Jean Meslier - Superstition In All Ages (1732)

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SUPERSTITION IN ALL AGES

By Jean Meslier

1732

A ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST, WHO, AFTER A PASTORAL SERVICE OF THIRTY YEARS
AT ETREPIGNY IN CHAMPAGNE, FRANCE, WHOLLY ABJURED RELIGIOUS DOGMAS, AND
LEFT AS HIS LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT TO HIS PARISHIONERS, AND TO THE
WORLD, TO BE PUBLISHED AFTER HIS DEATH, THE FOLLOWING PAGES, ENTITLED:
COMMON SENSE.

Translated from the French original by Miss Anna Knoop

1878

LIFE OF JEAN MESLIER BY VOLTAIRE.

Jean Meslier, born 1678, in the village of Mazerny, dependency of the
duchy of Rethel, was the son of a serge weaver; brought up in the
country, he nevertheless pursued his studies and succeeded to the
priesthood. At the seminary, where he lived with much regularity, he
devoted himself to the system of Descartes.

Becoming curate of Etrepigny in Champagne and vicar of a little annexed
parish named Bue, he was remarkable for the austerity of his habits.
Devoted in all his duties, every year he gave hat remained of his salary
to the poor of his parishes; enthusiastic, and of rigid virtue, he was
very temperate, as much in regard to his appetite as in relation to
women.

MM. Voiri and Delavaux, the one curate of Varq, the other curate of
Boulzicourt, were his confessors, and the only ones with whom he
associated.

The curate Meslier was a rigid partisan of justice, and sometimes
carried his zeal a little too far. The lord of his village, M. de
Touilly, having ill-treated some peasants, he refused to pray for him in
his service. M. de Mailly, Archbishop of Rheims, before whom the case
was brought, condemned him. But the Sunday which followed this decision,
the abbot Meslier stood in his pulpit and complained of the sentence of
the cardinal. "This is," said he, "the general fate of the poor country
priest; the archbishops, who are great lords, scorn them and do not
listen to them. Therefore, let us pray for the lord of this place. We
will pray for Antoine de Touilly, that he may be converted and granted
the grace that he may not wrong the poor and despoil the orphans." His
lordship, who was present at this mortifying supplication, brought new
complaints before the same archbishop, who ordered the curate Meslier to
come to Donchery, where he ill-treated him with abusive language.

There have been scarcely any other events in his life, nor other
benefice, than that of Etrepigny. He died in the odor of sanctity in the
year 1733, fifty-five years old. It is believed that, disgusted with
life, he expressly refused necessary food, because during his sickness
he was not willing to take anything, not even a glass of wine.

At his death he gave all he possessed, which was inconsiderable, to his
parishioners, and desired to be buried in his garden.

They were greatly surprised to find in his house three manuscripts, each
containing three hundred and sixty-six pages, all written by his hand,
signed and entitled by him, "My Testament." This work, which the author
addressed to his parishioners and to M. Leroux, advocate and procurator
for the parliament of Meziers, is a simple refutation of all the
religious dogmas, without excepting one. The grand vicar of Rheims
retained one of the three copies; another was sent to Monsieur
Chauvelin, guardian of the State's seal; the third remained at the
clerk's office of the justiciary of St. Minehould. The Count de Caylus
had one of those three copies in his possession for some time, and soon
afterward more than one hundred were at Paris, sold at ten Louis-d'or
apiece. A dying priest accusing himself of having professed and taught
the Christian religion, made a deeper impression upon the mind than the
"Thoughts of Pascal."

The curate Meslier had written upon a gray paper which enveloped the
copy destined for his parishioners these remarkable words: "I have seen
and recognized the errors, the abuses, the follies, and the wickedness
of men. I have hated and despised them. I did not dare say it during my
life, but I will say it at least in dying, and after my death; and it is
that it may be known, that I write this present memorial in order that
it may serve as a witness of truth to all those who may see and read it
if they choose."

At the beginning of this work is found this document (a kind of
honorable amend, which in his letter to the Count of d'Argental of May
31, 1762, Voltaire qualifies as a preface), addressed to his
parishioners.

"You know," said he, "my brethren, my disinterestedness; I do not
sacrifice my belief to any vile interest. If I embraced a profession so
directly opposed to my sentiments, it was not through cupidity. I obeyed
my parents. I would have preferred to enlighten you sooner if I could
have done it safely. You are witnesses to what I assert. I have not
disgraced my ministry by exacting the requitals, which are a part of it.

"I call heaven to witness that I also thoroughly despised those who
laughed at the simplicity of the blind people, those who furnished
piously considerable sums of money to buy prayers. How horrible this
monopoly! I do not blame the disdain which those who grow rich by your
sweat and your pains, show for their mysteries and their superstitions;
but I detest their insatiable cupidity and the signal pleasure such
fellows take in railing at the ignorance of those whom they carefully
keep in this state of blindness. Let them content themselves with
laughing at their own ease, but at least let them not multiply their
errors by abusing the blind piety of those who, by their simplicity,
procured them such an easy life. You render unto me, my brethren, the
justice that is due me. The sympathy which I manifested for your
troubles saves me from the least suspicion. How often have I performed
gratuitously the functions of my ministry. How often also has my heart
been grieved at not being able to assist you as often and as abundantly
as I could have wished! Have I not always proved to you that I took more
pleasure in giving than in receiving? I carefully avoided exhorting you
to bigotry, and I spoke to you as rarely as possible of our unfortunate
dogmas. It was necessary that I should acquit myself as a priest of my
ministry, but how often have I not suffered within myself when I was
forced to preach to you those pious lies which I despised in my heart.
What a disdain I had for my ministry, and particularly for that
superstitious Mass, and those ridiculous administrations of sacraments,
especially if I was compelled to perform them with the solemnity which
awakened all your piety and all your good faith. What remorse I had for
exciting your credulity! A thousand times upon the point of bursting
forth publicly, I was going to open your eyes, but a fear superior to my
strength restrained me and forced me to silence until my death."

The abbot Meslier had written two letters to the curates of his
neighborhood to inform them of his Testament; he told them that he had
consigned to the chancery of St. Minnehould a copy of his manuscript in
366 leaves in octavo; but he feared it would be suppressed, according to
the bad custom established to prevent the poor from being instructed and
knowing the truth.

The curate Meslier, the most singular phenomenon ever seen among all the
meteors fatal to the Christian religion, worked his whole life secretly
in order to attack the opinions he believed false. To compose his
manuscript against God, against all religion, against the Bible and the
Church, he had no other assistance than the Bible itself, Moreri
Montaigne, and a few fathers.

While the abbot Meslier naively acknowledged that he did not wish to be
burned till after his death, Thomas Woolston, a doctor of Cambridge,
published and sold publicly at London, in his own house, sixty thousand
copies of his "Discourses" against the miracles of Jesus Christ.

It was a very astonishing thing that two priests should at the same time
write against the Christian religion. The curate Meslier has gone
further yet than Woolston; he dares to treat the transport of our
Saviour by the devil upon the mountain, the wedding of Cana, the bread
and the fishes, as absurd fables, injurious to divinity, which were
ignored during three hundred years by the whole Roman Empire, and
finally passed from the lower class to the palace of the emperors, when
policy obliged them to adopt the follies of the people in order the more
easily to subjugate them. The denunciations of the English priest do not
approach those of the Champagne priest. Woolston is sometimes indulgent,
Meslier never. He was a man profoundly embittered by the crimes he
witnessed, for which he holds the Christian religion responsible. There
is no miracle which to him is not an object of contempt and horror; no
prophecy that he does not compare to those of Nostredamus. He wrote thus
against Jesus Christ when in the arms of death, at a time when the most
dissimulating dare not lie, and when the most intrepid tremble. Struck
with the difficulties which he found in Scripture, he inveighed against
it more bitterly than the Acosta and all the Jews, more than the famous
Porphyre, Celse, Iamblique, Julian, Libanius, and all the partisans of
human reason.

There were found among the books of the curate Meslier a printed
manuscript of the Treatise of Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray, upon the
existence of God and His attributes, and the reflections of the Jesuit
Tournemine upon Atheism, to which treatise he added marginal notes
signed by his hand.

DECREE

of the NATIONAL CONVENTION upon the proposition to erect a statue to the
curate Jean Meslier, the 27 Brumaire, in the year II. (November 17,
1793). The National Convention sends to the Committee of Public
Instruction the proposition made by one of its members to erect a statue
to Jean Meslier, curate at Etrepigny, in Champagne, the first priest who
had the courage and the honesty to abjure religious errors.

PRESIDENT AND SECRETARIES.

SIGNED--P. A. Laloy, President; Bazire, Charles Duval, Philippeaux,
Frecine, and Merlin (de Thionville), Secretaries.

Certified according to the original.

MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE OF DECREES AND PROCESS-VERBAL.

SIGNED--Batellier, Echasseriaux, Monnel, Becker, Vernetey, Perard, Vinet,
Bouillerot, Auger, Cordier, Delecloy, and Cosnard.

PREFACE OF THE AUTHOR.

When we wish to examine in a cool, calm way the opinions of men, we are
very much surprised to find that in those which we consider the most
essential, nothing is more rare than to find them using common sense;
that is to say, the portion of judgment sufficient to know the most
simple truths, to reject the most striking absurdities, and to be
shocked by palpable contradictions. We have an example of this in
Theology, a science revered in all times, in all countries, by the
greatest number of mortals; an object considered the most important, the
most useful, and the most indispensable to the happiness of society. If
they would but take the trouble to sound the principles upon which this
pretended science rests itself, they would be compelled to admit that
the principles which were considered incontestable, are but hazardous
suppositions, conceived in ignorance, propagated by enthusiasm or bad
intention, adopted by timid credulity, preserved by habit, which never
reasons, and revered solely because it is not comprehended. Some, says
Montaigne, make the world believe that which they do not themselves
believe; a greater number of others make themselves believe, not
comprehending what it is to believe. In a word, whoever will consult
common sense upon religious opinions, and will carry into this
examination the attention given to objects of ordinary interest, will
easily perceive that these opinions have no solid foundation; that all
religion is but a castle in the air; that Theology is but ignorance of
natural causes reduced to a system; that it is but a long tissue of
chimeras and contradictions; that it presents to all the different
nations of the earth only romances devoid of probability, of which the
hero himself is made up of qualities impossible to reconcile, his name
having the power to excite in all hearts respect and fear, is found to
be but a vague word, which men continually utter, being able to attach
to it only such ideas or qualities as are belied by the facts, or which
evidently contradict each other. The notion of this imaginary being, or
rather the word by which we designate him, would be of no consequence
did it not cause ravages without number upon the earth. Born into the
opinion that this phantom is for them a very interesting reality, men,
instead of wisely concluding from its incomprehensibility that they are
exempt from thinking of it, on the contrary, conclude that they can not
occupy themselves enough about it, that they must meditate upon it
without ceasing, reason without end, and never lose sight of it. The
invincible ignorance in which they are kept in this respect, far from
discouraging them, does but excite their curiosity; instead of putting
them on guard against their imagination, this ignorance makes them
positive, dogmatic, imperious, and causes them to quarrel with all those
who oppose doubts to the reveries which their brains have brought forth.
What perplexity, when we attempt to solve an unsolvable problem! Anxious
meditations upon an object impossible to grasp, and which, however, is
supposed to be very important to him, can but put a man into bad humor,
and produce in his brain dangerous transports. When interest, vanity,
and ambition are joined to such a morose disposition, society
necessarily becomes troubled. This is why so many nations have often
become the theaters of extravagances caused by nonsensical visionists,
who, publishing their shallow speculations for the eternal truth, have
kindled the enthusiasm of princes and of people, and have prepared them
for opinions which they represented as essential to the glory of
divinity and to the happiness of empires. We have seen, a thousand
times, in all parts of our globe, infuriated fanatics slaughtering each
other, lighting the funeral piles, committing without scruple, as a
matter of duty, the greatest crimes. Why? To maintain or to propagate
the impertinent conjectures of enthusiasts, or to sanction the knaveries
of impostors on account of a being who exists only in their imagination,
and who is known only by the ravages, the disputes, and the follies
which he has caused upon the earth.

Originally, savage nations, ferocious, perpetually at war, adored, under
various names, some God conformed to their ideas; that is to say, cruel,
carnivorous, selfish, greedy of blood. We find in all the religions of
the earth a God of armies, a jealous God, an avenging God, an
exterminating God, a God who enjoys carnage and whose worshipers make it
a duty to serve him to his taste. Lambs, bulls, children, men, heretics,
infidels, kings, whole nations, are sacrificed to him. The zealous
servants of this barbarous God go so far as to believe that they are
obliged to offer themselves as a sacrifice to him. Everywhere we see
zealots who, after having sadly meditated upon their terrible God,
imagine that, in order to please him, they must do themselves all the
harm possible, and inflict upon themselves, in his honor, all imaginable
torments. In a word, everywhere the baneful ideas of Divinity, far from
consoling men for misfortunes incident to their existence, have filled
the heart with trouble, and given birth to follies destructive to them.
How could the human mind, filled with frightful phantoms and guided by
men interested in perpetuating its ignorance and its fear, make
progress? Man was compelled to vegetate in his primitive stupidity; he
was preserved only by invisible powers, upon whom his fate was supposed
to depend. Solely occupied with his alarms and his unintelligible
reveries, he was always at the mercy of his priests, who reserved for
themselves the right of thinking for him and of regulating his conduct.

Thus man was, and always remained, a child without experience, a slave
without courage, a loggerhead who feared to reason, and who could never
escape from the labyrinth into which his ancestors had misled him; he
felt compelled to groan under the yoke of his Gods, of whom he knew
nothing except the fabulous accounts of their ministers. These, after
having fettered him by the ties of opinion, have remained his masters or
delivered him up defenseless to the absolute power of tyrants, no less
terrible than the Gods, of whom they were the representatives upon the
earth. Oppressed by the double yoke of spiritual and temporal power, it
was impossible for the people to instruct themselves and to work for
their own welfare. Thus, religion, politics, and morals became
sanctuaries, into which the profane were not permitted to enter. Men had
no other morality than that which their legislators and their priests
claimed as descended from unknown empyrean regions. The human mind,
perplexed by these theological opinions, misunderstood itself, doubted
its own powers, mistrusted experience, feared truth, disdained its
reason, and left it to blindly follow authority. Man was a pure machine
in the hands of his tyrants and his priests, who alone had the right to
regulate his movements. Always treated as a slave, he had at all times
and in all places the vices and dispositions of a slave.

These are the true sources of the corruption of habits, to which
religion never opposes anything but ideal and ineffectual obstacles;
ignorance and servitude have a tendency to make men wicked and unhappy.
Science, reason, liberty, alone can reform them and render them more
happy; but everything conspires to blind them and to confirm them in
their blindness. The priests deceive them, tyrants corrupt them in order
to subjugate them more easily. Tyranny has been, and will always be, the
chief source of the depraved morals and habitual calamities of the
people. These, almost always fascinated by their religious notions or by
metaphysical fictions, instead of looking upon the natural and visible
causes of their miseries, attribute their vices to the imperfections of
their nature, and their misfortunes to the anger of their Gods; they
offer to Heaven vows, sacrifices, and presents, in order to put an end
to their misfortunes, which are really due only to the negligence, the
ignorance, and to the perversity of their guides, to the folly of their
institutions, to their foolish customs, to their false opinions, to
their unreasonable laws, and especially to their want of enlightenment.
Let the mind be filled early with true ideas; let man's reason be
cultivated; let justice govern him; and there will be no need of
opposing to his passions the powerless barrier of the fear of Gods. Men
will be good when they are well taught, well governed, chastised or
censured for the evil, and justly rewarded for the good which they have
done to their fellow-citizens. It is idle to pretend to cure mortals of
their vices if we do not begin by curing them of their prejudices. It is
only by showing them the truth that they can know their best interests
and the real motives which will lead them to happiness. Long enough have
the instructors of the people fixed their eyes on heaven; let them at
last bring them back to the earth. Tired of an incomprehensible
theology, of ridiculous fables, of impenetrable mysteries, of puerile
ceremonies, let the human mind occupy itself with natural things,
intelligible objects, sensible truths, and useful knowledge. Let the
vain chimeras which beset the people be dissipated, and very soon
rational opinions will fill the minds of those who were believed fated
to be always in error. To annihilate religious prejudices, it would be
sufficient to show that what is inconceivable to man can not be of any
use to him. Does it need, then, anything but simple common sense to
perceive that a being most clearly irreconcilable with the notions of
mankind, that a cause continually opposed to the effects attributed to
him; that a being of whom not a word can be said without falling into
contradictions; that a being who, far from explaining the mysteries of
the universe, only renders them more inexplicable; that a being to whom
for so many centuries men addressed themselves so vainly to obtain their
happiness and deliverance from their sufferings; does it need, I say,
more than simple common sense to understand that the idea of such a
being is an idea without model, and that he is himself evidently not a
reasonable being? Does it require more than common sense to feel that
there is at least delirium and frenzy in hating and tormenting each
other for unintelligible opinions of a being of this kind? Finally, does
it not all prove that morality and virtue are totally incompatible with
the idea of a God, whose ministers and interpreters have painted him in
all countries as the most fantastic, the most unjust, and the most cruel
of tyrants, whose pretended wishes are to serve as rules and laws for
the inhabitants of the earth? To discover the true principles of
morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of Gods; they
need but common sense; they have only to look within themselves, to
reflect upon their own nature, to consult their obvious interests, to
consider the object of society and of each of the members who compose
it, and they will easily understand that virtue is an advantage, and
that vice is an injury to beings of their species. Let us teach men to
be just, benevolent, moderate, and sociable, not because their Gods
exact it, but to please men; let us tell them to abstain from vice and
from crime, not because they will be punished in another world, but
because they will suffer in the present world. There are, says
Montesquieu, means to prevent crime, they are sufferings; to change the
manners, these are good examples. Truth is simple, error is complicated,
uncertain in its gait, full of by-ways; the voice of nature is
intelligible, that of falsehood is ambiguous, enigmatical, and
mysterious; the road of truth is straight, that of imposture is oblique
and dark; this truth, always necessary to man, is felt by all just
minds; the lessons of reason are followed by all honest souls; men are
unhappy only because they are ignorant; they are ignorant only because
everything conspires to prevent them from being enlightened, and they
are wicked only because their reason is not sufficiently developed.

COMMON SENSE.

Detexit quo dolose Vaticinandi furore sacerdotes mysteria, illis spe
ignota, audactur publicant.--PETRON. SATYR.

I.--APOLOGUE.

There is a vast empire governed by a monarch, whose conduct does but
confound the minds of his subjects. He desires to be known, loved,
respected, and obeyed, but he never shows himself; everything tends to
make uncertain the notions which we are able to form about him. The
people subjected to his power have only such ideas of the character and
the laws of their invisible sovereign as his ministers give them; these
suit, however, because they themselves have no idea of their master, for
his ways are impenetrable, and his views and his qualities are totally
incomprehensible; moreover, his ministers disagree among themselves in
regard to the orders which they pretend emanated from the sovereign
whose organs they claim to be; they announce them diversely in each
province of the empire; they discredit and treat each other as impostors
and liars; the decrees and ordinances which they promulgate are obscure;
they are enigmas, made not to be understood or divined by the subjects
for whose instruction they were intended. The laws of the invisible
monarch need interpreters, but those who explain them are always
quarreling among themselves about the true way of understanding them;
more than this, they do not agree among themselves; all which they
relate of their hidden prince is but a tissue of contradictions,
scarcely a single word that is not contradicted at once. He is called
supremely good, nevertheless not a person but complains of his decrees.
He is supposed to be infinitely wise, and in his administration
everything seems contrary to reason and good sense. They boast of his
justice, and the best of his subjects are generally the least favored.
We are assured that he sees everything, yet his presence remedies
nothing. It is said that he is the friend of order, and everything in
his universe is in a state of confusion and disorder; all is created by
him, yet events rarely happen according to his projects. He foresees
everything, but his foresight prevents nothing. He is impatient if any
offend him; at the same time he puts every one in the way of offending
him. His knowledge is admired in the perfection of his works, but his
works are full of imperfections, and of little permanence. He is
continually occupied in creating and destroying, then repairing what he
has done, never appearing to be satisfied with his work. In all his
enterprises he seeks but his own glory, but he does not succeed in being
glorified. He works but for the good of his subjects, and most of them
lack the necessities of life. Those whom he seems to favor, are
generally those who are the least satisfied with their fate; we see them
all continually revolting against a master whose greatness they admire,
whose wisdom they extol, whose goodness they worship, and whose justice
they fear, revering orders which they never follow. This empire is the
world; its monarch is God; His ministers are the priests; their subjects
are men.

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