I take up again, Sir, this question of miracles that I have undertaken to discuss with you, and after having proved that to establish their necessity was to destroy Protestantism, I am now going to seek what their use is for proving revelation.
With heads so variously organized, men cannot all be equally affected by the same arguments, above all in matters of faith. What appears evident to one does not even appear probable to the other. By his turn of mind, one is struck only by one type of proof, the other is struck only by a very different kind. All can indeed agree sometimes on the same things, but it is very rare that they agree for the same reasons. This, it should be said in passing, shows how little sense dispute itself makes. We might as well want to force someone else to see through our eyes.
Thus when God gives men a Revelation that all are obliged to believe, he must establish it on proofs that are good for all, and that consequently are as diverse as the ways of seeing of those who must adopt them.
On this reasoning, which seems just and simple to me, it was found that God had given various characteristics to the mission of his Messengers that made this mission recognizable to all men, small and great, wise and foolish, learned and ignorant. The one among them who has a flexible enough brain to be moved by all these characteristics at the same time is fortunate, no doubt. But the one who is struck only by some is not to be pitied, provided he is sufficiently struck to be persuaded.
The first, most important, and most certain of these characteristics is derived from the nature of the doctrine; that is from its utility, its beauty,R1 its sanctity, its truth, its depth, and from all the other qualities that can announce to men the instructions of supreme wisdom and the precepts of the supreme goodness. This characteristic, as I have said, is the most reliable, and most infallible; it bears within itself a proof that makes all others unnecessary. But it is the least easy to verify. In order to be felt, it requires study, reflection, knowledge, discussions suited only to wise men who are educated and know how to reason.
The second characteristic is in that of the men chosen by God to announce his word. Their sanctity, their veracity, their justice, their pure and spotless morals, their virtues inaccessible to the human passions, along with the qualities of understanding, reason, mind, knowledge, prudence, are as many respectable indications whose combining, when nothing gives it the lie, forms a complete proof in their favor and says they are more than men. This is the sign that especially strikes good and upright people, who see the truth everywhere they see justice, and hear the voice of God only from the mouth of virtue. This characteristic has its certainty, too, but it is not impossible for it to deceive, and it is no marvel for an imposter to fool good people, nor for a good man to fool himself, carried away by the ardor of a holy zeal that he mistakes for inspiration.
The third characteristic of the Messengers of God is an emanation of divine Power, which can interrupt and change the course of nature at the will of those who receive this emanation. This characteristic is indisputably the most brilliant of the three, the most striking, the quickest to leap to the eyes, the one that, being distinguished by a sudden and perceptible effect, seems to require the least examination and discussion. Because of that, this characteristic is also the one that particularly strikes the people, incapable of coherent reasoning, slow and reliable observations, and in all things the slave of its senses. But that is what makes this same characteristic equivocal, as will be proved below. And indeed, so long as it strikes those for whom it is intended, what difference does it make whether it is apparent or real? That is a distinction they are incapable of making, which shows there is no truly certain sign except the one derived from doctrine, and that consequently only good reasoners can have a solid and sure faith. But divine goodness lends itself to the weaknesses of the vulgar, and wishes to give them proofs that work for them.
I stop here, without seeking whether this enumeration can go further. It is a discussion of no use to ours, for it is clear that when all these signs are combined, it is sufficient to persuade all men: the wise, the good, and the people. Everyone with the exception of madmen, incapable of reason, and the wicked, who do not want to be convinced of anything.
These characteristics are proofs of the authority of those in whom they reside. They are the reasons for which people are obliged to believe them. When all that is done, the truth of their mission is established. They can then act with right and power in their quality as Messengers of God. Proofs are the means; the faith owed to doctrine is the end. Provided we accept the doctrine, it is the most futile thing to argue about the number and choice of proofs, and if one alone convinces me, it is wasted effort to want to make me adopt others. It would at least be very ridiculous to maintain that a man does not believe what he says he believes because he does not believe it for precisely the same reasons we say we have to believe it too.
These, it seems to me, are clear and incontestable principles. We come now to their application. I declare myself Christian. My persecutors say that I am not. They prove that I am not Christian because I reject Revelation, and they prove I reject Revelation because I do not believe in miracles.
But for this consequence to be just, one of two things would have to be true: either that miracles were the unique proof of Revelation or that I rejected the other proofs that bear witness to it. Now, it is not true that miracles are the unique proof of Revelation, and it is not true that I reject the other proofs, since on the contrary they are found established in the very work cited to accuse me of destroying Revelation.R2
That is precisely where matters stand. Determined to make me reject Revelation in spite of myself, these Gentlemen count as nothing the fact that I accept it based on the proofs that convince me, if I do not also accept it based on those that do not convince me; and because I cannot do so, they say I reject it. Can one conceive of anything more unjust and more extravagant?
And see if I am making too much of this, please, when they accuse me of a crime for not accepting a proof that not only did Jesus not give but that he expressly rejected.
He did not proclaim himself at first by miracles, but by preaching. At the age of twelve, he was already disputing in the Temple with the Learned, sometimes questioning them and sometimes surprising them by the wisdom of his answers. That was the beginning of his functions, as he stated himself to his mother and Joseph.R3 In the countryside, before he performed any miracle, he started to preach the Kingdom of Heaven to the peoples,R4 and he had already gathered several disciples without having obtained their sanction by any sign, since it is said that he made the first at Cana.R5
When he subsequently performed miracles, it was most often on particular occasions whose choice did not proclaim a public testimony, and whose goal was so little to manifest his power that he was never asked to do it for that purpose without his refusing. Look at the whole history of his life in this regard. Listen above all to his own statement. It is so decisive that you will find nothing in it to reply to.
His career was already well advanced when the Learned, seeing him acting in earnest as a Prophet in their midst, took it into their heads to ask him for a sign. What should Jesus have replied to that, according to your Gentlemen? “You ask for a sign; you have had a hundred of them. Do you believe I came to proclaim myself to you as the Messiah without beginning by bearing witness about myself, as if I wanted to force you to mistake me and cause you to err despite yourselves? No. Cana, the Centurion, the Lepers, the blind men, the paralytics, the multiplication of the loaves, all Galilee, all Judea vouch for me. Those are my signs. Why do you pretend not to see them?”
Instead of that reply, which Jesus did not make at all, here, Sir, is the one he did give.
The wicked and adulterous Nation demands a sign, and none will be given to it. Elsewhere he adds, No other sign will be given to it than that of Jonah the Prophet. And turning his back to them, he went away.R6
See first how, blaming this mania for miraculous signs, he treats those who ask for them? And that does not happen to him only once, but many times.R7 Within the system of your Gentlemen, this request was very legitimate. Why, then, insult those who made it?
See next in whom we have to prefer to trust: in those who maintain it is rejecting Christian Revelation not to accept the miracles of Jesus as the signs that establish him, or in Jesus himself, who declares that he has no sign to give.
They will ask what, then, is the sign of Jonah the Prophet? I will reply to them that it is his preaching to the Ninevites, precisely the same sign Jesus used with the Jews, as he himself explains.R8 The second passage can only be given a meaning that refers back to the first, or else Jesus would have contradicted himself. Now in the first passage where a miracle is requested as a sign, Jesus says positively that none will be given. Therefore the meaning of the second passage indicates no miraculous sign.
A third passage, they will insist, explains this sign by the resurrection of Jesus.R9 I deny it. It explains it at best by his death. Now the death of a man is not a miracle. It is not even a miracle that after lying in the earth for three days, a body is taken out of it. In this passage, there is not a word about resurrection. Besides, what kind of proof would it be to claim authority during one’s lifetime based on a sign that will not happen until after one’s death? It would be wanting to find only non-believers. It would be hiding one’s light under a bushel. Just as this behavior would be unjust, so this interpretation would be impious.
Moreover, the invincible argument returns again. The meaning of the third passage should not undermine the first, and the first affirms that no sign at all will be given, none whatever, none. Finally, whatever the case may be, it remains always proved by the testimony of Jesus himself, that if he performed miracles during his lifetime, he did not do so as a sign of his mission.
Every time the Jews insisted on this type of proof, he always sent them away scornfully, without ever deigning to satisfy them. He did not even approve of having his works of charity taken in this sense. If you do not see marvels and miracles, you do not believe at all, he said to the person who begged him to cure his son.R10 Is that how someone speaks who wants to offer marvels as proofs?
Wasn’t it very astounding that if he performed so many of these, people incessantly continued to ask him for them? What miracle do you perform, the Jews said to him, such that having seen it we believe in you? Moses gave manna in the desert to our fathers. But what work do you do?R11 It is just about in the sense of your Gentlemen and setting aside royal Majesty, as if someone came to say to Frederick: They say you are a great Captain. And why so? What have you done that shows you to be such? Gustave won at Leipzig, at Lutzen, Charles at Frawstat, at Narva; but where are your monuments? What victory did you win, what Stronghold did you take, what march have you undertaken, what Campaign covered you with glory? By what right do you bear the name Great? Is the impudence of such a speech conceivable, and in the entire world would we find a man capable of making it?
Yet without putting to shame those who spoke to him like this, without granting them any miracle, without edifying them at least about those he had performed, Jesus, in reply to their question, is satisfied to allegorize about the bread of Heaven. So it was that far from winning him new Disciples, his reply deprived him of many of those he had and who, no doubt, thought as your Theologians do. The desertion was such that he said to the twelve: And you, don’t you, too, want to go away? It does not appear that he had his heart set on preserving those whom he could retain only with miracles.
The Jews were asking for a sign from Heaven. In their system, they were right. For them, the sign that was to verify the coming of the Messiah could not be too manifest, too decisive, too much above suspicion, nor have too many eye witnesses. Since the direct testimony of God is always worth more than that of men, it was safer to believe it by the sign itself than by the people who said they had seen it, and for that purpose, heaven was preferable to earth.
The Jews were right in their view, then, because they wanted a manifest and entirely miraculous messiah. But Jesus said after the Prophet that the Kingdom of Heaven does not come manifestly, that the person who proclaims it does not debate at all, does not shout at all, that one cannot at all hear his voice in the streets. All that does not evince the ostentation of miracles, nor was that the goal he had in mind for his own. He placed in them neither the apparatus nor the authenticity necessary to verify true signs, because he did not offer them as such. On the contrary, he recommended secrecy to the sick people he cured, to the lame he made to walk, to the possessed he freed from the Demon. It was as though he was afraid to have his miraculous virtue known. One will admit that this was a strange way to make this the proof of his mission.
But all that is self-explanatory, as soon as it is conceived that the Jews went looking for this proof where Jesus did not want it to be. The person who rejects me, he said, has a judge. He added, Will the miracles I have performed condemn him? No, but the word I have brought will condemn him. The proof is in the word, then, and not in the miracles.
One sees in the Gospel that those of Jesus were all useful, but they were without luster, without affectation, without pomp; they were simple like his discourses, like his life, like all his behavior. The most manifest, the most palpable he performed was indisputably that of the multiplication of the five loaves and two fish that fed five thousand men. Not only had his disciples seen the miracle, but it had so to speak passed through their hands. And yet they did not think about it, they almost were not aware of it. Can you conceive it is possible to give as well-known signs to the human Race for all time facts to which the most immediate witnesses scarcely pay attention?R12
And it was so far from the truth that the real object of Jesus’ miracles was to establish the faith, that on the contrary he began by requiring faith before performing the miracle. Nothing occurs so frequently in the Gospel. It is precisely because of that, it is because a prophet is without honor only in his own country, that he performed very few miracles in his.R13 It is even said that he could not perform any because of their incredulity.R14 What? It was because of their incredulity that he had to perform some to convince them, if his miracles had had that purpose. But they did not. They were simply acts of goodness, charity, kindness, which he performed for the benefit of his friends and those who believed in him. And such acts constituted the works of mercy truly worthy of being his, which he said bore witness to him.R15 These works denoted the power to do good rather than the will to astonish; they were virtuesR16 more than miracles. And how could the supreme wisdom have used means so contrary to the end it proposed for itself? How could it not have foreseen that the miracles with which it supported the authority of its Messengers would produce a completely opposite effect, that they would make the truth of the story suspect as much concerning the miracles as the mission, and that among so many solid proofs, that one would only make enlightened and true people more demanding about all the others? Yes, I will always maintain it: the support we want to give belief is its greatest obstacle. Take the miracles out of the Gospel and the whole world will be at the feet of Jesus Christ.R17
You see, Sir, that it is attested by Scripture itself that, in the mission of Jesus Christ, miracles are not a sign so necessary to faith that we cannot have it without accepting them. Let us grant that other passages present a meaning contrary to these, and these in turn present a meaning contrary to the others; and so I chose, making use of my right, the one of these meanings that appeared to me the most reasonable and the most clear. If I had the pride of wanting to explain everything, I could twist and turn each passage to my meaning, like a true Theologian. But good faith does not allow me these Sophistic interpretations. Sufficiently authorized in my sentimentR18 by what I understand, I remain at peace regarding what I do not, and what those who explain it to me make me understand even less. I do not give the authority I give the Gospel to the interpretations of men at all, and I do not intend to subject them to mine any more than I subject myself to theirs. The rule is common, and clear about what is important. The reason that explains it is individual, and each has his own that constitutes authority only for him. Allowing oneself to be led by another in this matter is substituting the explanation for the text; it is subjecting oneself to men and not to God.
I take up my train of reasoning again, and after having established that miracles are not a necessary sign for faith, I am going to show in confirmation of this that miracles are not an infallible sign about which men can judge.
Regarding a specific fact, a miracle is an immediate act of divine power, a tangible change in the order of nature, a real and visible exception to its Laws. That is the idea one must not stray from if one wants to understand one another in reasoning about this matter. This idea offers two questions to resolve.
The first: can God perform miracles? That is, can he depart from the Laws he has established? Seriously treated, this question would be impious if it were not absurd. It would be too great an honor to the person who would resolve it negatively to punish him. It would suffice to lock him up. But also what man has ever denied that God could perform miracles? It was necessary to be a Hebrew to ask whether God could erect tables in the desert.
Second question: Does God want to perform miracles? That is a different matter. This question, in itself and abstracting from all other considerations, is completely indifferent. It does not in any way concern the glory of God, whose plans we cannot fathom. I will say even more. If there could be some difference as to faith in the manner of responding to it, the greatest ideas we could have of divine wisdom and majesty would favor the negative. Only human pride is against that. That is as far as reason can go. Moreover, this question is purely idle, and it would be necessary to read the eternal decrees to resolve it. For as we shall soon see, it is impossible to decide by the facts. Let us be careful, then, not to dare cast a curious eye on these mysteries. Let us pay this respect to the infinite essence to make no pronouncements about it. We know only its immensity.
However, when a mortal boldly comes and asserts to us that he has seen a miracle, he clearly cuts this great question short. Judge whether we should believe him at his word! If there were a thousand of them, I would not believe them.
I leave aside the crude sophism of using moral proof to verify naturally impossible facts, because then the very principle of credibility based on natural possibility is lacking. If in such cases men are willing to accept this proof regarding matters of pure speculation, or regarding facts whose truth hardly touches them, we can be assured that they would be more demanding if their slightest temporal interest were at stake. Let us suppose a dead man came to demand his property back from his inheritors, affirming that he has been resuscitated and requesting the opportunity to prove it,R19 do you believe there would be a single tribunal on earth where that would be granted to him? But once again, let us not open up this debate here. Let the facts retain all the certainty given to them, and let us be satisfied to distinguish between what the senses can attest and what reason can conclude.
Since a miracle is an exception to the Laws of nature, to judge one it is necessary to know those Laws, and to judge one reliably, it is necessary to know them all. For a single law that is not known could, in certain cases unknown to the spectators, change the effect of those that are known. Thus the person who proclaims that such and such an act is a miracle declares that he knows all the Laws of nature and that he knows this act is an exception to them.
But who is this mortal who knows all the Laws of nature? Newton did not boast of knowing them. A wise man who has witnessed an unheard of fact can attest that he has seen this fact and one can believe him. But neither this wise man nor any other wise man on earth will ever affirm that this fact, however astonishing it may be, is a miracle. For how can he know that?
All that can be said of the person who boasts of performing miracles is that he does very extraordinary things. But who denies that very extraordinary things are done? I have seen those things myself, and have even done some.R2011
The study of nature leads to new discoveries every day. Human industry perfects itself every day. Curious Chemistry has transmutations, precipitations, detonations, explosions, phosphoruses, pyrophoruses, earthquakes, and a thousand other marvels to make the people who would see them cross themselves a thousand times. Oil of guaiacum and nitric acid are not terribly rare substances. Mix them together, and you will see what happens. But do not do this experiment in a room, because you may well set the house on fire.R21 If the priests of Baal had had M. Rouelle12 in their midst, their pyre would have caught fire on its own, and Elijah would have been taken for a dupe.
Pour water into water, behold ink. Pour water into water and make a hard substance. A Prophet from the College of Harcourt goes to Guinea and says to the people: acknowledge the power of the one who sends me. I am going to transform water into stone. By means known to the least Schoolboy, he makes ice. Behold the Negroes ready to worship him.
Formerly, Prophets made fire come down from Heaven at the sound of their voice. Today children do as much with a small piece of glass. Joshua made the Sun stop. An almanac writer is going to have it eclipsed. The marvel is even more striking. The workroom of the Abbé Nollet13 is a laboratory of magic; mathematical games are a collection of miracles. What am I saying? Even fairs will be swarming with them. People like Brioché are not a rarity at fairs. The peasant of North Holland by himself, whom I have seen twenty times light his candle with his knife, is capable of subjugating all the People, even in Paris. What do you think he would have done in Syria?14
These Paris fairs are a rather unusual spectacle. There is not one of them where one does not see the most amazing things, without the public deigning to pay them almost any attention, so accustomed is one to amazing things, and even to those that one cannot conceive! At the very moment I am writing this, two separate portable machines can be seen there, one of which walks or stops exactly according to the will of the person who makes the other one walk or stop. I saw a talking wooden head there, about which people did not talk as much as about that of Albert the Great.15 I saw an even more surprising thing, which was many heads of men, of scientists, of Academicians who rushed to the miracles of the convulsions,16 and came back all amazed.
With the cannon, optics, the magnet, the barometer, what marvels are not performed among the ignorant? The Europeans with their arts were always held to be Gods by the barbarians. If in the very bosom of the Arts, the Sciences, colleges, and Academies; if in the middle of Europe, in France and in England, a man had come in the last century armed with all the miracles of electricity that our physicists perform today, would he have been burned as a sorcerer, would he have been followed as a Prophet? It can be presumed one or the other would have been done. It is certain a mistake would have been made.
I do not know if the art of curing has been found or if it ever will be. What I do know is that it is not outside of nature. It is just as natural for a man to get well as it is for him to fall sick. He can just as easily get well suddenly as die suddenly. All that can be said about certain cures is that they are surprising, but not that they are impossible. How will you prove, then, that they are miracles? There are however, I admit, things that would astonish me greatly if I witnessed them. It would not be as surprising to see a lame man walk as to see a man walk who had no legs; nor to see a paralytic move his arm, as a man who has only one get both again. That would strike me even more, I admit, than to see a dead man resuscitated. For indeed a dead man can be not dead.R22 See Mr. Bruhier’s book.17
Besides, however striking such a spectacle might appear to me, I would not want to witness it for anything in the world. For what do I know could happen as a result? Instead of making me a believer, I would greatly fear it would only make me insane. But this is not about me. Let us return.
We have just learned the secret of reviving the drowned. We have already sought that of reviving the hanged. Who knows whether in other types of deaths, we will not succeed in restoring life to bodies we thought were deprived of it. We used not to know how to remove a cataract. It is a simple thing now for our surgeons. Who knows if there is not some secret that can be found to make it suddenly go away? Who knows if the possessor of such a secret cannot do with simplicity what an ignorant spectator will take for a miracle, and what a biased Author can present as such?R23 All that is not likely, so be it. But we have no proof it is impossible, and the issue here is physical impossibility. Without that, God displaying his power before our eyes could have given us only probable signs, simple probabilities. And the result of this would be that the authority of miracles being based only on the ignorance of those for whom they were performed, what would be miraculous in one era or for one people would no longer be so for others. So that lacking universal proof, the system established on it would be destroyed. No, give me miracles that will remain so whatever happens, at all times and in all places. If several of those that are related in the Bible appear to fall into this category, others also appear not to. Answer me then, Theologian. Do you require that I let the lot of them pass as a whole, or do you allow me to sort them out? When you have made a decision about this, we will see what happens after that.
Note well, Sir, that in supposing at most some amplification of the circumstances, I do not establish any doubt concerning the foundation of all the facts. That is what I have already said, and it is not superfluous to restate it. Enlightened by the spirit of God, Jesus had understanding so superior to that of his disciples that it is not surprising he performed many extraordinary feats in which the spectators’ ignorance saw a marvel that was not there. To what extent, by virtue of this understanding, could he act by natural ways unknown to them and to us?R24 That is what we do not know at all, and what we cannot know. The spectators of marvelous things are naturally inclined to describe them with exaggeration. About that we can in very good faith deceive ourselves as we deceive others. If a fact is a bit beyond our understanding, we suppose it is beyond reason, and the mind finally sees a marvel where the heart makes us strongly desire to do so.
Miracles, as I have said, are the proofs of simple people, for whom the Laws of nature form a very tight circle around them. But the sphere expands as men learn more and sense how much more there is for them to know. The great Physicist sees the limits of that sphere as so far away that he is unable to discern a miracle beyond them. That cannot be, is a phrase that rarely comes from the lips of wise men. They more often say, I do not know.
What ought we to think, then, of so many miracles related by Authors, truthful, I have no doubt, but of such crass ignorance and so full of zeal for the glory of their master? Must we reject all these facts? No. Must we accept them all? I am unaware.R25 We ought to respect them without making pronouncements about their nature, were a warrant issued against us a hundred times. For in the end, the authority of the Laws cannot extend to forcing us to reason badly. And yet this is what must be done to find a miracle necessarily where reason can see only an amazing fact.
Even if it were true that the Catholics have a sure means to make this distinction for themselves, what would be the consequence of that for us? In their system, when the Church once recognized has determined that such a fact is a miracle, it is a miracle. For the Church cannot be mistaken. But I am not dealing with the Catholics here, but with the Reformed. The latter have refuted very well some parts of the Vicar’s profession of faith that, being written only against the Roman church, neither could nor had to prove anything against them. In the same way, the Catholics will easily be able to refute these Letters, because I am not dealing in any way here with Catholics, and our principles are not theirs. When it is a matter of showing that I do not prove what I did not want to prove, that is where my adversaries triumph.
From everything I have just set forth, I conclude that the best attested facts, even if all their circumstances were accepted, would prove nothing, and one can even suspect exaggeration regarding the circumstances without impugning the good faith of those who relate them. Continual discoveries being made about the laws of nature, those that probably will still be made, those that will always be left to make; the past, present, and future progress of human industry; the various limits people place on what is possible according to whether they are more or less enlightened; everything proves to us that we cannot know these limits. Yet for a miracle to be truly a miracle, it must go beyond them. Therefore whether there are miracles or whether there are not, it is impossible for the wise man to be certain that any fact, whatever it might be, is one.
Independently of the proofs of this impossibility I have just established, I see another that is no less powerful in the supposition itself. For let us grant that there might be true miracles, what good will they do us if there are also false miracles from which it is impossible to differentiate them? And note carefully that here I am not calling a false miracle a miracle that is not real, but an act that is really supernatural performed to support a false doctrine. As the word miracle in this sense can wound pious ears, let us use another word and give it the name magic trick.18 But let us remember that it is impossible for the human senses to differentiate between a magic trick and a miracle.
The same authority that attests miracles also attests magic tricks, and this authority proves again that the appearance of magic tricks is in no way different from that of miracles. How then can they be distinguished from each other, and what can the miracle prove if the person who sees it cannot discern by any mark that is certain and drawn from the thing itself whether it is the work of God or whether it is the work of the Demon? There would have to be a second miracle to certify the first.
When Aaron threw down his rod in front of Pharaoh and it was changed into a serpent, the magicians also threw down their rods and they were changed into serpents. It makes no difference whether this change was real on both sides, as it is said in Scripture, or whether only Aaron’s miracle was real and the magic trick of the magicians was only an appearance as some Theologians say. This appearance was exactly the same. Exodus does not note any difference between them, and if there had been, the magicians would have been careful not to expose themselves to the comparison, or if they had, they would have been confounded.
Now men can judge miracles only by their senses, and if the sensation is the same, the real difference they cannot perceive means nothing to them. Thus the sign, as sign, proves nothing more for one side than for the other, and in this regard the Prophet has no advantage over the Magician. If this once again is some of my fine style, agree that it will take a far finer one to refute it.
It is true that Aaron’s serpent devoured the Magicians’ serpents. But forced for once to acknowledge Magic, Pharaoh could well conclude nothing from it except that Aaron was more skilful than they in that art. Thus it was that Simon, enchanted with the things Philip was doing, wanted to buy from the Apostles the secret of doing as much as they did.19
Besides, the Magicians’ inferiority was due to Aaron’s presence. But in Aaron’s absence, by making the same signs, they had the right to claim the same authority. The sign in itself therefore proved nothing.
When Moses changed water into blood, the Magicians changed water into blood. When Moses produced frogs, the Magicians produced frogs. They failed at the third plague, but let us confine ourselves to the first two, which God himself had made the proof of Divine power.R26 The magicians also made that proof.
As for the third plague, which they could not imitate, one does not see what made it so difficult, to the point of signifying that the finger of God was there. Why were those who could produce an animal unable to produce an insect, and how was it that after making frogs they could not make lice? If it is true that in those things only the first step is hard, that was assuredly stopping right in the middle.
The same Moses, having learned from these experiences, orders that if a false Prophet comes to proclaim other Gods—that is to say a false doctrine—and if this false Prophet gives authority to his statements by predictions or marvels that succeed, he must not be heeded but put to death. It is possible, then, to use true signs for the benefit of a false doctrine. A sign in itself proves nothing, then.
The same doctrine of signs through magic tricks is established in a thousand parts of the Scripture. Beyond that, after having declared that he will not make any signs, Jesus announces false Christs who will make them. He says that they will make great signs, miracles capable of seducing even the elect, if that were possible.R27 Wouldn’t this language make it tempting to take signs as proofs of falseness?
What! God, master of the choice of his proofs when he wants to speak to men, prefers to choose those that assume knowledge he knows they do not have! In order to teach them he takes the same path he knows the Demon will take to deceive them! Would this course then be that of the divinity? Is it possible that God and the Devil follow the same route? That is what I cannot conceive.
Our Theologians, better reasoners but of less good faith than the ancients, are greatly perplexed by this magic. They would very much like to free themselves from it entirely, but they do not dare. They sense that denying it would be denying too much. These people who are always so decisive change their language here. They do not deny it, nor do they acknowledge it. They adopt the course of equivocating, of looking for subterfuges; they stop at each step. They do not know which leg to stand on.
I believe I have given you a sense, Sir, of where the difficulty lies. In order to make it perfectly clear, here it is stated as a dilemma.
If one denies magic tricks, one cannot prove miracles, because they are both founded on the same authority.
And if one accepts magic tricks along with miracles, one has no sure, precise, and clear rule for distinguishing between them. Thus miracles prove nothing.
I know well that our people pressed in this way come back to the doctrine. But they simply forget that if the doctrine is established, the miracle is superfluous, and that if it is not, it cannot prove anything.
I beg you not to be led astray, and from the fact that I have not regarded miracles as essential to Christianity, do not go concluding that I have rejected miracles. No, Sir, I have not and do not reject them. While I have stated reasons for having doubts about them, I have not dissimulated the reasons for believing in them. There is a big difference between denying something and not affirming it, between rejecting it and not acknowledging it; and I am so undecided on this point that I dare someone to find a single place in all my writings where I am affirmative against miracles.
Ah, how could I have been so despite my own doubts, since in all the places where I see myself most decided, I still affirm nothing. See what affirmations a man can make who speaks like this right from his Preface.R28
“As to what will be called the systematic part, which is here nothing but the march of nature, it is the point that will most put the readers off, and doubtless it is here that I will be attacked. And perhaps it will not be wrong to do so. It will be believed that what is being read is less an educational treatise than a visionary’s dreams about education. What is to be done about it? It is on the basis not of others’ ideas that I write but on that of my own. I do not see as do other men. I have long been reproached for that. But is it up to me to provide myself with other eyes or to affect other ideas? No. It is up to me not to go overboard, not to believe that I alone am wiser than everybody. It is up to me not to change sentiments but to distrust mine. That is all I can do; and that is what I do. If I sometimes adopt an assertive tone, it is not for the sake of making an impression on the reader but for the sake of speaking to him as I think. Why should I propose as doubtful what, so far as I am concerned, I do not doubt at all? I say exactly what goes on in my mind.
“In expounding freely my sentiment, I so little expect that it be taken as authoritative that I always join to it my reasons, so that they may be weighed and I be judged. But although I do not wish to be obstinate in defending my ideas, I nonetheless believe that it is my obligation to propose them; for the maxims concerning which I am of an opinion different from that of others are not matters of indifference. They are among those whose truth or falsehood is important to know and which make the happiness or the unhappiness of mankind.”20
An Author who does not know himself whether he is in error; who fears that everything he says is a web of reveries; who, being unable to change his sentiments, is wary of his own; who does not adopt an assertive tone to advance it, but to speak as he thinks; who, not wishing at all to play the authority, always states his reasons so that he can be judged, and who does not even want at all to persist in defending his ideas; does an Author who talks in that way at the beginning of his Book want to pronounce oracles in it? Does he want to give decisions, and by this preliminary declaration, doesn’t he place his strongest assertions among the doubts?
And let it not be said that I break my promises by persisting in defending my ideas here. That would be the height of injustice. It is not my ideas I defend, it is my person. If only my Books had been attacked, I would constantly have remained silent. That was a settled point. Since my declaration in 1753,21 have I been seen to respond to someone, or was I silent for want of aggressors? But when I am prosecuted, when a warrant is issued against me, when I am dishonored for having said what I did not say, to defend myself I really have to show that I did not say it. It is my enemies who place the pen back in my hand in spite of myself. Ah! Let them leave me in peace, and I will leave the public in peace. I gladly give my word to do so.
This already serves as a reply to the retort I foresaw, of wanting to play the reformer myself while defying the opinions of my entire era. For nothing has less of an air of bravado than such language, and to speak with so much circumspection is assuredly not to adopt a Prophet’s tone. I considered it as a duty to state my sentiment about important and useful things. But have I said a word, have I taken a step to have it adopted by others? Has anyone seen in my behavior the look of a man who was seeking to make sectaries for himself?
In transcribing the particular Writing that makes so many unexpected zealots for the faith, I warn the reader again that he has to be wary of my judgments, that it is for him to see if he can derive some useful reflections from this Writing; that I propose to him neither someone else’s sentiment nor mine as a rule; that I present it to him to examine.R29
And when I resume speaking, here is what I put in additionally at the end.
“I have transcribed this writing not as a rule for the sentiments that one ought to follow in religious matters, but as an example of the way one can reason with one’s pupil in order not to diverge from the method I have tried to establish. So long as one concedes nothing to the authority of men or to the prejudices of the country in which one was born, the light of reason alone cannot, in the education founded by nature, lead us any farther than natural religion. This is what I limit myself to with my Emile. If he must have another religion, I no longer have the right to be his guide in that. It is up to him alone to choose it.”R30
After that, what man is impudent enough to dare accuse me of having denied miracles that are not even denied in this Writing? I have not spoken of them elsewhere.R31
What! Because the Author of a Writing published by another person introduces into it a reasoner of whom he disapprovesR32 and who in an argument rejects miracles, does it follow from this that not only the Author of this Writing but the Editor also rejects miracles? What a web of reckless acts! That one permits oneself such presumptions in the heat of a literary quarrel is very blameworthy and too common. But to take them as proofs in Tribunals! That is jurisprudence to give the shivers to the most just and firm man who has the misfortune to live under such magistrates.
The Author of the profession of faith raises objections as much about the utility as about the reality of miracles, but these objections are not at all negations. Here is the strongest thing he says concerning this. “It is the unalterable order of nature which best shows the Supreme Being. If many exceptions took place, I would no longer know what to think; and as for me, I believe too much in God to believe in so many miracles that are so little worthy of Him.”22
Now I ask you, what does that say? That too great a multitude of miracles would make them suspect to the Author. That he does not indiscriminately accept every kind of miracle, and that his faith in God makes him reject all those that are not worthy of God. What then? Does someone who does not accept all miracles reject all miracles, and is it necessary to believe in all those in the Legend to believe the ascension of Christ?
As the last straw, far from being able to understand the doubts contained in this second part of the profession of faith as negations, on the contrary the negations it may contain ought to be understood only as doubts. That is what the Author declares in beginning it about the sentiments he is going to dispute. He says, Attribute to my discourse only the authority of reason. I do not know whether I am in error. It is difficult in discussion not to adopt an assertive tone sometimes. But remember that all my assertions here are only reasons for doubt.R33 Is it possible to speak more positively?
As for myself, I see facts attested in the holy Scriptures. That suffices to settle my judgment on this point. If they were elsewhere, I would reject these facts or I would remove the name miracles from them. But because they are in the Scriptures I do not reject them at all. I do not accept them either, because my reason refuses to do so and because my decision on this matter does not concern my salvation. No judicious Christian can believe that everything in the Bible is inspired, even the very words and errors. What we ought to believe inspired is everything that relates to our duties. For why would God have inspired the rest? Now the doctrine of miracles is in no way related to that. That is what I have just proved. Thus the sentiment we may have about that has no bearing on the respect we owe to the sacred Books.
Besides, it is impossible for men to ascertain that any fact whatever it might be is a miracle.R34 That is what I also proved. Thus, in acknowledging all the facts contained in the Bible, one can reject miracles without impiety and even without inconsistency. I did not go that far.
That is how your Gentlemen derive from miracles—which are not certain, which are not necessary, which prove nothing, and which I did not reject—the evident proof that I destroy the foundations of Christianity and that I am not Christian.
Boredom would prevent you from following me if I went into the same detail about the other accusations they heap up in the attempt to offset by their number the injustice of each one in particular. They accuse me, for example, of rejecting prayer. Look at the Book and you will find a prayer in the very place that is at issue. The pious man who is speakingR35 does not believe, it is true, that it is absolutely necessary to ask God for one particular thing or another.R36 He does not disapprove at all of doing that. For myself, he says, I do not do it, being convinced that God is a good father who knows better than his children what suits them. But cannot one worship him in other ways that are as worthy of him? The homage of a heart filled with zeal, the adorations, the praises, the contemplation of his greatness, the admission of our nothingness, the resignation to his will, the submission to his laws, a pure and saintly life, aren’t all these things worth as much as self-interested and mercenary wishes? Near a just God, the best way to ask is to deserve to receive. Do the Angels who praise him surrounding his Throne pray to him? What would they have to ask of him? This word prayer is often used in the Scriptures for homage, adoration, and whoever does the greater is discharged from the lesser. For myself, I reject none of the ways of honoring God. I have always approved of joining the Church which prays to him. I do so. The Savoyard Priest did so himself.R37 The Writing so violently attacked is full of all that. No matter. I reject prayer, they say. I am an impious man to be burned. Thus am I judged.
They say further that I accuse Christian morality of making all our duties impracticable by carrying them to excess. Christian morality is that of the Gospel. I do not recognize any other at all, and my accuser understands it in this same way, since it is from imputations where that is included that he concludes, a few lines after, that I call the Gospel divine by derision.R38
Now see whether a blacker falsehood could be proposed, or more marked bad faith shown, since in the passage of my Book where this is reported, it is not even possible that I wanted to talk about the Gospel.
Here is this passage, Sir. It is in the fourth volume of Emile, page 64. “By enslaving decent women only to gloomy duties, we have banished from marriage everything which could make it attractive to men. Ought we to be surprised if the taciturnity they see reigning at home drives them from it or if they are scarcely tempted to embrace so unpleasant a condition? By exaggerating all duties, Christianity makes them impracticable and vain. By forbidding women song, dance, and all the entertainments of the world, it makes them sullen, shrewish, and unbearable in their homes.”23
But where does the Gospel forbid women to sing and dance? Where does it subject them to sad duties? Completely to the contrary, the duties of husbands are discussed in it, but not a word is said about those of wives. Therefore it is wrong to have me say about the Gospel what I said only about the Jansenists, the Methodists, and other sanctimonious people today, who make Christianity a Religion as awful and unpleasant,R39 as it is pleasant and gentle under the true law of Jesus Christ.
I would not want to adopt the tone of Father Berruyer,24 whom I hardly like and even find in very bad taste. But I cannot keep myself from saying that one of the things that charms me in Jesus’ character is not only the gentleness of morals, and simplicity, but ease, grace, and even elegance. He did not flee from either pleasures or celebrations; he went to weddings, he visited women, he played with children, he liked perfumes, he dined at the homes of financiers. His disciples did not fast. His austerity was not at all troublesome. He was simultaneously indulgent and just, gentle with the weak and terrible with the wicked. His morality had about it something attractive, affectionate, tender. He had a sensitive heart. He was a man of good company. If he had not been the wisest of mortals, he would have been the most lovable.
Certain passages of Saint Paul, exaggerated or misunderstood, have produced many fanatics, and these fanatics have often disfigured and dishonored Christianity. If people had held closer to the spirit of the Master, that would never have happened. Let them accuse me of not always sharing Saint Paul’s opinion, I can be reduced to proving that I am sometimes right not to do so. But it will never follow from this that I find the Gospel divine by derision. Yet that is how my persecutors reason.
Forgive me, Sir. I tire you with these lengthy details. I feel it, and I bring them to an end. I have already said only too much in my defense, and I bore myself by always replying with reasons to unreasonable accusations.
Notes
R1 I do not know why people want to attribute the beautiful morality of our Books to the progress of philosophy. This morality, taken from the Gospel, was Christian before it was philosophic. The Christians teach it without practicing it, I admit. But what more do the philosophers do, except to give themselves a great deal of praise, which since it is not repeated by anyone else does not prove much, in my opinion?
Plato’s precepts are often very sublime, but doesn’t he go greatly astray sometimes, and don’t his errors go far? As for Cicero, can we believe that without Plato this Rhetorician would have found his treatise on duties? Concerning morality, the Gospel alone is always reliable, always true, always unique, and always resembles itself.
R2 It is important to note that the Vicar could find many objections as a Catholic that are null for a Protestant. Thus the skepticism in which he remains does not prove mine in any way, especially after the very express declaration I made at the end of this same Writing. It is clearly seen in my principles that several of the objections it contains are beside the mark.
R3 Luke XI: 46, 47, 49.
R4 Matthew IV: 17.
R5 John II: 11. I cannot think that anyone wishes to count among the public signs of his mission the temptation of the devil and the forty-day fast.
R6 Mark VIII: 12; Matthew XVI: 4. For brevity, I have combined these two passages, but I have preserved the distinction essential to the question.
R7 Examine the following passages: Matthew XII: 39, 41; Mark VIII: 12; Luke XI: 29; John II: 18, 19; IV: 48; V: 34, 36, 39.
R8 Matthew XII: 41; Luke XI, 30, 32.
R9 Matthew XII: 40.
R10 John IV: 48.
R11 John VI: 30, 31, and following.
R12 Mark VI: 52. It is said that was because their hearts were stupid. But who would dare boast of having a heart more intelligent about sacred things than the disciples chosen by Jesus.
R13 Matthew XIII: 58.
R14 Mark VI: 5.
R15 John X: 25, 32, 38.
R16 That is the word used in the Scripture. Our translators render it by the word miracles.
R17 Paul preaching to the Athenians was listened to very peaceably until he spoke to them about a resuscitated man. At that point, some started to laugh. The others said to him, That is enough. We will hear the rest another time. I do not know very well what these good, fashionable Christians think deep in their hearts. But if they believe in Jesus through his miracles, I believe in him despite his miracles; and to my mind, my faith is worth more than theirs.
R18 This sentiment is not so unique to me that it is not also shared by several Theologians whose orthodoxy is better established than that of the Genevan Clergy. Here is what one of those gentlemen wrote me on February 28, 1764.
Whatever the throng of modern apologists for Christianity say, I am persuaded there is not a word in the sacred Books from which one can legitimately conclude that miracles were destined to serve as proof to men of all times and all places. Far from that, it was not in my opinion the principal object for those who were eye witnesses to them. When the Jews asked Saint Paul for miracles, his only answer was to preach Jesus’ crucifixion to them. Certainly if Grotius, the Authors of the Boyle society, Vernes, Vernet, etc. had been in this Apostle’s place, they would have had nothing more urgent to do than send for a stage to satisfy a request that squares so well with their principles. Those people believe they perform marvels with their mass of arguments. But someday, I hope, people will question whether they were not compiled by a society of unbelievers, without needing to be Hardouin to do so.
Let it not be thought, moreover, that the Author of this Letter is my partisan. Far from it. He is one of my adversaries. He finds only that the others do not know what they are saying. He suspects perhaps worse, for the faith of those who believe based on miracles will always be very suspect to enlightened people. That was the sentiment of the most illustrious reformers. Non satis tuta fides eorum qui miraculis nituntur. Beze in Joan, c. II, v. 23.
R19 Note carefully that in my supposition, it is a genuine resurrection and not a false death that has to be verified.
R20 In Venice in 1743, I saw a rather novel method of telling fortunes, stranger than those at Praenestum. The person who wanted to consult them entered a room, and stayed there alone if he desired. There, from a Book full of blank pages, he selected one. Then, holding this sheet, he asked—not aloud but mentally—what he wanted to know. Then he folded his empty sheet, placed it in an envelope, sealed it, placed it in a Book similarly sealed. Finally, after reciting certain very baroque formulas without losing sight of his Book, he withdrew the paper from it, recognized the seal, opened it, and found his answer in writing.
The magician who told these fortunes was the first Secretary of the Ambassador of France. His name was J. J. Rousseau.
I was content to be a sorcerer because I was modest. But if I had the ambition to be a Prophet, who would have prevented me from becoming one?
R21 There are precautions to take to succeed in this operation. I will be excused, I think, from giving the recipe here.
R22 Lazarus was already in the earth? Would he be the first man who had been buried alive? He had been in it for four days? Who counted them? Not Jesus, who was absent. He was already stinking? What do you know about that? His sister says so, that is the entire proof. Fright, disgust would have caused any other woman to say as much, even if it was not true. Jesus only calls him and he emerges. Be careful not to reason badly. It was a matter of physical impossibility, which is no longer so. Jesus made more of a fuss in other cases that were no more difficult. See the next note. What accounts for this difference, if everything was equally miraculous? This can be an exaggeration, and it is not the biggest Saint John made. I cite as evidence the last verse of his Gospel.
R23 We sometimes see in the details of reported facts a gradation that is not suited to a supernatural operation. A blind man is introduced to Jesus. Instead of healing him at the moment, he leads him out of the village. There he anoints his eyes with saliva and places his hands on him. After that, he asks him if he sees something. The blind man replies that he sees men walking who appear to him like trees. Thereupon, judging that the first operation is not sufficient, Jesus starts over, and finally the man is healed.
Another time, instead of using pure saliva, he mixes it with earth.
Now I ask what is the good of all that for a miracle? Is nature arguing with her master? Does he need effort and persistence to make himself obeyed? Does he need saliva, earth, ingredients? Does he even need to talk, and isn’t it sufficient that he wills? Or rather will one dare to say that Jesus, certain of his success, does not fail to resort to a petty trick of a charlatan, as if to look more impressive and amuse the spectators? In the system of your Gentlemen, it must be one or the other, however. Choose.
R24 Our men of God wish with all their might that I have made Jesus an Imposter. They get angry in order to respond to this ignoble accusation, so it will be thought that I made it. They assume it with an air of certainty. They insist on it, they return to it affectionately. Ah, if these gentle Christians could finally extract some blasphemy from me, what a triumph it would be! What contentment, what edification for their charitable souls! With what holy joy they would bring the embers lighted by the fire of their zeal to burn me at the stake!
R25 There are some in the Gospel that it is not even possible to take Literally without renouncing good sense. Such, for example, are those of the possessed. We recognize the Devil by his works, and the truly possessed are the wicked. Reason will never acknowledge any others. But let us move on. Here is more.
Jesus asks a group of Demons its name. What! Demons have names? Angels have names? Pure spirits have names? No doubt to call to one another or to hear when God is calling them? But who gave them these names? In what language are the words? What mouths pronounce these words; what ears are struck by their sound? This name is Legion, for they are many, which Jesus apparently did not know. These Angels, these Intelligences sublime in evil as in goodness, these Celestial Beings who have been able to revolt against God, who dare to fight his eternal Decrees, lodge themselves in a crowd inside the body of a man. Forced to leave this wretch, they ask to throw themselves into a flock of pigs. They are granted this. These pigs rush into the sea. And those are the august proofs of the mission of the Redeemer of the human race, the proofs that have to bear witness to it to all the peoples of all times, and of whom none can be in doubt on pain of damnation! Just God! One’s head spins; one does not know where one is. Are those, then, the foundations of your faith, Sirs? Mine has some that are safer, it seems to me.
R26 Exodus VII: 17.
R27 Matthew XXIV: 24; Mark XIII: 22.
R28 Preface of Emile, page iv [Bloom, 34].
R29 Emile, vol. II, page 360 [Bloom, 260].
R30 Ibid., vol. III, page 204 [Bloom, 313–314].
R31 I have spoken of them since in my Letter to M. de Beaumont. But beside the fact that no one has said anything about that letter, its contents cannot serve as the basis for proceedings that occurred before it appeared.
R32 Emile, vol. III, page 151 [Bloom, 300–301].
R33 Emile, vol. III, page 131 [Bloom, 295].
R34 If these gentlemen say that is determined in the Scripture and I ought to recognize as a miracle what it presents to me as such, I reply that this is what is at issue, and I add that this reasoning on their part is a vicious circle. For since they want the miracle to serve as proof of Revelation, they ought not to use the authority of Revelation to verify the miracle.
R35 A minister from Geneva, most assuredly demanding about Christianity in the judgments he brings to bear on mine, affirms that I said—I, J. J. Rousseau—that I did not pray to God. He asserts it in so many words, five or six times in a row, and always naming me. I want to be respectful toward the Church, but would I dare ask him where I said that? Every scribbler is permitted to reason badly and chatter as much as he wants. But a good Christian is not permitted to be a public slanderer.
R36 When you pray, Jesus says, pray like this. When words are used to pray, it is well to prefer those. But I do not see here at all the order to pray with words. Another prayer is preferable. It is to be disposed toward everything God wants. Here I am, Lord, to do your will. Of all the formulas, the Lord’s Prayer is, indisputably, the most perfect. But what is still more perfect is complete resignation to what God wills. Not what I want, but what you want. What am I saying? That is the Lord’s Prayer itself. It is entirely in these words: Thy will be done. All other prayer is superfluous and only contradicts that one. It is possible that someone who thinks like this may be mistaken. But is the person who publicly accuses him on that account of destroying Christian morality and not being Christian a very good Christian himself?
R37 Emile, vol. III, page 185 [Bloom, 308–309].
R38 Letters Written from the Country, page 11.
R39 The first Reformed people initially let themselves go to this excess with a harshness that produced many hypocrites, and the first Jansenists did not fail to imitate them in that. A preacher from Geneva named Henri de la Marre maintained from the pulpit that it was a sin to go to a wedding more joyously than Jesus Christ went to his death. A Jansenist curate similarly maintained that wedding feasts were an invention of the Devil. Someone objected to him concerning this that Jesus Christ had nevertheless attended them, and that he had even deigned to perform his first miracle at one in order to prolong the gaiety of the festivities. The curate, a little embarrassed, replied, grumbling: That is not the best thing he did.