Part 11

It was in earlier times unheard of that a priest should set up royal rights in any city of the Empire. It is well known all over Europe, except in your chancellery, that, until the time of Gregory VII., your pope was but a metropolitan bishop, subject to the Greek, then the Frankish, emperors, and then to the house of Saxony; receiving investiture from them, compelled to send a profession of faith to the bishops of Ravenna and Milan, as we read expressly in your _Diarium Romanum_. His title of “patriarch of the west” gave him much prestige, but no sovereign rights. A priest-king was a blasphemy in a religion of which the founder expressly says in the gospels: “There shall be no first and last among you.” Weigh well, Romans, these other words that are put in the mouth of Jesus: “To sit on my right hand and on my left it is not mine to give, but for whom it is prepared of my father.”[49] Know, moreover, that the Jews meant, and still mean, by “son of God” a just man. Inquire of the eight thousand Jews who sell old clothes, as they ever have done, in your city, and pay close attention to the following words: “Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister. The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.”[50]

Do these clear and precise words mean that Boniface VIII. was bound to crush the Colonna family; that Alexander VI. was bound to poison so many Roman barons; or that the bishop of Rome received from God, in a time of anarchy, the duchy of Rome, Ferrara, Bologna, the March of Ancona, Castro, and Ronciglione, and all the country from Viterbo to Terracina, which have been wrested from their lawful owners? Think you, Romans, that Jesus was sent on earth by God solely for the Rezzonico?

ARTICLE V.

You will ask me by what means this strange revolution of all divine and human laws was brought about. I am about to tell you; and I defy the most zealous fanatic in whom there is still a spark of reason, and the most determined rogue who has still a trace of decency in his soul, to resist the force of the truth, if he reads this important inquiry with the attention it deserves.

It is certain and undoubted that the earliest societies of the Galilæans, afterwards called Christians, remained in obscurity, in the mud of the cities; and it is certain that, when these Christians began to write, they entrusted their books only to those who had been initiated into their mysteries. They were not even given to the catechumens, much less to partisans of the imperial religion. No Roman before the time of Trajan [98-117 A.D.] knew that the gospels existed; no Greek or Latin writer has ever quoted the word “gospel”; Plutarch, Lucian, Petronius, and Apuleius, who speak of everything, are entirely ignorant of the existence of gospels. This proof, with a hundred others, shows the absurdity of those authors who now hold, or pretend to hold, that the disciples of Jesus died for the truth of these gospels, of which the Romans did not hear a word during two hundred years. The half-Jew, half-Christian Galilæans, separated from the disciples of John, and from the Therapeuts, Essenians, Judaites, Herodians, Sadducees, and Pharisees, recruited their little flock among the lowest of the people, not, indeed, by means of books, but of speech, by catechising the women and girls (_Acts_ xvi., 13 and 14) and children, and passing from town to town; in a word, like all other sects.

Tell me frankly, Romans, what your ancestors would have said if St. Paul, or Simon Barjona, or Matthias, or Matthew, or Luke, had appeared in the Senate and said: “Our God, Jesus, who passed as the son of a carpenter during life, was born in the year 752 from the foundation of Rome, under the governorship of Cyrenius (_Luke_ ii., 2), in a Jewish village called Bethlehem, to which his father Joseph and his mother Mariah had gone to be included in the census which Augustus had ordered. This God was born in a stable, between an ox and an ass.[51] The angels came down from heaven and informed the peasants of his birth; a new star appeared in the heavens, and led to him three kings or wise men from the east, who brought him a tribute of incense, myrrh, and gold; but in spite of this gold he was poor throughout life. Herod, who was then dying, and whom you had made king, having learned that the new-born child was king of the Jews, had fourteen thousand new-born infants of the district put to death, to make sure that the king was included (_Matthew_ ii., 16). However, one of our writers inspired by God says that the God-king child fled to Egypt; and another writer, equally inspired by God, says that the child remained at Bethlehem (_Luke_ ii., 39). One of these sacred and infallible writers draws up a royal genealogy for him; another composes for him an entirely different royal genealogy. Jesus preaches to the peasants, and turns water into wine for them at a marriage feast. Jesus is taken by the devil up into a mountain. He drives out devils, and sends them into the body of two thousand pigs in Galilee, where there never were any pigs. He greatly insulted the magistrates, and the prætor Pontius had him executed. When he had been executed, he manifested his divinity. The earth trembled; the dead left their graves, and walked about in the city before the eyes of Pontius. There was an eclipse of the sun at midday, at a time of full moon, although that is impossible. He rose again secretly, went up to heaven, and sent down another god, who fell on the heads of his disciples in tongues of fire. May these same tongues fall on your heads, conscript fathers; become Christians.”

If the lowest official in the Senate had condescended to answer this discourse, he would have said: “You are weak-minded rogues, and ought to be put in the asylum for the insane. You lie when you say that your God was born in the year of Rome 752, under the governorship of Cyrenius, the proconsul of Syria. Cyrenius did not govern Syria until more than ten years afterwards, as our registers prove. Quintilius Varus was at that time proconsul of Syria.

“You lie when you say that Augustus ordered a census of ‘all the world.’ You must be very ignorant not to know that Augustus was master only of one tenth of the world. If by ‘all the world’ you mean the Roman Empire, know that neither Augustus nor anybody else ever undertook such a census. Know that there was but one single enumeration of the citizens of Rome and its territory under Augustus, and that the number amounted to four million citizens; and unless your carpenter Joseph and his wife Mariah brought forth your God in a suburb of Rome, and this Jewish carpenter was a Roman citizen, he cannot possibly have been included.

“You are telling a ridiculous untruth with your three kings and new star, and the little massacred children, and the dead rising again and walking in the streets under the eyes of Pontius Pilate, who never wrote us a word about it, etc., etc.

“You are lying when you speak of an eclipse of the sun at a time of full moon. Our prætor Pontius Pilate would have written to us about it, and we, together with all the nations of the earth, would have witnessed this eclipse. Return to your work, you fanatical peasants, and thank the Senate that it has too much disdain to punish you.”

ARTICLE VI.

It is clear that the first half-Jewish Christians took care not to address themselves to the Roman Senators, nor to any man of position or any one above the lowest level of the people. It is well known that they appealed only to the lowest class. To these they boasted of healing nervous diseases, epilepsy, and uterine convulsions, which ignorant folk, among the Romans as well as among the Jews, Egyptians, Greeks, and Syrians, regarded as the work of charms or diabolical possession. There must assuredly have been some cases of healing. Some were cured in the name of Esculapius, and we have since discovered at Rome a monument of a miracle of Esculapius, with the names of the witnesses. Others were healed in the name of Isis, or of the Syrian goddess; others in the name of Jesus, etc. The common people healed in one of these names believed in those who propagated it.

ARTICLE VII.

Thus the Christians made progress among the people by a device that invariably seduces ignorant folk. But they had a still more powerful means. They declaimed against the rich. They preached community of goods; in their secret meetings they enjoined their neophytes to give them the little money they had earned; and they quoted the alleged instance of Sapphira and Ananias (_Acts_ v., 1-11), whom Simon Barjona, called Cephas, which means Peter, caused to die suddenly because they had kept a crown to themselves--the first and most detestable example of priestly covetousness.

But they would not have succeeded in extorting the money of their neophytes if they had not preached the doctrine of the cynic philosophers--the idea of voluntary poverty. Even this, however, was not enough to form a new flock. The end of the world had been long announced. You will find it in Epicurus and Lucretius, his chief disciple. Ovid had said, in the days of Augustus:

Esse quoque in fatis meminisceret adfore tempus, Quo mare, quo tellus, correptaque regio coeli Ardeat, et mundi moles operosa laboret.[52]

According to others, the world had been made by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, and would be destroyed by another fortuitous concourse, as we find in the poems of Lucretius.

This idea came originally from the Brahmans of India. Many Jews had adopted it by the time of Herod. It is formally stated in the gospel of Luke, as you have seen; it is in Paul’s epistles; and it is in all those who are known as fathers of the Church. The world was about to be destroyed, it was thought; and the Christians announced a new Jerusalem, which was seen in the air by night.[53] The Jews talked of nothing but a new kingdom of heaven; it was the system of John the Baptist, who had introduced on the Jordan the ancient Hindoo practice of baptism in the Ganges. Baptism was practised by the Egyptians, and adopted by the Jews. This new kingdom of heaven, to which the poor alone would be admitted, was preached by Jesus and his followers. They threatened with eternal torment those who would not believe in the new heaven. This hell, invented by the first Zoroaster, became one of the chief points of Egyptian theology.[54] From the latter came the barque of Charon, Cerberus, the river Lethe, Tartarus, and the Furies. From Egypt the idea passed to Greece, and from there to the Romans; the Jews were unacquainted with it until the time when the Pharisees preached it, shortly before the reign of Herod. It was one of their contradictions to admit both hell and metempsychosis (transmigration of souls); but who would look for reasoning among the Jews? Their powers in that direction are confined to money matters. The Sadducees and Samaritans rejected the immortality of the soul, because it is not found anywhere in the Mosaic law.

This was the great spring which the early Christians, all half-Jewish, relied upon to put the new machinery in action: community of goods, secret meals, hidden mysteries, gospels read to the initiated only, paradise for the poor, hell for the rich, and exorcisms by charlatans. Here, in strict truth, we have the first foundations of the Christian sect. If I deceive you--or, rather, if I deliberately deceive you--I pray the God of the universe, the God of all men, to wither the hand that writes this, to shatter with his lightning a head that is convinced of the existence of a good and just God, and to tear out from me a heart that worships him.

ARTICLE VIII.

Let us now, Romans, consider the artifices, roguery, and forgery to which the Christians themselves have given the name of “pious frauds”; frauds that have cost you your liberty and your goods, and have brought down the conquerors of Europe to a most lamentable slavery. I again take God to witness that I will say no word that is not amply proved. If I wished to use all the arms of reason against fanaticism, all the piercing darts of truth against error, I should speak to you first of that prodigious number of contradictory gospels which your popes themselves now recognise to be false. They show, at least, that there were forgers among the first Christians. This, however, is very well known. I have to tell you of impostures that are not generally known, and are a thousand times more pernicious.

_First Imposture_

It is a very ancient superstition that the last words of the dying are prophetic, or are, at least, sacred maxims and venerable precepts. It was believed that the soul, about to dissolve the union with the body and already half united to the Deity, had a cloudless vision of the future and of truth. Following this prejudice, the Judæo-Christians forge, in the first century of the Church, the _Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs_, written in Greek, to serve as a prediction or a preparation for the new kingdom of Jesus. In the testament of Reuben we find these words: “Adore his seed, for he will die for you, in wars visible and invisible, and he will be your king for ever.” This prophecy is applied to Jesus, in the usual way of those who wrote fifty-four gospels in various places, and who nearly all endeavoured to find in Jewish writers, especially those who were called prophets, passages that could be twisted in favour of Jesus. They even added some that are clearly recognised as false. The author of the _Testament of the Patriarchs_ is one of the most impudent and clumsy forgers that ever spoiled good parchment. His book was written in Alexandria, in the school of a certain Mark.

_Second Chief Imposture_

They forged letters from the king of Edessa to Jesus, and from Jesus to this supposed prince. There was no king at Edessa, which was a town under the Syrian governor; the petty prince of Edessa never had the title of king. Moreover, it is not said in any of the gospels that Jesus could write; and if he could, he would have left some proof of it to his disciples. Hence these letters are now declared by all scholars to be forgeries.

_Third Chief Imposture_

(_which contains several_)

They forged _Acts of Pilate_, letters of Pilate, and even a history of Pilate’s wife. The letters of Pilate are especially interesting. Here is a fragment of one:

“It happened a short time ago, and I have verified it, that the Jews in their envy drew on themselves a cruel condemnation. Their God having promised that he would send his holy one to them from heaven to be their legitimate king, and that he should be born of a virgin, did indeed send him when I was procurator in Judæa. The leaders of the Jews denounced him to me as a magician. I believed it, and had him scourged, and handed him over to them; and they crucified him. They put guards about his tomb, but he rose again the third day.”

To this forgery I may add that of the rescript of Tiberius to the Senate, to raise Jesus to the rank of the imperial gods, and the ridiculous letters of the philosopher Seneca to Paul, and of Paul to Seneca, written in barbaric Latin; also the letters of the Virgin Mary to St. Ignatius, and many other clumsy fictions of the same nature. I will not draw out this list of impostures. It would amaze you if I enumerated them one by one.

_Fourth Imposture_

The boldest, perhaps, and clumsiest of these forgeries is that of the prophecies attributed to the Sibyls, foretelling the incarnation, miracles, and death of Jesus, in acrostic verse. This piece of folly, unknown to the Romans, fed the belief of the catechumens. It circulated among us for eight centuries, and we still sing in one of our hymns[55] “teste David cum Sibylla” [witness David and the Sibyl].

You are astonished, no doubt, that this despicable comedy was maintained so long, and that men could be led with such a bridle as that. But as the Christians were plunged in the most stupid barbarism for fifteen hundred years, as books were very rare and theologians very astute, one could say anything at all to poor wretches who would believe anything at all.

_Fifth Imposture_

Illustrious and unfortunate Romans, before we come to the pernicious untruths which have cost you your liberty, your property, and your glory, and put you under the yoke of a priest; before I speak to you of the alleged pontificate of Simon Barjona, who is said to have been bishop of Rome for twenty-five years, you must be informed of the “Apostolic Constitutions,” the first foundation of the hierarchy that crushes you to-day.

At the beginning of the second century there was no such thing as an _episcopos_ (“overseer”) or bishop, clothed with real dignity for life, unalterably attached to a certain see, and distinguished from other men by his clothes; bishops, in fact, dressed like ordinary laymen until the middle of the fifth century. The meeting was held in a chamber of some retired house. The minister was chosen by the initiated, and continued his work as long as they were satisfied. There were no altars, candles, or incense; the earliest fathers of the Church speak of altars and temples with a shudder.[56] They were content to make a collection and sup together. When the Christian society had grown, however, ambition set up an hierarchy. How did they go about it? The rogues who led the enthusiasts made them believe that they had discovered the apostolic constitutions written by St. John and St. Matthew: “quæ ego Matthæus et Joannes vobis tradidimus [which I, Matthew, and John have given you].”[57] In these Matthew is supposed to say (II., xxxvi.): “Be ye careful not to judge your bishop, for it is given to the priests alone to judge.” Matthew and John say (II., xxxiv.): “As much as the soul is above the body, so much higher is the priesthood than royalty; consider your bishop as a king, an absolute master (_dominum_); give him your fruits, your works, your firstlings, your tithes, your savings, the first and tenth part of your wine, oil, and corn, etc.” Again (II., xxx.): “Let the bishop be a god to you, and the deacon a prophet”; and (II., xxxviii.): “In the festivals let the deacon have a double portion, and the priest double that of the deacon; and if they be not at table, send the portions to them.”

You see, Romans, the origin of your custom of spreading your tables to give indigestion to your pontiffs. Would to God they had confined themselves to the sin of gluttony.

You will further observe with care, in regard to this imposture of the constitutions of the apostles, that it is an authentic monument of the dogmas of the second century, and that forgery at least does homage to truth in maintaining a complete silence about innovations that could not be foreseen--innovations with which you have been deluged century after century. You will find, in this second-century document, neither trinity, nor consubstantiality, nor transubstantiation, nor auricular confession. You will not find in it that the mother of Jesus was the mother of God, that Jesus had two natures and two wills, or that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the father and the son. All these singular ornaments of imagination, unknown to the religion of the gospels, have been added since to the crude structure which fanaticism and ignorance raised up in the first centuries.

You will assuredly find in it three persons, but not three persons in one God. Read with all the acuteness of your mind, the only treasure that your tyrants have left you, the common prayer which the Christians, by the mouth of their bishop, offered in their meetings in the second century:

“O all-powerful, unengendered, inaccessible God, the one true God, father of Christ thy only son, God of the paraclete, God of all, thou hast made the disciples of Christ doctors, etc.”[58]

Here, clearly, is one sole God who commands Christ and the paraclete [Holy Ghost]. Judge for yourselves if that has any resemblance to the trinity and consubstantiality which were afterwards declared at Nicæa, in spite of the strong protest of eighteen bishops and two thousand priests.[59]

In another place (III., xvi.) the author of the _Apostolic Constitutions_, who is probably a bishop of the Christians at Rome, says expressly that the father is God above all.

That is the doctrine of Paul, finding expression so frequently in his epistles. “We have peace in God through Our Lord Jesus Christ” (_Romans_ v., 1). “If through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many” (_Romans_ v., 15). “We are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (_Romans_ viii., 17). “Receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God” (_Romans_ xv., 7). “To God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever” (_Romans_ xvi., 27). “That the God of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom” (_Ephesians_ i., 17).

Thus does the Jew-Christian Saul Paul always express himself, and thus is Jesus himself made to speak in the gospels. “My Father is greater than I” (_John_ xiv., 28); that is to say, God can do what men cannot do. All the Jews said “my father” when they spoke of God.

The Lord’s Prayer begins with the words “Our Father.” Jesus said: “Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only” (_Matthew_ xxiv., 36); and “That is not mine to give, but for whom it is prepared by my Father” (_Matthew_ xx., 23). It is also very remarkable that when Jesus awaited arrest, and sweated blood and water, he cried out: “Father, remove this cup from me” (_Luke_ xxii., 42). No gospel has put into his mouth the blasphemy that he was God, or consubstantial with God.

You will ask me, Romans, why and how he was made into a God in the course of time? I will ask you in turn why and how Bacchus, Perseus, Hercules, and Romulus were made gods? In their case, moreover, the sacrilege did not go so far as to give them the title of supreme god and creator. This blasphemy was reserved for the Christian outgrowth of the Jewish sect.

_Sixth Chief Imposture_

I pass over the countless impostures of “The Travels of Simon Barjona,” the “Gospel of Simon Barjona,” his “Apocalypse,” the “Apocalypse” of Cerinthus (ridiculously attributed to John), the epistles of Barnaby, the “Gospel of the Twelve Apostles,” their liturgies, the “Canons of the Council of the Apostles,” the “Apostles’ Creed,” the “Travels of Matthew,” the “Travels of Thomas,” and so many other vagaries that are now recognised to be the work of forgers, who passed them off under venerated Christian names.