Inspired by the fraudulent bankruptcy of Jesuit colonial racketeer, Father Antoine La Valette, Voltaire invents an extra victim to pose some scathingly pertinent questions. This pamphlet was condemned by Rome on May 24, 1762, but the scandal contributed to the suppression of the Jesuit order in France in 1764, along with the Malagrida affair evoked in the Sermon of Rabbi Akib.

I beseech, not only my dear compatriots, but also my dear brothers the Germans, the English, and even the Italians to consider with me, for their edification, the events taking place these days regarding the reverend Jesuit fathers.

I am the cousin of Monsieur Cazotte and related by marriage to Monsieur Lioncy, who Father La Valette, Apostolic Prefect of Commerce, has driven to utter ruin. God have mercy on His prefect! Yet I ask any man who makes use of his reason whether it be possible that Reverend La Valette, having done two years of theology, having read the Gospel and taken the vow of poverty, could have believed in the Christian religion while dealing in commerce to the tune of six million francs? Is it in human nature for a theologian who believes in his religion to damn himself so light-heartedly in doing what his faith and his vows so adamantly forbid?

For a believer, carried off in a fit of violent passion, to commit a crime and then repent of it, is within human nature. But when God's servants rob us while preaching and confessing us, when they persist in these maneuvers year after year, I ask you dear brothers, is it possible to be true believers while being that deceitful? Can they truly believe they hold God in their hands at Mass when they pillage us upon leaving the altar?

It has been established by the depositions of the conspirators of Lisbon that their confessors, the Jesuits, assured them that they could assassinate the king in clear conscience. I do not examine what motives of vengeance inspired these conspirators. I simply ask whether it is possible that men who used a sacrament to incite a parricide could have believed in that sacrament?

I pass from these great crimes to iniquities of another sort. Do you think that the Jesuit Le Tellier believed in Jesus Christ? Do you think he believed in a just God who rewards and punishes when he took advantage of King Louis XIV's ignorance in theology to persecute the virtuous Cardinal de Noailles, and when he forged and showed letters to his penitent, the king, from several bishops, which these bishops had not written? Does such conduct, sustained over several years, not prove that this confessor believed nothing he made his penitent believe?

And the adversaries of the Jesuits, who invented convulsions and so many other miracles, who have been convicted of so many impostures—have they been truer believers than the Jesuit Le Tellier?1

I repeat, a man may believe in God yet kill his father; but it is not possible that he believe in God yet spend his life committing an uninterrupted series of premeditated crimes, frauds, and impostures. He would at least repent on his deathbed, but I defy you to find anywhere in history a single theologian who confessed his crimes upon his deathbed.

We see murderous, incestuous laymen and women do public penance every day, but I submit to offer the ten thousand ecus that remain of the entire fortune Father La Valette took from me if you can show me a single penitent theologian.

Would you like grander examples? You can find them among the first popes: Jules II, in armor and helmet; the voluptuous Leon X; Alexander VI, befouled in his incests and murders; so many popes, surrounded by mistresses and bastards, playing off human credulity in the midst of their debauchery, did they lift their blood-stained hands full of gold to God? Did a single one do penance in retirement? While we watch Charles Quint sing his De Profundis to Saint Just.

The greatest unbelievers of all time have thus been the theologians, great and small, shorn or mitered.

If I am not mistaken, this is how every one of them has reasoned: the Christian religion that I teach is clearly not that of the first centuries. The synaxes of the first Christians were not private masses. It is obvious that the images we invoke were forbidden for over two hundred years, that auricular confessions were unheard of for a very long time, that all of our practices have changed without a single exception. All of our dogmas have visibly changed as well. We know at what period the procession of the Holy Ghost was added to the Apostle's Creed. Of all the opinions that incited so many wars, not a single one of them has any clear relation to our Gospels. It is all our handiwork, and therefore, arbitrary. We cannot therefore believe what we teach, and we should therefore take advantage of human foolishness. We can therefore despoil them with nothing to fear, confess them, assassinate them and administer the last rites to them.

Not only have they reasoned this way, but it is impossible for them to have reasoned otherwise, for again, it is not in human nature to say: I firmly believe in all I teach and I shall do the exact opposite throughout my entire life and at my death.

Many secular persons, especially among the powerful, have imitated the theologians in all religions. Mustapha has said: “My mufti doesn't believe in Mahomet, so I needn't either. I can therefore have my brothers strangled without the slightest scruple.” This abominable syllogism, “My religion is false, so there is no God” is the most common one that I know, and the most fertile source of all crimes.

What, my brothers! Because Father Malagrida is a murderer, Father Le Tellier a forger, Father La Valette a fraudulent bankrupt, and the mufti a knave, it follows that there is no Supreme Being, no creator, no guardian, no equitable judge who rewards and punishes? I once knew a Dominican Doctor of the Sorbonne who became an atheist because his prior obliged him to maintain in his cloister that the Virgin was conceived in sin, while at the Sorbonne he was obliged to maintain the contrary. He told me coldly, “My religion is false. And since my religion, which is indisputably the best, contains only elements of falsehood, there is no religion, and there is no God. I obviously committed a very great folly in becoming a Dominican at age fifteen.”

I took pity on the poor man and said to him, “It's true that it was exceedingly daft of you to become a Dominican, but my friend, whether Mary was born maculate or immaculate, does God exist any less? Does that make God any less the father and judge of all men? Does he not command men equally, from the first colao in China to the lowest ranking Dominican, to be moderate, just, sincere, and to do unto others what every Dominican would like done unto himself? Dogmas change, my friend, but God does not. The Franciscan friar, Saint Bonaventure, and the Dominican, Saint Thomas, are almost never of the same opinion. Well then! Think like neither Thomas nor Bonaventure. Certain books have been falsified; others, alleged. This causes you grief. Console yourself. The great book of nature cannot be falsified, and in it is written: “Adore one God and be just.” I saw with pleasure that my sermon had made a big impression on my Dominican.

My brothers, religion must be purified. All Europe cries out for it, and in order to purge it, it isn't by purifying theology that we must begin. It must be abolished entirely. It is altogether too shameful to have made a science of this grave folly, which has only capsized thousands of brains and overthrown one government after another. It alones creates atheists. The great number of little theologians, who are sensible enough to see the absurdity of this chimeric science, do not know enough to be able to replace it with a saner philosophy. They conclude, like the young Dominican, that the Divinity is a chimera, because theology is chimeric. That is precisely like saying that one shouldn't take quinine for a fever, or be bled for an apoplexy, or fast after an excess, because there are quacks in the world. It would be like denying the obvious effects of chemistry because a few charlatan chemists claimed to have made gold. And society people, even less knowledgeable than these little theologians, say, “Here are bachelors of science and university graduates who don't believe in God. Why should we believe?”

My brothers, a fake science creates atheists. A true science prostrates us before the Divinity and makes wise and just men of those theology had made vicious and senseless.

That, my dear brothers, is my profession of faith, and it should be yours, for it is the faith of all honest people. Amen.