The Three Impostors 15

The Three Impostors 15

This is what we wish to say in speaking of God, or rather in

speaking of the Devil and Hell. If God is almighty, and if nothing

can happen without his permission, how comes it that the devil hates

him, blasphemes him, and seduces his worshippers? The Deity either

consents to this or he does not. If he consents to it, the Devil

in blaspheming him is only doing his duty, since he can do nothing

but what God wishes, and consequently it is not the Devil, but God

himself who blasphemes himself,--a fearfully absurd supposition. If

he does not consent to it he cannot be omnipotent, and there must

be two principles, the one of good, and the other of evil--the one

aiming at one thing, and the other at its direct opposite.

 

To what then leads our reasoning? To this; that neither God,

nor the Devil, nor Paradise, nor Hell, nor the Soul, are such as

religion has represented them to be, and as most reverend divines

have maintained. These latter sell their fables for truths, being

people of bad faith who abuse the credulity of the ignorant by making

them believe whatever they please; as if the vulgar were absolutely

unfitted to hear the truth and could be nourished by nothing but

those absurdities, in which a rational mind can only discover a vast

of nothing, and a waste of folly.

 

The world has been long infected with these most absurd opinions,

yet in every age men have been found--truth-loving men--who have

striven against the absurdities of their day. This little treatise has

been written from like motives, and in it the lovers of truth will

doubtless meet with some things satisfactory. It is to them that I

appeal, caring little for the opinion of those who substitute their

own prejudices in place of infallible oracles.

 

 

Happy the man, who, studying Nature's laws,

Through known effects can trace the secret cause;

His mind possessing in a quiet state,

Fearless of Fortune, and resigned to Fate.

 

Dryden's Translation of Virgil, Georgics, Book II. l. 700.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOTES

 

 

[1] Daniel George Morof, who died suddenly on the 30th of June 1691.

 

[2] Librum de tribus impostoribus absit ut Papæ tribuam, aut Papæ

oppugnatoribus; jam olim inimici Frederici Barbarossæ Imperatoris

famam sparserant libri talis, quasi jussu ipsius scripti, sed ab eo

tempore, nemo est qui viderit; quare fabulam esse arbitror.

 

[3] Apud Nevizanum 1. Sylvae nupt. 2. n. 121.

 

[4] Doubtless Averroes here alludes to that law of Mahomet

which wisely prohibits the use of pork in a hot and pestilential

climate.--Translator's Note.

 

[5] Disseminavit iste impius haereticus in Hispania, [such is the

language made use of by Alvaro Pelagius], quod tres deceptores fuerunt

in mundo, scilicet, Moises, qui decepterat Judaeos, et Christus,

qui decepterat Christianos, et Mahometus, qui decepit Sarrazenos.

 

[6] Et sic falsa est Porphirii sententia, qui dixit tres fuisse

garrulatores qui totum mundum ad se converterunt; primus fuit Moises

in populo Judaico, secundus Mahometus, tertius Christus.

 

[7] Qui in quæstionem vertere presumunt, dicentes; quis in hec mundo

majorem gentium aut populorum sequelam habuit, an Christus, an Moises,

an Mahometus?

 

[8] Every classical scholar must have heard of the demon

of Socrates. The belief in the existence of such agencies was

sufficiently prevalent in the East 2000 years ago, and the Jews were

in this respect, as credulous as their neighbors. We read in Acts,

c. iv. v. 7, that the leaders of the Sanhedrim enquired of the Apostle

Peter, "By what power or by what name, have ye done this;" evidently

acknowledging their belief that it was possible to work miracles by

the invocation of some mysterious power. The Apostle, himself a Jew,

seems to understand their creed; but he answers them in a way for

which they were not altogether prepared.--Translator's Note.

 

[9] Ædeficabat sine pecunia, judicabat sine conscientia, scribebat

sine scientia.

 

[10] Non Blandratum, non Alciatum, non Ochinum ad Mahotnetismum

impulerunt; non Valleum ad atheismi professionem induxerunt; non alium

quemdam ad spargendum libellum de tribus impostoribus, quorum secundus

esset Christus Dominus, duo alii Moises et Mahometes, pellexerunt.

 

[11] Vincentii Panurgii epistola tribus impostoribus, ad clarissimum

virum Joannem--Baptistam Morinum Medicum.

 

[12] Isaac de Peyrere published his Pre-Adamite doctrine in 1655. This

set of fanatics, who were persuaded by their lenders that the general

race of mankind had lost nothing of their innocence by the fall of

Adam, made their appearance, (both men and women) in the streets of

Munster, and elsewhere, in the same robeless condition as our first

parents were, when they wandered in the bowers of Paradise before

the eating of that forbidden fruit, which

 

 

"Brought death into the world and all our woe."

 

 

The magistrates of the city attempted to put them down but failed;

and the military had some difficulty in extinguishing this

absurdity.--Translator's Note.

 

[13] Monstrum illud hominis, diis inferis a secretis scelus, nefarii

illius tractatus de tribus impostoribus author quantumvis ab omni

Religione alienus, adeo ut nec Judaeus, nec Turca, nec Christianus

fuerit, plane tamen athoeus non erat.

 

[14] Consult Bayle's Dictionary on this subject, article, "Trabea."

 

[15] Quid vel hac sola dubitatione in Christiana schola cogitara

potest perniciosius?

 

[16] Nefarium tillud rium impostorum commentum sen liber contra

Christum, Moisem et Mahometan Capomi nuper ab illis qui Evangelo

Calvini so adductissimos profitentur typis excussus est.

 

[17] Hinc Boccaccius in fabellis probare contendit non posse discerni

inter legem Christi, Moisis et Mahometis, quia eadem signa habent

uti tres annuli consimiles.

 

[18] F. I. S. D. namely, Fredericus Imperator Salutem Dicit Othoni

illustrissimo amico meo carrissimo.

 

[19] Quod de tribus famosissimis nationum deceptoribus in ordinem

jussu meo digessit doctissimus ille vir quorum sermonem de illa re in

museo meo habustiæ exscribi curavi; atque Codicem illum stylo aeque

vero ac puro scriptum ad te quam primum mitto; etenum, &c.

 

[20] There is a measure in every thing.

 

[21] This phrase is frequently employed to express ecclesiastical

criticism. Its first application however had a more pungent

meaning.--The individual here alluded to having boldly assailed the

errors of the Church was attacked one evening by an assassin.

Fortunately the blow did not prove fatal; but the weapon (a stylus,

or dagger, which is also the Latin name for a pen) having been left

in the wound--on his recovery he wore it in his girdle labelled,

"The Theological Stylus," or Pen of the Church. The trenchant powers

of this instrument have more frequently been employed to repress truth,

than to refute argument.

 

[22] Moses put to death in one day 24,000 men, because they resisted

his laws.

 

[23] We read in the Book of Kings, chap. xxii, v. 6, that Ahab,

the King of Israel consulted 400 prophets who were all false, as the

result of their vaticinations showed.

 

[24] Genesis, chap. iv, v. 7.

 

[25] I. Samuel chap. xv, v. 11.

 

[26] Jeremiah, chap. xviii, v. 10.

 

[27] Cætera, quæ fieri in terris, Coeloque tuentur

Mortales pavidis cum pendent mentibus sæpe

Efficiunt animos humiles formidine Divum,

Depressosque premunt ad terram, propterea quod

Ignorantia causarum conferre Deorum

Cogit ad imperium res, et concedere regnum: et

Quorum operum causas nulla ratione videre

Possunt hæc fieri Divino numine rentur.

 

Lucret. de Rer. Nat. Lib. VI. v. 49 et seq.

 

[28] "What appears to our limited conceptions to be evil or apparently

unjust, is entirely owing to our having no commensurate ideas either

of the goodness or the justice of the Deity."--Bolingbroke's Works,

Vol. iv, p. 117.--Translator's Note.

 

[29] Acts, chap. xvii, v. 28.

 

[30] "Qui autem negabit Deum esse corpus, etsi Deus Spiritus?" Tertul

adv. Prax. cap. vii.

 

[31] These four Councils were, First, that of Nice, (325) under

Constantine and Pope Sylvester: Second, that of Constantinople, 381,

under Gratian, Valentinian, Theodosius, and Pope Damasus: Third, that

of Ephesus, 431, under Theodosius II, Valentinian, and Pope Celestin:

and Fourth, that of Chalcedon, 451, under Valentinian, Marcianus,

and Pope Leo I.

 

[32] The Talmud informs us that the Rabbis deliberated whether they

ought not to strike from the list of Canonical writings the books

of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and that they only spared them because

they made favourable mention of Moses and his law. The prophecies of

Ezekiel (which the Jews were not permitted to read until they were

thirty years of age) would to a certainty have been expunged from the

sacred Catalogue, if a learned Rabbi had not undertaken to reconcile

them with the same Law.

 

[33] Consult Hobbes' Leviathan "De Homine," chap. xli, pages 56,

57 and 58.

 

[34] Philip of Macedon had sent auxiliaries and money to Hannibal in

Africa. "Infensos Philippo, ob auxilia cum pecunia nuper in Africam

missu Annibale." Levy, Book xxxi. chap. 1.--Translator's Note.

 

[35] Hobbe's Leviathan, "De Homine," chap. xii, pp. 56 and 57.

 

[36] Hobbes, ubi supra "De Homine," chap. xii. pages 58 and 59.

 

[37] This word must not be taken in its usual acceptation. What

rational men understand by the term is a dexterous man, an able

cheat, and a master of jugglery, which requires great readiness and

address; and not by any means a person in compact with the Devil as the vulgar suppose.