A caloyer is a monk of the Greek Orthodox Church. The long list of initials stands for Dom Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ci-devant citoyen de Genève (former citizen of Geneva). “Dom,” a form of address for Benedictine monks, may be a wink at Rousseau's “The Savoyard Vicar's Profession of Faith” in Emile the previous year, which had greatly pleased Voltaire. Catechism of the Honest Man was hugely popular.1 Thomas Jefferson echoes one of its closing statements while discussing the fiftieth Fourth of July celebration. The Catechism was condemned by Rome on July 8, 1765.

THE CALOYER

May I ask you, Sir, which religion you belong to in Aleppo, in the midst of all the sects that are received here and that all serve to make this great town flourish? Are you a Muslim who follows the rites of Omar or of Ali? Are you a follower of the dogmas of the ancient of Parsis or of the Sabaeans, so anterior to the Parsis, or of the Brahmins, who boast of even greater antiquity? Might you be Jewish? Are you a Christian of the Greek or the Armenian or Coptic or Latin Church?

THE HONEST MAN

I adore God, I try to be just and I seek to instruct myself.

THE CALOYER

But do you give no preference to the Jewish books over the Zend-Avesta, the Vedas, or the Koran?

THE HONEST MAN

I fear that I have not enough knowledge to judge books well, and I sense that I have enough to see, in the great book of nature, that one must worship and love one's master.

THE CALOYER

Is there something that bothers you about the Jewish books?

THE HONEST MAN

Yes, I admit I have trouble conceiving what they report. I see inconsistencies in them that surprise my feeble reason.

1. It seems difficult to me that Moses could have written the Pentateuch attributed to him in the desert. If his people came from Egypt, where the author says they lived for four hundred years (although he is mistaken by two hundred), the book would probably have been written in Egyptian, though we are told it is in Hebrew.

   It would have had to be engraved on stone or wood. There was no other way of writing in the time of Moses. It was an extremely difficult art, which required long preparations. The wood or stone had to be polished. It doesn't appear that this art could have been exercised in a desert where, according to the book itself, the Jewish horde did not even have what was needed to make clothes or shoes and where God was obliged to perform constant miracles for forty years to prevent their shoes and clothes from wearing out. It is so true that one only wrote on stone that the author of the Book of Joshua says that Deuteronomy was written on an altar of uncut stones2 covered with mortar. Apparently, Joshua did not intend this book to last.

2. Men the most well-versed in antiquity think that these books were written more than seven hundred years after Moses. They found this on what is said about kings, and there weren't any kings until a long time after Moses; on the position of the towns, which is false if the book were written in the desert but true if it was written in Jerusalem; and on the names of towns and villages that are mentioned, but that were not founded or called by those names till several centuries later, etc.
3. What may shock in the writings attributed to Moses is that the immortality of the soul and rewards and punishments after death are entirely absent from the setting forth of his laws. It is strange that he commands the manner in which one must make one's excrements, and speaks nowhere of the immortality of the soul. Is it possible that Moses, inspired by God, would have been more concerned with our bottoms than with our souls?3 That he would have prescribed the manner in which we must go to the toilet in the Israeli camp and that he would not have breathed a single word about eternal life? Zoroaster, more ancient than the Jewish legislator, said: “Honor your parents if you wish to have eternal life.”⁴ And the Decalogue says “Honor your father and mother if you wish to have a long life on earth.”⁵ It seems to me that Zoroaster speaks as a holy man and Moses as a terrestrial one.
4. The events recounted in the Pentateuch surprise those unfortunate enough to judge only by their reason, and whose blind reason has not been enlightened by some special grace. The first chapter of Genesis is so beyond our conceptions that it was forbidden to read it among the Jews before the age of twenty-five.⁶

   We see with some surprise that God came to stroll every day at noon in the Garden of Eden; that the sources of four great rivers, prodigiously far from each other, formed a fountain in this garden; that the serpent spoke to Eve, since he is the most subtle of animals, and that a she-ass, not half so subtle, also spoke a few centuries later;⁷ that God separated the light from the darkness, as if darkness were something real;⁸ that he created light, which comes from our sun, before the sun itself; that after having created man and woman, he then pulls woman from one of man's ribs and that he put flesh in the place of this rib; that he condemned Adam to death, and all his posterity to hell over an apple; that he put a mark on Cain, who had slain his brother, to save him and that Cain feared to be killed by the other men peopling the earth although, according to the text, the human race was limited to the family of Adam; that supposed cataracts in the sky inundated the earth and that all the animals came to enclose themselves in a box for a year.9

   After this prodigious number of fables that all seem more absurd than Ovid's Metamorphoses, we are not less surprised to see that God delivers six hundred thousand combatants of his people from servitude in Egypt, not counting the old men, women or children, and that these six hundred thousand combatants, after the most astonishing miracles—equaled, however, by the magicians of Egypt—flee instead of combatting their enemies; and that in fleeing they do not take the road that leads to the land God is giving them; that they end up between Memphis and the Red Sea; that God parts this sea for them and lets them cross it on dry land, only to let them perish in a ghastly desert instead of bringing them into this promised land; that these people, taken in hand by God himself and before his eyes, ask Moses’ brother for a golden calf to worship; that this golden calf was smelted in a single day; that Moses reduced this gold to impalpable powder and made the people swallow it; that twenty-three thousand men of this people allowed their throats to be slit by the Levites in punishment for having made this golden calf, but that Aaron, who had smelted it, was declared a great priest in reward;¹⁰ that two hundred and fifty men were burned, and then another 14,700 for having wrangled over Aaron's incense censer,¹¹ and that on another occasion, Moses had another twenty-four thousand men of his people slain.

5. If one relies upon the simple laws of physics, and does not raise oneself to divine powers, it is difficult to imagine that there was a water that made adulterous women die but not faithful ones. One is even more surprised to find a true prophet among the idolaters in the person of Balaam.
6. More surprising yet is that in a village of the small land of Madiam, the Jewish people found 675,000 sheep, 72,000 steer, 61,000 donkeys, and 32,000 virgins; and one shivers with horror on reading that, by order of the Lord, the Jews massacred all the men and all the widows, wives, and mothers, and kept only the little girls.
7. The sun that stops at high noon to give more time to the Jews to slaughter the Amorites, already crushed by a rain of hailstones from heaven,12 the Jordan opening its bed just like the Red Sea to let these Jews cross it, who could so easily have forded it, the walls of Jericho falling to the sound of trumpets; so many prodigies of every species demand, to be believed, the sacrifice of all reason and the liveliest faith. And finally, to what end do so many miracles performed by God himself for centuries in favor of his people obtain? To render them almost always the slaves of other nations.
8. The entire story of Samson and his loves, his hair, his lion, and his three hundred foxes seems to be written more to amuse the imagination than to edify the mind.¹³ The stories of Joshua and Jephthah seem barbarous.
9. The story of Kings is a jumble of cruelties and assassinations that make your heart bleed. Nearly all the events are unbelievable. The first Jewish king, Saul, can only find two swords among his people, and his successor, David, leaves behind over twenty million in silver, cash. You say that these books are written by God himself, and you know that God cannot lie; therefore if a single fact is wrong, the entire book is an imposture.
10. The prophets are no less revolting for a man who does not have the gift of penetrating the hidden allegorical meanings of the prophecies. He is pained to see Jeremiah yoke himself and have himself tied with ropes; Hosea, formally ordered to do so by God, makes sons of whores with a public whore, then makes some with an adulteress; Isaiah, walking naked in a public place;¹⁴ Ezekiel, who sleeps 390 days on his left side, then 40 days on his right, who eats a book of parchment, who covers his bread with the excrement of men, and then with cow dung; Oholah and Oholibah, who establish a bordello and of whom God says that they only like men hung like donkeys with the sperm of a horse.¹⁵ Surely if a reader is not instructed in the customs of the country and in the manner of prophesizing, he is in danger of being scandalized; and when he sees Elisha have forty children devoured by a bear for having called him baldy,¹⁶ a punishment so disproportionate to the offense may inspire him with more horror than respect.

So forgive me if the Jewish books have bothered me. I do not wish to revile the object of your veneration. I even confess that I may be mistaken on matters concerning propriety and justice, which are perhaps not the same in all eras. I tell myself that our customs are different from those of these remote times, but perhaps the preference you give to the New Testament over the Old can justify my scruples. The law of the Jews must not have seemed good to you, since you have abandoned it, for if it really was good, why would you not have always followed it? But if it was bad, how could it have been divine?

THE CALOYER

The Old Testament presents its difficulties. But you admit to me then, that the New Testament does not give rise to the same doubts and scruples as the Old?

THE HONEST MAN

I have read them both with attention, but suffer me to expose the anxieties into which my ignorance plunges me. You will take pity on them and relieve them.

I find myself here with Armenian Christians who tell me it is not permitted to eat rabbit, with the Greek Orthodox who assure me that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, with Nestorians who deny that Mary is the mother of God, and with a few of the Roman Church who boast that in the far reaches of the West, the Christians of Europe think entirely differently than those of Asia and Africa. I know that ten or twelve sects in Europe anathemize each other. The Muslims around me regard all these Christians with contempt, whom they tolerate nevertheless. The Jews hold in execration both the Christians and the Muslims, the Guebres17 despise them all and what few remain of the Sabaeans would not like to dine with any of those I have named, nor can the Brahmins suffer the Sabaeans, the Guebres, the Christians, the Muslims, or the Jews.

I have wished a hundred times that Jesus Christ, by coming to incarnate himself in Judea had reunited all these sects under his laws. I have wondered why, being God, he didn't use the powers of his divinity; why, in coming to deliver us from sin, he left us in sin; why, in coming to enlighten all men, he left nearly all men in error?

I know that I am nothing. I know that in the depths of my nothingness I must not question the Being of all beings; but I am allowed, like Job, to raise my respectful complaints from the bosom of my misery.

What do you want me to think when I read two genealogies of Jesus, which directly contradict each other?18 And that these genealogies, so different in the names and numbers of his ancestors, are not even his, but those of his father Joseph, who is not his father?

I torture my mind to understand how a God could die. I read the books both sacred and profane of his times. One of these sacred books tells me that a new star appeared in the East and led the Magi to the feet of God, who had just been born. No profane book speaks of this forever-memorable event, which sounds like it should've been perceived by the entire earth and noted in the annals of every state. One Gospel writer tells us that a king named Herod, to whom the Romans, masters of the whole known world, had given Judea, heard that a child just born in a stable would become King of the Jews, but how and from whom and on what foundation could he have heard this strange piece of news? Is it possible that a king who hadn't lost his mind could have imagined having all of the male babies in the country put to the sword just to include one obscure child in the massacre? Is there a single example on earth of a fury so abominable and so senseless?¹⁹

I see that the remaining Gospels contradict each other on nearly every page. I open the history of Josephus, an author who's nearly contemporary: Josephus, related to Miriam, who was sacrificed by Herod; Josephus, the natural enemy of this prince, doesn't say a word about this adventure. He's Jewish and he doesn't even speak of this Jesus, born among the Jews.

What uncertainties overwhelm me in the important search for what I must adore and what I must believe! I read the Scriptures and I see nowhere that Jesus, since recognized as God, ever called himself God. I even see the contrary. He says that the Father is greater than he and that the Father alone knows what the son does not.²⁰ And how should these words, father and son, be understood among a people who spoke of bad men as the sons of Belial, and of just men as the sons of God? I adopt some of the maxims of Jesus’ morals, but what legislator ever taught bad morals? In which religion is adultery, larceny, murder, imposture not forbidden, and respect for one's parents, obedience to the laws, and the practice of all the virtues not expressly commanded?

The more I read, the more my pain redoubles. I seek prodigies worthy of a God, attested to by the universe. I dare say, with a painful naiveté that fears to blaspheme, that devils sent into the bodies of a herd of pigs, water changed into wine for people who were already drunk, a fig tree withered for not bearing figs before the season of figs, etc., do not fulfill the idea I had of the master of all nature, announcing and proving the truth by magnificent and useful miracles. Must I adore the master of nature in a Jew said to have been transported by the devil to the top of a mountain from which one could see all the kingdoms on earth?21

I read the words that have been reported of him. I see the imminent arrival of the kingdom of heaven represented by a mustard seed, by a fishing net, by money lent at interest, by a supper that the lame and the one-eyed are forced to attend. Jesus says that one does not put young wine into old kegs and that one prefers old wine to the new. Is this the way God speaks?

In short, how can I recognize God in a Jew of the rabble, condemned to death for having spoken badly of the government to this rabble and sweating blood in the anguish and fright that death inspires in him? Is that a Plato? A Socrates? An Antony, an Epictetus, a Zaleucus,²² Solon, or Confucius? Who, of all these wise men, did not speak or write in a manner more fitting to the ideas we have of wisdom? And how else can we judge, if not by our ideas?

When I told you I had adopted some of Jesus’ maxims, you must have sensed that I cannot adopt them all. I was afflicted to read, “I have come to bring the sword, not peace. I have come to divide son against father, daughter, mother and parents.”²³ I confess that these words filled me with grief and terror, and if I considered these words a prophecy, I would believe I had seen its accomplishment in the quarrels that have divided Christians from the very beginning, in the civil wars that have put arms in their hands throughout so many centuries, in the assassinations of so many princes, in the horrible woes of so many families.

I confess further that feelings of indignation and pity seized my heart when I saw Peter make his followers bring their money to his feet. Ananias and Sapphira kept something for themselves from the sale of their field. They didn't say so, and Peter punished them by making husband and wife drop dead on the spot.²⁴ Alas! That was not the sort of miracle I was expecting from those who say that they do not wish the death of a sinner, but his conversion. I dare to believe that if God worked miracles, it would be to cure men and not to kill them; that it would be to better them and not to destroy them; that He is a God of mercy and not a homicidal tyrant. What revolted me most in the story is that Peter, having made Ananias die, and seeing Sapphira come in turn, did not warn her, did not say to her, “Beware of keeping a few oboles for yourself. If you have some, admit it, give it all. Fear the fate of your husband.” On the contrary, he entraps her. He seems to enjoy striking a second victim. I confess to you that this story has always made my hair stand on end, and I was consoled only when I saw how impossible and ridiculous it was.

Since you permit me to explain my thoughts, I continue and say that I have not found a single trace of Christianity in the story of Jesus. The four Gospels that remain to us are in opposition regarding several deeds, but they are unanimous in attesting that Jesus submitted to the Law of Moses from his birth unto his death. All of his disciples attended the synagogue. They preached reform, but they did not announce a new religion. The Christians were not completely separated from the Jews until much later. At what moment exactly did God then wish that we cease being Jews and become Christians? Who does not see that time accounts for everything and that all the dogmas came later, one after the other?

If Jesus had wanted to establish a Christian Church, would he not have taught its laws? Would he not have established all its rites himself? Would he not have heralded the seven sacraments, of which he does not speak? Would he not have said “I am God, begot but not created. The Holy Spirit proceeds from my Father without being begotten. I have two wills in one person and my mother is the mother of God? On the contrary, he says to his mother, “Woman, what is there between you and me?” He established no dogmas, no rites, no hierarchy. It was thus not he who created his religion.

When the first dogmas began to be established, I see the Christians supporting them by false books. They impute acrostic verses on Christianity to the Sibyls. They forge histories, prodigies, whose absurdity is palpable. Such is, for example, the story of the New Jerusalem, built in the air, whose walls were five hundred leagues in circumference and in height, which appears on the horizon throughout all the night and disappears at the break of day. Such is also the quarrel of Peter and Simon the Magician before Nero, and a hundred other fables no less absurd.25

What puerile miracles were invented! How many false martyrs and ridiculous legends! Portenta judaica rides.26

How did whoever wrote the legend of Luke, under the name of glad tidings, find the nerve to say, in chapter 21, that the generation he lived in would not pass away without seeing the heavenly bodies shaken, without there being signs in the sun, moon, and stars, and without seeing Jesus come in a cloud with great power and glory?²⁷ Clearly there have been no signs in the sun, moon, and stars, or heavenly bodies shaken, nor any Jesus arriving majestically in the clouds.

How could the fanatic who wrote the Epistles of Paul be bold enough to make him say, “I have learned from Jesus that those of us who live are reserved for his coming. As soon as the trumpets sound, those who died in Jesus will be resurrected first. Then those of us who are living will be carried away with them in the air to meet Jesus”?²⁸

Was this lovely prophecy accomplished? Did Paul and the Christian Jews go to meet Jesus in the air to the sound of trumpets? And where, if you please, did Paul learn all these marvelous things from Jesus? Paul, who never saw him, who persecuted his disciples and who had joined in the stoning of Stephen? Had he spoken to Jesus when he was taken to the third heaven? And what exactly is the third heaven? Is it Mercury or Mars? In truth, if we read attentively, we would be seized with horror and pity on every page.²⁹

THE CALOYER

But if this book has that effect on its readers, how could anyone have believed in it? How was it able to convert so many thousands?

THE HONEST MAN

It is because it wasn't read. Was it through reading that ten million peasants were convinced that three makes one, that God is in a wafer and that the wafer disappears, and is suddenly turned into God himself by some man? It was through conversations, preaching, cabals. It was through winning over women and children. It was through impostures and miraculous tales that they easily managed to establish a little flock. The books of the first Christians were extremely rare. It was forbidden to show them to catechists. People were initiated in secret into the Christian mysteries just like into the mysteries of Ceres. The underprivileged eagerly followed those who had convinced them that not only were all men equal, but that a Christian was far superior to a Roman emperor.

All the world was then divided into small societies: Egyptian, Greek, Syrian, Roman, Jewish, etc. The Christian sect had all the advantages among the rabble. Three or four hotheads like Paul were enough to draw a mob. Not long after, clever men arrived to take command. Nearly every sect was established in this manner except that of Mahomet, the most brilliant of all, since it alone among so many human institutions seemed to rise under the protection of God, owing its existence only to victories.

Moreover, the Muslim religion is still what it was under its founder, after twelve hundred years. Nothing has been changed. The laws, written by Mahomet himself, subsist in all their integrity. His Koran is as well respected in Persia as in Turkey, Africa, or India. It is observed everywhere to the letter. Their only division is over the right of succession between Ali and Omar. Christianity, on the contrary, differs on every count from the religion of Jesus. Jesus, son of a village carpenter, never wrote a word, and it is likely that he was unable to read or write. He was born, lived, and died a Jew, observing all the Jewish laws: circumcised, sacrificing according to Mosaic Law, eating Passover lamb with lettuce, abstaining from pork, ixion, and griffin, and also from hare, because it ruminates and does not have cleft feet, according to Mosaic Law.30 You Christians, you think that it does have cleft feet and that it does not ruminate, and so you boldly eat it. You roast ixions and griffins whenever you find some. You are not circumcised and you do not practice sacrifice. Not a single one of your rites was instituted by Jesus. What can you have in common with him?

THE CALOYER

I confess that I would be a brazen impostor if I dared claim to you that the Christianity of today resembles that of the first centuries, or that that of the first centuries resembled the religion of Jesus. But you will also admit that God could have commanded all of these variations.

THE HONEST MAN

God vary! God change! The idea sounds like blasphemy. What! God's sun is always the same yet his religion would be a series of vicissitudes! What! You would make him resemble these miserable governments who issue new and contradictory edicts every day? He would have given one edict to Adam, another to Seth, a third to Noah, a fourth to Abraham, a fifth to Moses, a sixth to Jesus, and still more new edicts at every church council, and everything would have changed, from the prohibition of eating fruit from the tree of knowledge of right from wrong, to the papal bull Unigenitus of the Jesuit, Le Tellier! Believe me, you ought to tremble at outraging God in accusing Him of so much inconsistency, weakness, contradiction, absurdity, and even wickedness.

THE CALOYER

If all these variations are the work of men, acknowledge at least that the morals are from God, since they do not vary.

THE HONEST MAN

Let us consider then only these morals. But how the Christians have corrupted them! How cruelly have they violated the natural law taught by all lawmakers and engraved in the hearts of all men!

If Jesus spoke of this law as old as the world, this law established among the Hurons and the Chinese: Love your neighbor as yourself, the law of the Christians has been: Hate your neighbor as yourself. Athanasians, persecute the Eusebians,31 and be persecuted yourselves. Cyrillians, crush the children of the Nestorians against the walls; Guelphs and Ghibellines, make civil war for five hundred years to determine whether Jesus ordered the supposed successor of Simon Barjona to dethrone emperors and kings and whether Constantine ceded the empire to Pope Silvester.³² Papists, hang wretches from a gibbet thirty feet high, tear them, burn them if they don't believe that a piece of dough is changed into God at the voice of a Capuchin or Franciscan monk, to be nibbled by mice on the altar if the ciborium is left open. Poltrot, Balthasar Gérard, Jacques Clément, Châte, Guignard, Ravaillac, sharpen your holy daggers, charge your holy pistols. Europe, swim in blood, while the vicar of God, Pope Alexander VI, sullied by his murders and poisonings, sleeps in the arms of his daughter, Lucretia; while Leo X is awash in pleasures; while Paul III enriches his bastard sons with the spoils of nations; while Jules III makes his messenger monkey a cardinal (a dignity that suits the monkey better); while Pius IV has Cardinal Caraffe strangled; while Pius V makes the Romans groan beneath the plunderings of his bastard son, Buon-Compagno; and while Clement VIII whips the great King Henry IV on the [surrogate] buttocks of Cardinals of Ossat and Duperron. Join the absurdity of your Italian farces to the horrors of your lootings everywhere, then send Brother Trigaut and Brother Bouvet to preach “the good tidings” in China.

THE CALOYER

I cannot condemn your zeal. The truth, against which one argues in vain, forces me to admit part of what you say, but you must admit too that amidst so many crimes, there were also great virtues. Must the abuses embitter you, and the good laws not move you at all? And join to these good laws the miracles that prove the divinity of Christ.

THE HONEST MAN

Miracles? Good heavens! And what religion does not have its miracles? Everything is a prodigy in antiquity. What? You don't believe the miracles reported by the Herodotuses and the Titus Livys, by a hundred authors respected by all nations, and you believe the adventures in Palestine recounted, they say, by John and Mark in books that were ignored by the Greeks and the Romans for three hundred years—books undoubtedly written long after the destruction of Jerusalem, as it is proven by the books themselves, that swarm with contradictions on each page! For example, it is said in the Gospel of Saint Matthew that the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, who was massacred between the temple and altar, will fall on the Jews.33 Well we see in Flavius Joseph that this Zachariah was killed indeed between the temple and the altar during the siege of Jerusalem by Titus.³⁴ Therefore, this gospel was written after Titus. And why would the Lord God Jesus have performed these miracles? To be condemned to the gallows by the Jews! What? He resuscitated the dead and obtained nothing by it except to die himself by the cruelest of tortures?! If he had performed miracles, it would have been to make his divinity known. Think what it means to accuse God of having made himself into a man, quite uselessly, and to then have raised the dead only to be hanged himself? What? Thousands of miracles in favor of the Jews, only to make slaves of them, and miracles performed by Jesus, only to get Jesus crucified! It's imbecilic to believe it and a criminal frenzy to teach it when one does not believe it.

THE CALOYER

I do not deny that your objections are founded and I can see that you are reasoning in good faith, but still, you must agree that men must have a religion.

THE HONEST MAN

No doubt, the soul must be nourished, but why turn it into poison? Why suffocate the simple truth beneath a mass of shocking lies? Why impose these lies by fire and the sword? What infernal horror! Ah! If your religion were from God, would you need henchmen to uphold it? Does a geometer need to say, “Believe or I will kill you?” The religion between men and God is adoration and virtue. Between a prince and his subjects, it is a matter for the police. And only too often between man and man, it is a commerce of swindling and deceit. Let us adore God sincerely, simply, and fool no one. Yes, there must be a religion, but it must be pure, reasonable, universal. It must be like the sun, which is the same for all men and not just for some little privileged province. It is absurd, odious, and abominable to imagine that God sheds light on all eyes but that he plunges nearly all souls into darkness. There is only one kind of integrity common to all; there is therefore only one religion. And what is this religion? You know well: to adore God and be just.

THE CALOYER

But then how do you imagine that my religion got established?

THE HONEST MAN

Like all the others. A man of great imagination finds followers among people of little imagination. The flock increases. Fanaticism begins, and deceit does the rest. A powerful man arrives. He sees a mob that has put a saddle on its back and a bit in its mouth. He climbs aboard and conducts it.35 Once a new religion is adopted by the state, the government is henceforth only occupied in forbidding the means by which it established itself. It had begun with secret assemblies, so they are prohibited. The first apostles were sent out expressly to chase demons, so demons are forbidden. The apostles had proselytes bring them money, so whoever is found guilty of thus taking money is punished. They said it was better to obey God than men,36 and on this pretext, they braved the laws. The government then maintains that to follow the laws is to obey God. In short, politicians struggle unceasingly to reconcile received errors with the public good.

THE CALOYER

But you are going to Europe. You will be obliged to conform to one of the received religions.

THE HONEST MAN

What? Will I not be able to do in Europe as I do here? To adore in peace the Creator of all the universe, the God of all men, who put the love of truth and justice in my heart?

THE CALOYER

No, it will be too risky. Europe is divided into factions, and you will have to choose one.

THE HONEST MAN

Factions? When we're speaking of universal truths? When it's about God!

THE CALOYER

Such is the misfortune of men. We are obliged to do as they do or flee them. I ask you to give preference to the Greek Church.

THE HONEST MAN

It is in slavery.

THE CALOYER

Would you prefer to submit to the Roman Church?

THE HONEST MAN

It is tyrannical. I want no more of a simoniac patriarch who buys his shameful dignity from a Grand Vizier than of a priest who believes he has been the master of kings these past seven hundred years.

THE CALOYER

It would not behoove a religious person such as myself to suggest the Protestant faith to you.

THE HONEST MAN

It is perhaps the one I would adopt the most willingly if I were reduced to the hardship of having to choose a party.

THE CALOYER

Why not prefer to it a more ancient religion?

THE HONEST MAN

It appears to me far more ancient than the Roman.

THE CALOYER

How can you imagine that Saint Peter is not more ancient than Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and the reformers of England, Denmark, Sweden, etc.?

THE HONEST MAN

It seems to me that the Protestant religion was not invented by either Luther or Zwingli. It seems to me that it is closer to its sources than the Roman religion, and that it adopts only what it finds expressly written in the Gospels of the Christians, whereas the Romans have overladen the faith with new rites and dogmas. One only has to open one's eyes to see that the lawmaker of the Christians instituted no holy days, did not command that we worship images and the bones of the dead, did not sell indulgences or receive annuities, did not confer benefices, held no temporal dignities, did not establish an Inquisition to uphold his laws, and did not maintain his authority by the blades of executioners. The Protestants rejected all these scandalous and deadly novelties. They submit to the magistrates everywhere and the Roman Church has fought against the magistrates for eight hundred years. If the Protestants are mistaken like the others in principle, they have fewer errors in the results, and, since one must deal with men, I prefer to deal with those who mislead the least.

THE CALOYER

It sounds as though you choose a religion like one buys fabric in a shop. You go to the merchant who sells it the less dearly.

THE HONEST MAN

I told you what I would prefer if I had to make a choice, according to the rules of human prudence, but it is not to men that I should address myself. It is to God alone. He speaks to all hearts. We all have an equal right to hear him. The conscience that he gave all men is their universal law. Men from one pole to the other sense that we must be just, honor our fathers and mothers, help our fellow human beings, keep our promises. These laws are from God. The affectations are from mortals. All religions differ as do governments. God permits all of them. I thought that the outer manner in which one worships him can neither flatter nor offend him, so long as this worship is neither superstitious toward him, nor barbaric toward men.

For is it not, in fact, an offense to God to believe that he chose a small nation steeped in crimes as his favorite, in order to damn all the others? That the murderer of Uriah37 be his beloved and that he holds the pious Antonine³⁸ in horror? Is it not the greatest absurdity to think that the Supreme Being would punish a caloyer for all eternity for eating rabbit or a Turk for having eaten some pork? There once were people who raised onions, they say, to the rank of gods.³⁹ There are others who have claimed that a piece of dough was changed into as many gods as there were crumbs. These two extremes of human dementia both rouse pity, but that those who adopt these reveries dare to persecute those who don't believe them, that is what is horrible. The ancient Parsis, the Sabaeans, the Egyptians, and the Greeks all believed in hell. This hell is on earth and it is persecutors who are the demons.

THE CALOYER

I detest persecution and constraint as much as you, and praise heaven the Turks under whose dominion I live in peace, as I've already told you, persecute no one.

THE HONEST MAN

Ah! May all the people of Europe follow the example of the Turks!

THE CALOYER

But I add that, as a caloyer, I cannot propose to you any religion other than the one I profess on Mont Athos.

THE HONEST MAN

And myself, I add that as a man I can only propose to you the religion that suits all men, all the patriarchs and all the wise men of antiquity: the worship of one God, justice, the love of one's fellow human beings, indulgence for all errors, and charity in all occasions that life gives. It is this religion, worthy of God, which God has engraved in all hearts. But he certainly did not engrave that three makes one,40 that a piece of bread is the Eternal One, and that the she-ass of Balaam spoke.

THE CALOYER

Do not prevent me from being a caloyer.

THE HONEST MAN

Do not prevent me from being an honest man.

THE CALOYER

I serve God according to customs of my monastery.

THE HONEST MAN

And I, according to my conscience. It tells me to fear God, to love caloyers, dervishes, bonzes, and talapoins, and to regard all men as my brothers.

THE CALOYER

All right, all right, caloyer that I am, I think as you do.

THE HONEST MAN

Dear Lord, bless this good caloyer!

THE CALOYER

Dear Lord, bless this honest man!