of health which thou observest; thou art the better for it; I congratulate thee on it. Thou hast faith and hope; I congratulate thee still more; they will procure thee eternal life. Thy theological virtues are celestial gifts; thy cardinal ones are excellent qualities, which serve to guide thee; but they are not virtues in relation to thy neighbor. The prudent man does himself good; the virtuous one does it to other men. St. Paul was right in telling thee, that charity ranks above faith and hope.

But how! wilt thou admit of no other virtues than those which are useful to thy neighbor? How can I admit any others? We live in society; there is therefore nothing truly good for us but that which does good to society. An hermit will be sober, pious, and dressed in sackcloth: very well; he will be holy; but I will not call him virtuous until he shall have done some act of virtue by which men may have profited. While he is alone, he is neither beneficent nor the contrary; he is nobody to us. If St. Bruno had made peace in families, if he had assisted the indigent, he had been virtuous; having fasted and prayed in solitude, he is only a saint. Virtue between men is a commerce of good actions: he who has no part in this commerce, must not be reckoned. If this saint were in the world, he would doubtless do good, but while he is not in the world, we have no reason to give him the name of virtuous: he will be good for himself, and not for us.

But, say you, if an hermit is gluttonous, drunken, given up to a secret debauch with himself, he is vicious; he is therefore virtuous, if he has the contrary qualities. I cannot agree to this: he is a very vile man, if he has the faults of which you speak; but he is not vicious, wicked, or punishable by society, to which his infamies do no harm. It may be presumed, that if he re-enters society, he will do evil to it; he then will be very vicious; and it is even more probable that he will be a wicked man, than it is certain that the other temperate and chaste hermit will be a good man; for in society faults augment, and good qualities diminish.

A much stronger objection is made to me: Nero, Pope Alexander VI., and other monsters of the kind, have performed good actions. I reply boldly, that they were virtuous at the time. Some theologians say, that the divine Emperor Antoninus was not virtuous; that he was an infatuated Stoic, who, not content with commanding men, would further be esteemed by them; that he gave himself credit for the good which he did to mankind; that he was all his life just, laborious, beneficent, through vanity; and that he only deceived men by his virtues. To which I exclaim: My God! often send us such knaves!

VISION.

When I speak of vision, I do not mean the admirable manner in which our eyes perceive objects, and in which the pictures of all that we see are painted on the retina--a divine picture designed according to all the laws of mathematics, which is, consequently, like everything else from the hand of the Eternal geometrician; in spite of those who explain it, and who pretend to believe, that the eye is not intended to see, the ear to hear, or the feet to walk. This matter has been so learnedly treated by so many great geniuses, that there is no further remnant to glean after their harvests.

I do not pretend to speak of the heresy of which Pope John XXII. was accused, who pretended that saints will not enjoy beatific vision until after the last judgment. I give up this vision. My subject is the innumerable multitude of visions with which so many holy personages have been favored or tormented; which so many idiots are believed to have seen; with which so many knavish men and women have duped the world, either to get the reputation of being favored by heaven, which is very flattering, or to gain money, which is still more so to rogues in general.

Calmet and Langlet have made ample collections of these visions. The most interesting in my opinion is the one which has produced the greatest effects, since it has tended to reform three parts of the Swiss--that of the young Jacobin Yetzer, with which I have already amused my dear reader. This Yetzer, as you know, saw the Holy Virgin and St. Barbara several times, who informed him of the marks of Jesus Christ. You are not ignorant of how he received, from a Jacobin confessor, a host powdered with arsenic, and how the bishop of Lausanne would have had him burned for complaining that he was poisoned. You have seen, that these abominations were one of the causes of the misfortune which happened to the Bernese, of ceasing to be Catholic, Apostolical, and Roman.

I am sorry that I have no visions of this consequence to tell you of. Yet you will confess, that the vision of the reverend father Cordeliers of Orleans, in 1534, approaches the nearest to it, though still very distant. The criminal process which it occasioned is still in manuscript in the library of the king of France, No. 1770.

The illustrious house of St. Memin did great good to the convent of the Cordeliers, and had their vault in the church. The wife of a lord of St. Memin, provost of Orleans, being dead, her husband, believing that his ancestors had sufficiently impoverished themselves by giving to the monks, gave the brothers a present which did not appear to them considerable enough. These good Franciscans conceived a plan for disinterring the deceased, to force the widower to have her buried again in their holy ground, and to pay them better. The project was not clever, for the lord of St. Memin would not have failed to bury her elsewhere. But folly often mixes with knavery.

At first, the soul of the lady of St. Memin appeared only to two brothers. She said to them: "I am damned, like Judas, because my husband has not given sufficient." The two knaves who related these words perceived not, that they must do more harm to the convent than good. The aim of the convent was to extort money from the lord of St. Memin, for the repose of his wife's soul. Now, if Madame de St. Memin was damned, all the money in the world could not save her. They got no more; the Cordeliers lost their labor.

At this time there was very little good sense in France: the nation had been brutalized by the invasion of the Franks, and afterwards by the invasion of scholastic theology; but in Orleans there were some persons who reasoned. If the Great Being permitted the soul of Madame de St. Memin to appear to two Franciscans, it was not natural, they thought, for this soul to declare itself damned like Judas. This comparison appeared to them to be unnatural. This lady had not sold our Lord Jesus Christ for thirty deniers; she was not hanged; her intestines had not obtruded themselves; and there was not the slightest pretext for comparing her to Judas.

This caused suspicion; and the rumor was still greater in Orleans, because there were already heretics there who believed not in certain visions, and who, in admitting absurd principles, did not always fail to draw good conclusions. The Cordeliers, therefore, changed their battery, and put the lady in purgatory.

She therefore appeared again, and declared that purgatory was her lot; but she demanded to be disinterred. It was not the custom to disinter those in purgatory; but they hoped that M. de St. Memin would prevent this extraordinary affront, by giving money. This demand of being thrown out of the church augmented the suspicions. It was well known, that souls often appeared, but they never demanded to be disinterred.

From this time the soul spoke no more, but it haunted everybody in the convent and church. The brother Cordeliers exorcised it. Brother Peter of Arras adopted a very awkward manner of conjuring it. He said to it: "If thou art the soul of the late Madame de St. Memin, strike four knocks;" and the four knocks were struck. "If thou are damned, strike six knocks;" and the six knocks were struck. "If thou art still tormented in hell, because thy body is buried in holy ground, knock six more times;" and the other six knocks were heard still more distinctly. "If we disinter thy body, and cease praying to God for thee, wilt thou be the less damned? Strike five knocks to certify it to us;" and the soul certified it by five knocks.

This interrogation of the soul, made by Peter of Arras, was signed by twenty-two Cordeliers, at the head of which was the reverend father provincial. This father provincial the next day asked it the same questions, and received the same answers.

It will be said, that the soul having declared that it was in purgatory, the Cordeliers should not have supposed that it was in hell; but it is not my fault if theologians contradict one another.

The lord of St. Memin presented a request to the king against the father Cordeliers. They presented a request on their sides; the king appointed judges, at the head of whom was Adrian Fumée, master of requests.

The procureur-general of the commission required that the said Cordeliers should be burned, but the sentence only condemned them to make the "amende honorable" with a torch in their bosom, and to be banished from the kingdom. This sentence is of February 18, 1535.

After such a vision, it is useless to relate any others: they are all a species either of knavery or folly. Visions of the first kind are under the province of justice; those of the second are either visions of diseased fools, or of fools in good health. The first belong to medicine, the second to Bedlam.

VISION OF CONSTANTINE.

Grave theologians have not failed to allege a specious reason to maintain the truth of the appearance of the cross in heaven; but we are going to show that these arguments are not sufficiently convincing to exclude doubt; the evidences which they quote being neither persuasive nor according with one another.

First, they produce no witnesses but Christians, the deposition of whom may be suspected in the treatment of a fact which tended to prove the divinity of their religion. How is it that no Pagan author has made mention of this miracle, which was seen equally by all the army of Constantine? That Zosimus, who seems to have endeavored to diminish the glory of Constantine, has said nothing of it, is not surprising; but the silence appears very strange in the author of the panegyric of Constantine, pronounced in his presence at Trier; in which oration the panegyrist expresses himself in magnificent terms on all the war against Maxentius, whom this emperor had conquered.

Another orator, who, in his panegyric, treats so eloquently of the war against Maxentius, of the clemency which Constantine showed after the victory, and of the deliverance of Rome, says not a word on this apparition; while he assures us, that celestial armies were seen by all the Gauls, which armies, it was pretended, were sent to aid Constantine.

This surprising vision has not only been unknown to Pagan authors, but to three Christian writers, who had the finest occasion to speak of them. Optatianus Porphyrius mentions more than once the monogram of Christ, which he calls the celestial sign, in the panegyric of Constantine which he wrote in Latin verse, but not a word on the appearance of the cross in the sky.

Lactantius says nothing of it in his treatise on the "Death of Persecutors," which he composed towards the year 314, two years after the vision of which we speak; yet he must have been perfectly informed of all that regards Constantine, having been tutor to Crispus, the son of this prince. He merely relates, that Constantine was commanded, in a dream, to put the divine image of the cross on the bucklers of his soldiers, and to give up war: but in relating a dream, the truth of which had no other support than the evidence of the emperor, he passes, in silence over a prodigy to which all the army were witnesses.

Further, Eusebius of Cæsarea himself, who has given the example to all other Christian historians on the subject, speaks not of this wonder, in the whole course of his "Ecclesiastical History," though he enlarges much on the exploits of Constantine against Maxentius. It is only in his life of this emperor that he expresses himself in these terms: "Constantine resolved to adore the god of Constantius; his father implored the protection of this god against Maxentius. Whilst he was praying, he had a wonderful vision, which would appear incredible, if related by another; but since the victorious emperor has himself related it to us, who wrote this history; and that, after having been long known to this prince, and enjoying a share in his good graces, the emperor confirming what he said by oath--who could doubt it? particularly since the event has confirmed the truth of it.

"He affirmed, that in the afternoon, when the sun set, he saw a luminous cross above it, with this inscription in Greek--'By this sign, conquer:' that this appearance astonished him extremely, as well as all the soldiers who followed him, who were witnesses of the miracle; that while his mind was fully occupied with this vision, and he sought to penetrate the sense of it, the night being come, Jesus Christ appeared to him during his sleep, with the same sign which He had shown to him in the air in the day-time, and commanded him to make a standard of the same form, and to bear it in his battles, to secure him from danger. Constantine, rising at break of day, related to his friends the vision which he had beheld; and, sending for goldsmiths and lapidaries, he sat in the midst of them, explained to them the figure of the sign which he had seen, and commanded them to make a similar one of gold and jewels; and we remember having sometimes seen it."

Eusebius afterwards adds, that Constantine, astonished at so admirable a vision, sent for Christian priests; and that, instructed by them, he applied himself to reading our sacred books, and concluded that he ought to adore with a profound respect the God who appeared to him.

How can we conceive that so admirable a vision, seen by so many millions of people, and so calculated to justify the truth of the Christian religion, could be unknown to Eusebius, an historian so careful in seeking all that could contribute to do honor to Christianity, as even to quote profane monuments falsely, as we have seen in the article on "Eclipse?" And how can we persuade ourselves that he was not informed of it, until several years after, by the sole evidence of Constantine? Were there no Christians in the army, who publicly made a glory of having seen such a prodigy? Had they so little interest in their cause as to keep silence on so great a miracle? Ought we to be astonished, after that, that Gelasius, one of the successors of Eusebius, in the siege of Cæsarea in the fifth century, has said that many people suspected that it was only a fable, invented in favor of the Christian religion?

This suspicion will become much stronger, if we take notice how little the witnesses agree on the circumstances of this marvellous appearance. Almost all affirm, that the cross was seen by Constantine and all his army; and Gelasius speaks of Constantine alone. They differ on the time of the vision. Philostorgius, in his "Ecclesiastical History," of which Photius has preserved us the extract, says, that it was when Constantine gained the victory over Maxentius; others pretend that it was before, when Constantine was making preparations for attacking the tyrant, and was on his march with his army. Arthemius, quoted by Metaphrastus and Surius, mentions the 20th of October, and says that it was at noon; others speak of the afternoon at sunset.

Authors do not agree better even on the vision: the greatest number acknowledged but one, and that in a dream. There is only Eusebius, followed by Philostorgius and Socrates, who speaks of two; the one that Constantine saw in the day-time, and the other which he saw in a dream, tending to confirm the first. Nicephorus Callistus reckons three.

The inscription offers new differences: Eusebius says that it was in Greek characters, while others do not speak of it. According to Philostorgius and Nicephorus, it was in Latin characters; others say nothing about it, and seem by their relation to suppose that the characters were Greek. Philostorgius affirms, that the inscription was formed by an assemblage of stars; Arthemius says that the letters were golden. The author quoted by Photius, represents them as composed of the same luminous matter as the cross; and according to Sosomenes, it had no inscription, and they were angels who said to Constantine: "By this sign, gain the victory."

Finally, the relation of historians is opposed on the consequences of this vision. If we take that of Eusebius, Constantine, aided by God, easily gained the victory over Maxentius; but according to Lactantius, the victory was much disputed. He even says that the troops of Maxentius had some advantage, before Constantine made his army approach the gates of Rome. If we may believe Eusebius and Sosomenes, from this epoch Constantine was always victorious, and opposed the salutary sign of the cross to his enemies, as an impenetrable rampart. However, a Christian author, of whom M. de Valois has collected some fragments, at the end of Ammianus Marcellinus--relates, that in the two battles given to Licinius by Constantine, the victory was doubtful, and that Constantine was even slightly wounded in the thigh; and Nicephorus says, that after the first apparition, he twice combated the Byzantines, without opposing the cross to them, and would not even have remembered it, if he had not lost nine thousand men, and had the same vision twice more. In the first, the stars were so arranged that they formed these words of a psalm: "Call on me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me;" and the last, much clearer and more brilliant still, bore: "By this sign, thou shalt vanquish all thy enemies."

Philostorgius affirms, that the vision of the cross, and the victory gained over Maxentius, determined Constantine to embrace the Christian faith; but Rufinus, who has translated the "Ecclesiastical History" of Eusebius into Latin, says that he already favored Christianity, and honored the true God. It is however known, that he did not receive baptism until a few days before his death, as is expressly said by Philostorgius, St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, Socrates, Theodoret, and the author of the Chronicle of Alexandria. This custom, then common, was founded on the belief that, baptism effacing all the sins of him who received it, he died certain of his salvation.

We might confine ourselves to these general reflections, but by superabundance of right we will discuss the authority of Eusebius, as an historian, and that of Constantine and Arthemius, as ocular witnesses.

As to Arthemius, we think that he ought not to be placed in the rank of ocular witnesses; his discourse being founded only on his "Acts," related by Metaphrastus, a fabulous author: "Acts" which Baronius pretends it was wrong to impeach, at the same time that he confesses that they are interpolated.

As to the speech of Constantine, related by Eusebius, it is indisputably an astonishing thing, that this emperor feared that he should not be believed unless he made oath; and that Eusebius has not supported his evidence by that of any of the officers or soldiers of the army. But without here adopting the opinion of some scholars, who doubt whether Eusebius is the author of the life of Constantine, is he not an author who, in this work, bears throughout the character of a panegyrist, rather than that of a historian? Is he not a writer who has carefully suppressed all which could be disadvantageous to his hero? In a word, does he not show his partiality, when he says, in his "Ecclesiastical History," speaking of Maxentius, that having usurped the sovereign power at Rome, to flatter the people he feigned at first to profess the Christian religion? As if it was impossible for Constantine to make use of such a feint, and to pretend this vision, just as Licinius, some time after, to encourage his soldiers against Maximin, pretended that an angel in a dream had dictated a prayer to him, which he must repeat with his army.

How could Eusebius really have the effrontery to call a prince a Christian who caused the temple of Concord to be rebuilt at his own expense, as is proved by an inscription, which was read in the time of Lelio Geraldi, in the temple of Latran? A prince who caused his son Crispus, already honored with the title of Cæsar, to perish on a slight suspicion of having commerce with Fausta, his stepmother; who caused this same Fausta, to whom he was indebted for the preservation of his life, to be suffocated in an overheated bath; who caused the emperor Maximian Hercules, his adopted father, to be strangled; who took away the life of the young Licinius, his nephew, who had already displayed very good qualities; and, in short, who dishonored himself by so many murders, that the consul Ablavius called his times Neronian? We might add, that much dependence should not be placed on the oath of Constantine, since he had not the least scruple in perjuring himself, by causing Licinius to be strangled, to whom he had promised his life on oath. Eusebius passes in silence over all the actions of Constantine which are related by Eutropius, Zosimus, Orosius, St. Jerome, and Aurelius Victor.

After this, have we not reason to conclude that the pretended appearance of the cross in the sky is only a fraud which Constantine imagined to favor the success of his ambitious enterprises? The medals of this prince and of his family, which are found in Banduri, and in the work entitled, "_Numismata Imperatorum Romanorum_"; the triumphal arch of which Baronius speaks, in the inscription of which the senate and the Roman people said that Constantine, by the direction of the Divinity, had rid the republic of the tyrant Maxentius, and of all his faction; finally, the statue which Constantine himself caused to be erected at Rome, holding a lance terminating in the form of a cross, with this inscription--as related by Eusebius: "By this saving sign, I have delivered your city from the yoke of tyranny"--all this, I say, only proves the immoderate pride of this artificial prince, who would everywhere spread the noise of his pretended dream, and perpetuate the recollection of it.

Yet, to excuse Eusebius, we must compare him to a bishop of the seventeenth century, whom La Bruyère hesitated not to call a father of the Church. Bossuet, at the same time that he fell so unmercifully on the visions of the elegant and sensible Fénelon, commented himself, in the funeral oration of Anne of Gonzaga of Cleves, on the two visions which worked the conversion of the Princess Palatine. It was an admirable dream, says this prelate; she thought that, walking alone in a forest, she met with a blind man in a small cell. She comprehended that a sense is wanting to the incredulous as well as to the blind; and at the same time, in the midst of so mysterious a dream, she applied the fine comparison of the blind man to the truths of religion and of the other life.

In the second vision, God continued to instruct her, as He did Joseph and Solomon; and during the drowsiness which the trouble caused her, He put this parable into her mind, so similar to that in the gospel: She saw that appear which Jesus Christ has not disdained to give us as an image of His tenderness--a hen become a mother, anxious round the little ones which she conducted. One of them having strayed, our invalid saw it swallowed by a hungry dog. She ran and tore the innocent animal away from him. At the same time, a voice cried from the other side that she must give it back to the ravisher. "No," said she, "I will never give it back." At this moment she awakened, and the explanation of the figure which had been shown to her presented itself to her mind in an instant.

VOWS.

To make a vow for life, is to make oneself a slave. How can this worst of all slavery be allowed in a country in which slavery is proscribed? To promise to God by an oath, that from the age of fifteen until death we will be a Jesuit, Jacobin, or Capuchin, is to affirm that we will always think like a Capuchin, a Jacobin, or a Jesuit. It is very pleasant to promise, for a whole life, that which no man can certainly insure from night to morning!

How can governments have been such enemies to themselves, and so absurd, as to authorize citizens to alienate their liberty at an age when they are not allowed to dispose of the least portion of their fortunes? How, being convinced of the extent of this stupidity, have not the whole of the magistracy united to put an end to it?

Is it not alarming to reflect that there are more monks than soldiers? Is it possible not to be affected by the discovery of the secrets of cloisters; the turpitudes, the horrors, and the torments to which so many unhappy children are subjected, who detest the state which they have been forced to adopt, when they become men, and who beat with useless despair the chains which their weakness has imposed upon them?

I knew a young man whose parents engaged to make a Capuchin of him at fifteen years and a half old, when he desperately loved a girl very nearly of his own age. As soon as the unhappy youth had made his vow to St. Francis, the devil reminded him of the vows which he had made to his mistress, to whom he had signed a promise of marriage. At last, the devil being stronger than St. Francis, the young Capuchin left his cloister, repaired to the house of his mistress, and was told that she had entered a convent and made profession.

He flew to the convent, and asked to see her, when he was told that she had died of grief. This news deprived him of all sense, and he fell to the ground nearly lifeless. He was immediately transported to a neighboring monastery, not to afford him the necessary medical aid, but in order to procure him the blessing of extreme unction before his death, which infallibly saves the soul.

The house to which the poor fainting boy was carried, happened to be a convent of Capuchins, who charitably let him remain at the door for three hours; but at last he was recognized by one of the venerable brothers, who had seen him in the monastery to which he belonged. On this discovery, he was carried into a cell, and attention paid to recover him, in order that he might expiate, by a salutary penitence, the errors of which he had been guilty.

As soon as he had recovered strength, he was conducted, well bound, to his convent, and the following is precisely the manner in which he was treated. In the first place he was placed in a dungeon under ground, at the bottom of which was an enormous stone, to which a chain of iron was attached. To this chain he was fastened by one leg, and near him was placed a loaf of barley bread and a jug of water; after which they closed the entrance of the dungeon with a large block of stone, which covered the opening by which they had descended.

At the end of three days they withdrew him from the dungeon, in order to bring him before the criminal court of the Capuchins. They wished to know if he had any accomplices in his flight, and to oblige him to confess, applied the mode of torture employed in the convent. This preparatory torture was inflicted by cords, which bound the limbs of the patient, and made him endure a sort of rack.

After having undergone these torments, he was condemned to be imprisoned for two years in his cell, from which he was to be brought out thrice a week, in order to receive upon his naked body the discipline with iron chains.

For six months his constitution endured this punishment, from which he was at length so fortunate as to escape in consequence of a quarrel among the Capuchins, who fought with one another, and allowed the prisoner to escape during the fray.

After hiding himself for some hours, he ventured to go abroad at the decline of day, almost worn out by hunger, and scarcely able to support himself. A passing Samaritan took pity upon the poor, famished spectre, conducted him to his house, and gave him assistance. The unhappy youth himself related to me his story in the presence of his liberator. Behold here the consequence of vows!

It would be a nice point to decide, whether the horrors of passing every day among the mendicant friars are more revolting than the pernicious riches of the other orders, which reduce so many families into mendicants.

All of them have made a vow to live at our expense, and to be a burden to their country; to injure its population, and to betray both their contemporaries and posterity; and shall we suffer it?

Here is another interesting question for officers of the army: Why are monks allowed to recover one of their brethren who has enlisted for a soldier, while a captain is prevented from recovering a deserter who has turned monk?

VOYAGE OF ST. PETER TO ROME.

Of the famous dispute, whether Peter made the journey to Rome, is it not in the main as frivolous as most other grand disputes? The revenues of the abbey of St. Denis, in France, depend neither on the truth of the journey of St. Dionysius the Areopagite from Athens to the midst of Gaul; his martyrdom at Montmartre; nor the other journey which he made after his death, from Montmartre to St. Denis, carrying his head in his arms, and kissing it at every step.

The Carthusians have great riches, without there being the least truth in the history of the canon of Paris, who rose from his coffin three successive days, to inform the assistants that he was damned.

In like manner it is very certain that the rights and revenues of the Roman pontiff can exist, whether Simon Barjonas, surnamed Cephas, went to Rome or not. All the rights of the archbishops of Rome and Constantinople were established at the Council of Chalcedon, in the year 451 of our vulgar era, and there was no mention in this council of any journey made by an apostle to Byzantium or to Rome.

The patriarchs of Alexander and Constantinople followed the lot of their provinces. The ecclesiastical chiefs of these two imperial cities, and of opulent Egypt, must necessarily have more authority, privileges, and riches, than bishops of little towns.

If the residence of an apostle in a city decided so many rights, the bishop of Jerusalem would have been, without contradiction, the first bishop of Christendom. He was evidently the successor of St. James, the brother of Jesus Christ, acknowledged as the founder of this church, and afterwards called the first of all bishops. We should add by the same reasoning, that all the patriarchs of Jerusalem should be circumcised, since the fifteen first bishops of Jerusalem--the cradle of Christianity and tomb of Jesus Christ--had all received circumcision. It is indisputable that the first largesses made to the church of Rome by Constantine, have not the least relation to the journey of St. Peter.

1. The first church raised at Rome was that of St. John; it is still the true cathedral. It is evident that it would have been dedicated to St. Peter, if he had been the first bishop of it. It is the strongest of all presumptions, and that alone might have ended the dispute.

2. To this powerful conjecture are joined convincing negative proofs. If Peter had been at Rome with Paul, the Acts of the Apostles would have mentioned it; and they say not a word about it.

3. If St. Peter went to preach the gospel at Rome, St. Paul would not have said, in his Epistle to the Galatians: "When they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcisions was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter; and when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision."

4. In the letters which Paul writes from Rome, he never speaks of Peter; therefore, it is evident that Peter was not there.

5. In the letters which Paul writes to his brethren of Rome, there is not the least compliment to Peter, nor the least mention of him; therefore, Peter neither made a journey to Rome when Paul was in prison, nor when he was free.

6. We have never known any letter of St. Peter's dated from Rome.

7. Some, like Paul Orosius, a Spaniard of the fifth century, say that he was at Rome in the first years of the reign of Claudius. The Acts of the Apostles say that he was then at Jerusalem; and the Epistles of Paul, that he was at Antioch.

8. I do not pretend to bring forward any proof, but speaking humanly, and according to the rules of profane criticism, Peter could scarcely go from Jerusalem to Rome, knowing neither the Latin nor even the Greek language, which St. Paul spoke, though very badly. It is said that the apostles spoke all the languages of the universe; therefore, I am silenced.

9. Finally, the first mention which we ever had of the journey of St. Peter to Rome, came from one named Papias, who lived about a hundred years after St. Peter. This Papias was a Phrygian; he wrote in Phrygia; and he pretended that St. Peter went to Rome, because in one of his letters he speaks of Babylon. We have, indeed, a letter, attributed to St. Peter, written in these obscure times, in which it is said: "The Church which is at Babylon, my wife, and my son Mark, salute you." It has pleased some translators to translate the word meaning my wife, by "chosen vessel": "Babylon, the chosen vessel." This is translating comprehensively.

Papias, who was, it must be confessed, one of the great visionaries of these ages, imagined that Babylon signified Rome. It was, however, very natural for Peter to depart from Antioch to visit the brethren at Babylon. There were always Jews at Babylon; and they continually carried on the trade of brokers and peddlers; it is very likely that several disciples sought refuge there, and that Peter went to encourage them. There is not more reason in supposing that Babylon signifies Rome, than in supposing that Rome means Babylon. What an extravagant idea, to suppose that Peter wrote an exhortation to his comrades, as we write at present, in ciphers! Did he fear that his letter should be opened at the post? Why should Peter fear that his Jewish letters should be known--so useless in a worldly sense, and to which it was impossible for the Romans to pay the least attention? Who engaged him to lie so vainly? What could have possessed people to think, that when he wrote Babylon, he intended Rome?

It was after similar convincing proofs that the judicious Calmet concludes that the journey of St. Peter to Rome is proved by St. Peter himself, who says expressly, that he has written his letter from Babylon; that is to say, from Rome, as we interpret with the ancients. Once more, this is powerful reasoning! He has probably learned this logic among the vampires!

The learned archbishop of Paris, Marca, Dupin, Blondel, and Spanheim, are not of this opinion; but it was that of Calmet, who reasoned like Calmet, and who was followed by a multitude of writers so attached to the sublimity of their principles that they sometimes neglected wholesome criticism and reason. It is a very poor pretence of the partisans of the voyage to say that the Acts of the Apostles are intended for the history of Paul, and not for that of Peter; and that if they pass in silence over the sojourn of Simon Barjonas at Rome, it is that the actions and exploits of Paul were the sole object of the writer.

The Acts speak much of Simon Barjonas, surnamed Peter; it is he who proposes to give a successor to Judas. We see him strike Ananias and his wife with sudden death, who had given him their property, but unfortunately not all of it. We see him raise his sempstress Dorcas, at the house of the tanner Simon at Joppa. He has a quarrel in Samaria with Simon, surnamed the Magician; he goes to Lippa, Cæsarea, and Jerusalem; what would it have cost him to go to Rome?

It is very difficult to decide whether Peter went to Rome under Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, or Nero. The journey in the time of Tiberius is only founded on the pretended apocryphal fasti of Italy.

Another apocrypha, entitled "Catalogues of Bishops," makes Peter bishop of Rome immediately after the death of his master. I know not what Arabian tale sent him to Rome under Caligula. Eusebius, three hundred years after, makes him to be conducted to Rome under Claudius by a divine hand, without saying in what year.

Lactantius, who wrote in the time of Constantine, is the first veracious author who has said that Peter went to Rome under Nero, and that he was crucified there.

We must avow, that if such claims alone were brought forward by a party in a lawsuit, he would not gain his cause, and he would be advised to keep to the maxim of "_uti possedetis_"; and this is the part which Rome has taken.

But it is said that before Eusebius and Lactantius, the exact Papias had already related the adventure of Peter and Simon; the virtue of God which removed him into the presence of Nero; the kinsman of Nero half raised from the dead, in the name of God, by Simon, and wholly raised by Peter; the compliments of their dogs; the bread given by Peter to Simon's dogs; the magician who flew into the air; the Christian who caused him to fall by a sign of the cross, by which he broke both his legs; Nero, who cut off Peter's head to pay for the legs of his magician, etc. The grave Marcellus repeats this authentic history, and the grave Hegesippus again repeats it, and others repeat it after them; and I repeat to you, that if ever you plead for a meadow before the judge of Vaugirard, you will never gain your suit by such claims.

I doubt not that the episcopal chair of St. Peter is still at Rome in the fine church. I doubt not but that St. Peter enjoyed the bishopric of Rome twenty-nine years, a month, and nine days, as it is said. But I may venture to say that that is not demonstratively proved; and I say that it is to be thought that the Roman bishops of the present time are more at their ease than those of times past--obscure times, which it is very difficult to penetrate.

WALLER.

The celebrated Waller has been much spoken of in France; he has been praised by La Fontaine, St. Évremond, and Bayle, who, however, knew little of him beyond his name.

He had pretty nearly the same reputation in London as Voiture enjoyed in Paris, but I believe that he more deserved it. Voiture existed at a time when we were first emerging from literary ignorance, and when wit was aimed at, but scarcely attained. Turns of expression were sought for instead of thoughts, and false stones were more easily discovered than genuine diamonds. Voiture, who possessed an easy and trifling turn of mind, was the first who shone in this aurora of French literature. Had he come after the great men who have thrown so much lustre on the age of Louis XIV., he would have been forced to have had something more than mere wit, which was enough for the hotel de Rambouillet, but not enough for posterity. Boileau praises him, but it was in his first satires, and before his taste was formed. He was young, and of that age in which men judge rather by reputation than from themselves; and, besides, Boileau was often unjust in his praise as well as his censure. He praised Segrais, whom nobody read; insulted Quinault, who everybody repeated by heart; and said nothing of La Fontaine.

Waller, although superior to Voiture, was not perfect. His poems of gallantry are very graceful, but they are frequently languid from negligence, and they are often disfigured by conceits. In his days, the English had not learned to write correctly. His serious pieces are replete with vigor, and exhibit none of the softness of his gallant effusions. He composed a monody on the death of Cromwell, which, with several faults, passes for a masterpiece; and it was in reference to this eulogy that Waller made the reply to Charles II., which is inserted in "Bayle's Dictionary." The king--to whom Waller, after the manner of kings and poets, presented a poem stuffed with panegyric--told him that he had written more finely on Cromwell. Waller immediately replied: "Sire, we poets always succeed better in fiction than in truth." This reply was not so sincere as that of the Dutch ambassador, who, when the same king complained to him that his masters had less regard for him than for Cromwell, replied: "Ah, sire! that Cromwell was quite another thing." There are courtiers in England, as elsewhere, and Waller was one of them; but after their death, I consider men only by their works; all the rest is annihilated. I simply observe that Waller, born to an estate of the annual value of sixty thousand livres, had never the silly pride or carelessness to neglect his talent. The earls of Dorset and Roscommon, the two dukes of Buckingham, the earl of Halifax, and a great many others, have not thought it below them to become celebrated poets and illustrious writers; and their works do them more honor than their titles. They have cultivated letters as if their fortunes depended on their success, and have rendered literature respectable in the eyes of the people, who in all things require leaders from among the great--who, however, have less influence of this kind in England than in any other place in the world.

WAR.

All animals are perpetually at war; every species is born to devour another. There are none, even to sheep and doves, who do not swallow a prodigious number of imperceptible animals. Males of the same species make war for the females, like Menelaus and Paris. Air, earth, and the waters, are fields of destruction.

It seems that God having given reason to men, this reason should teach them not to debase themselves by imitating animals, particularly when nature has given them neither arms to kill their fellow-creatures, nor instinct which leads them to suck their blood.

Yet murderous war is so much the dreadful lot of man, that except two or three nations, there are none but what their ancient histories represent as armed against one another. Towards Canada, man and warrior are synonymous; and we have seen, in our hemisphere, that thief and soldier were the same thing. Manichæans! behold your excuse.

The most determined of flatterers will easily agree, that war always brings pestilence and famine in its train, from the little that he may have seen in the hospitals of the armies of Germany, or the few villages he may have passed through in which some great exploit of war has been performed.

That is doubtless a very fine art which desolates countries, destroys habitations, and in a common year causes the death of from forty to a hundred thousand men. This invention was first cultivated by nations assembled for their common good; for instance, the diet of the Greeks declared to the diet of Phrygia and neighboring nations, that they intended to depart on a thousand fishers' barks, to exterminate them if they could.

The assembled Roman people judged that it was to their interest to go and fight, before harvest, against the people of Veii or the Volscians. And some years after, all the Romans, being exasperated against all the Carthaginians, fought them a long time on sea and land. It is not exactly the same at present.

A genealogist proves to a prince that he descends in a right line from a count, whose parents made a family compact, three or four hundred years ago, with a house the recollection of which does not even exist. This house had distant pretensions to a province, of which the last possessor died of apoplexy. The prince and his council see his right at once. This province, which is some hundred leagues distant from him, in vain protests that it knows him not; that it has no desire to be governed by him; that to give laws to its people, he must at least have their consent; these discourses only reach as far as the ears of the prince, whose right is incontestable. He immediately assembles a great number of men who have nothing to lose, dresses them in coarse blue cloth, borders their hats with broad white binding, makes them turn to the right and left, and marches to glory.

Other princes who hear of this equipment, take part in it, each according to his power, and cover a small extent of country with more mercenary murderers than Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, and Bajazet employed in their train. Distant people hear that they are going to fight, and that they may gain five or six sous a day, if they will be of the party; they divide themselves into two bands, like reapers, and offer their services to whoever will employ them.

These multitudes fall upon one another, not only without having any interest in the affair, but without knowing the reason of it. We see at once five or six belligerent powers, sometimes three against three, sometimes two against four, and sometimes one against five; all equally detesting one another, uniting with and attacking by turns; all agree in a single point, that of doing all the harm possible.

The most wonderful part of this infernal enterprise is that each chief of the murderers causes his colors to be blessed, and solemnly invokes God before he goes to exterminate his neighbors. If a chief has only the fortune to kill two or three thousand men, he does not thank God for it; but when he has exterminated about ten thousand by fire and sword, and, to complete the work, some town has been levelled with the ground, they then sing a long song in four parts, composed in a language unknown to all who have fought, and moreover replete with barbarism. The same song serves for marriages and births, as well as for murders; which is unpardonable, particularly in a nation the most famous for new songs.

Natural religion has a thousand times prevented citizens from committing crimes. A well-trained mind has not the inclination for it; a tender one is alarmed at it, representing to itself a just and avenging God; but artificial religion encourages all cruelties which are exercised by troops--conspiracies, seditions, pillages, ambuscades, surprises of towns, robberies, and murder. Each marches gaily to crime, under the banner of his saint.

A certain number of orators are everywhere paid to celebrate these murderous days; some are dressed in a long black close coat, with a short cloak; others have a shirt above a gown; some wear two variegated stuff streamers over their shirts. All of them speak for a long time, and quote that which was done of old in Palestine, as applicable to a combat in Veteravia.

The rest of the year these people declaim against vices. They prove, in three points and by antitheses, that ladies who lay a little carmine upon their cheeks, will be the eternal objects of the eternal vengeances of the Eternal; that Polyeuctus and Athalia are works of the demon; that a man who, for two hundred crowns a day, causes his table to be furnished with fresh sea-fish during Lent, infallibly works his salvation; and that a poor man who eats two sous and a half worth of mutton, will go forever to all the devils.

Of five or six thousand declamations of this kind, there are three or four at most, composed by a Gaul named Massillon, which an honest man may read without disgust; but in all these discourses, you will scarcely find two in which the orator dares to say a word against the scourge and crime of war, which contains all other scourges and crimes. The unfortunate orators speak incessantly against love, which is the only consolation of mankind, and the only mode of making amends for it; they say nothing of the abominable efforts which we make to destroy it.

You have made a very bad sermon on impurity--oh, Bourdaloue!--but none on these murders, varied in so many ways; on these rapines and robberies; on this universal rage which devours the world. All the united vices of all ages and places will never equal the evils produced by a single campaign.

Miserable physicians of souls! you exclaim, for five quarters of an hour, on some pricks of a pin, and say nothing on the malady which tears us into a thousand pieces! Philosophers! moralists! burn all your books. While the caprice of a few men makes that part of mankind consecrated to heroism, to murder loyally millions of our brethren, can there be anything more horrible throughout nature?

What becomes of, and what signifies to me, humanity, beneficence, modesty, temperance, mildness, wisdom, and piety, while half a pound of lead, sent from the distance of a hundred steps, pierces my body, and I die at twenty years of age, in inexpressible torments, in the midst of five or six thousand dying men, while my eyes which open for the last time, see the town in which I was born destroyed by fire and sword, and the last sounds which reach my ears are the cries of women and children expiring under the ruins, all for the pretended interests of a man whom I know not?

What is worse, war is an inevitable scourge. If we take notice, all men have worshipped Mars. Sabaoth, among the Jews, signifies the god of arms; but Minerva, in Homer, calls Mars a furious, mad, and infernal god.

The celebrated Montesquieu, who was called humane, has said, however,' that it is just to bear fire and sword against our neighbors, when we fear that they are doing too well. If this is the spirit of laws, At is also that of Borgia and of Machiavelli. If unfortunately he says true, we must write against this truth, though it may be proved by facts.

This is what Montesquieu says: "Between societies, the right of natural defence sometimes induces the necessity of attacking, when one people sees that a longer peace puts another in a situation to destroy it, and that attack at the given moment is the only way of preventing this destruction."

How can attack in peace be the only means of preventing this destruction? You must be sure that this neighbor will destroy you, if he become powerful. To be sure of it, he must already have made preparations for your overthrow. In this case, it is he who commences the war; it is not you: your supposition is false and contradictory.