Part 10

Any man can do what Mahomet did, for he wrought no miracles, he was confirmed by no prophecies. No man can do what Jesus Christ did.

_Against Mahomet._--The Koran is not more of Mahomet than the Gospel is of Saint Matthew, for it is cited by many authors from age to age. Even its very enemies, Celsus and Porphyry, never disavowed it.

The Koran says that Saint Matthew was an honest man. Therefore Mahomet was a false prophet for calling honest men wicked, or for not admitting what they have said of Jesus Christ.

It is not by the obscurities in Mahomet which may be interpreted in a mysterious sense, that I would have him judged, but in what he speaks clearly, as of his paradise, and the rest, he is ridiculous. And because what is clear is so absurd, it is not just to take his obscurities for mysteries.

It is not the same with the Scripture. It may be admitted that in it are obscurities as strange as those of Mahomet, but much is admirably clear, and prophecies are manifestly fulfilled. The cases are not the same. We must not confound and compare things which only resemble each other in their obscurity, and not in that clearness, which should induce us to reverence the obscurities.

Suppose two persons tell foolish stories, one whose words have a two-fold sense, understood only by his own followers, the other which has only the one sense, a stranger not being in the secret, who hears them both speak in this manner, would pass on them a like judgment. But if afterwards in the rest of their conversation one speak with the tongue of angels, and the other mere wearisome common-places, he will judge that the one spoke in mysteries and not the other; the one having sufficiently shown that he was incapable of absurdity, and capable of being mysterious, the other that he is incapable of mystery, and capable of absurdity.

The Old Testament is a cipher.

_History of China._--I believe those histories only, whose witnesses let themselves be slaughtered.

It is not a question of seeing this in bulk. I say there is in it a something to blind and something to enlighten.

In this one word I destroy all your reasoning. "But China obscures," you say, and I answer, "China obscures, but there is light to be found; seek it."

Thus all that you say makes for one of these designs, and not at all against the other. So this serves, and does no harm.

We must then look at this in detail, the papers must be laid on the table.

Against the history of China, the historians of Mexico. The five suns, of which the last is but eight hundred years old.

_OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE._

I see the Christian Religion founded on an earlier Religion, and this is what I find of positive fact.

I do not here speak of the miracles of Moses, of Jesus Christ, and of the Apostles, because they do not at first seem convincing, and because I only wish here to adduce in evidence all those foundations of the Christian Religion which are beyond a doubt, and on which doubt cannot be cast by any person soever. It is certain that we see in many places in the world a peculiar people, separated from all other peoples of the world, which is called the Jewish people.

I see then a mass of religions in many countries, and in all times, but they neither please me by their morality, nor convince me by their proofs. Thus I should equally have refused the religion of Mahomet and of China, of the ancient Romans and of the Egyptians, for the sole reason, that none having more marks of truth than another, nor any thing which necessarily decides me, reason cannot incline to one rather than the other.

But while I consider this vacillating and strange variety of morals and beliefs at different times, I find in one corner of the world a peculiar people, separated from all other nations upon earth, the oldest of all, and whose histories are earlier by many ages than the most ancient in our possession.

I find then this great and numerous people, sprung from a single man, who adore one God, and guide themselves by a law, given them as they say, by his own hand. They maintain that to them alone in the world God has revealed his mysteries, that all men are corrupt and under the wrath of God, are all abandoned to their senses and imagination, whence arise the strange errors and continual changes among them, both of religions and of manners, whereas this nation remains unshaken in its conduct: but that God will not leave other nations in darkness for ever, that there will come a Saviour for all, that they are in the world to announce his coming, that they were expressly formed to be the forerunners and heralds of this great advent, and to call on all nations to join with them in the expectation of this Redeemer.

_Advantages of the Jewish people._--In this search the Jewish people at first attracts my attention by a number of wonderful and singular things which appear among them.

I see first that they are a people wholly composed of brethren, and whereas all others are formed by the assemblage of an infinity of families, this, though so prodigiously fruitful, has sprung from one man only, and being thus all one flesh, and members one of another, they form a powerful state consisting of one family, a fact without example.

This family or nation is the most ancient known to men, a fact which seems to invest it with a peculiar veneration, especially in regard to our present enquiry, because if God has during all time revealed himself to men, these are they from whom we must learn the tradition.

This people is not peculiar only by their antiquity, but also remarkable by their duration, which has been unbroken from their origin till now. For while the nations of Greece and Italy, of Lacedæmon, Athens and Rome, and others who came after, have long been extinct, these still remain, and in spite of the endeavours of many powerful princes who have a hundred times striven to destroy them, as their historians testify, and as we can easily understand by the natural order of things during so long a space of years, they have nevertheless been preserved, and extending from the earliest times to the latest, their history comprehends in its duration all our histories.

The Law by which this people is governed is at once the most ancient law in the world, the most perfect, and the only one which has been kept without interruption in a state. This is what Josephus excellently shows, against Apion, as does Philo the Jew in many places, where they point out that it is so ancient that the very name of _law_ was only known by the men of old more than a thousand years afterwards, so that Homer, who has treated the history of so many States, has not once used the word. And it is easy to judge of the perfection of the Law by simply reading it, for it plainly provides for all things with so great wisdom, equity and judgment, that the most ancient legislators, Greek and Roman, having had some glimpse of it, have borrowed from it their principal laws, as appears by those called Of the Twelve Tables, and by the other proofs given by Josephus.

Yet this law is at the same time severe and rigorous beyond all others in respect to their religious worship, constraining the people, in order to keep them in their duty, to a thousand peculiar and painful observances, on pain of death. Whence it is a most astonishing fact, that it has been constantly preserved during many ages by a people so rebellious and impatient, while all other states have changed their laws from time to time, although they are far more lenient.

The book containing this law, the first of all laws, is itself the most ancient book in the world, those of Homer, Hesiod and others dating from six or seven hundred years later.

_Falsity of other religions._--They have no witnesses; this people has them. God challenges other religions to produce such marks. Is. xliii. 9,--xliv. 8.

This is fact. While all philosophers separate into different sects, there is found in one corner of the world, a people, the most ancient in the world, declaring that all the world is in error, that God has revealed to them the truth, that they will abide always on the earth. In fact, all other sects come to an end, this one still endures, and has done so for four thousand years. They assert that they hold from their ancestors that man has fallen from communion with God, is entirely separated from God, but that he has promised to redeem them, that their doctrine shall always exist on the earth;

That their law has a twofold sense, that during sixteen hundred years they have had people whom they believed prophets foretelling both the time and the manner;

That four hundred years after they were scattered everywhere in order that Jesus Christ should be everywhere announced, Jesus Christ came in the manner and time foretold;

That the Jews have since been scattered abroad under a curse, yet nevertheless still exist.

The creation and the deluge being past, and God not intending any more to destroy the world, nor to create it anew, nor to give any such great proofs of himself, he began to establish a people on the earth, formed of set purpose, which should last until the coming of that people whom Messiah should mould by his spirit.

The Jews who were called to subdue the nations and their kings were slaves of sin, and the Christians whose calling has been to be servants and subjects, are free children.

The devil troubled the zeal of the Jews before Jesus Christ, because he would have been their salvation, but not since.

The Jewish people mocked of the Gentiles, the Christian people persecuted.

_Republic._--The Christian and even the Jewish Republic has only had God for master, as Philo the Jew notices, _On Monarchy_.

When they fought, they did so for God alone, their chief hope was in God alone, they considered their towns as belonging to God, and they kept them for God. I Chron. xix. 13.

The sceptre was not interrupted by the carrying away into Babylon, because the return was promised and foretold.

A single phrase of David or of Moses, as for instance that God will circumcise the heart, enables us to judge of their spirit. If all the rest of their language were ambiguous, and left it doubtful whether they were philosophers or Christians, one single sentence of this kind would determine all the rest, as one sentence of Epictetus determines the character of the rest to be the contrary. So far we may be in doubt, but not afterwards.

While the prophets were for maintaining the law, the people were negligent, but since there have been no more prophets, zeal has taken their place.

The zeal of the Jewish people for the law, especially since there have been no more prophets.

Maccabees after they had no more prophets. The Masorah after Jesus Christ.

_THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE SACRED BOOKS._

_The Premiss._--Moses was a man of genius. If then he ruled himself by his reason, he should say nothing clearly which was directly against reason.

So all the apparent weaknesses are strength. Example: the two genealogies in Saint Matthew and Saint Luke. What can be more clear than that this was not concerted?

_Proof of Moses._--Why should Moses make the lives of men so long, and their generations so few?

Because it is not the length of years, but the number of generations which renders matters obscure.

For truth is impaired only by the change of men. And yet Moses places two things, the most memorable that can be imagined, that is to say the creation and the deluge, so near that we can reach from one to the other.

_Another proof._--The longevity of the patriarchs, instead of causing the loss of past history, was the rather serviceable for its preservation. For if we are not always well instructed in the history of our ancestors, it is because we have never lived much with them, and because they are often dead before we have ourselves attained the age of reason. But when men lived so long, children lived long with their parents, and long conversed with them. Now, their conversation could only be of the history of their ancestors, since to that all history was reduced, and men did not study science or art, which now take up so much of our daily discourse. We see also that at that time men took special care to preserve their genealogies.

Shem, who saw Lamech, who saw Adam, saw also Jacob, who saw those who saw Moses; therefore the deluge and the creation are true. This is conclusive among certain people who clearly understand it.

Josephus conceals the shame of his nation.

Moses does not conceal his own shame nor....

_Quis mihi det ut omnes prophetent?_

He was tired of the people.

When the creation of the people began to stand at a distance, God provided a single contemporary historian, and appointed a whole people as the guardians of this book, in order that the history might be the most authentic in all the world, that all men might learn a thing so necessary to know, yet so impossible to be known in any other way.

If the story in Esdras is credible, then it must be believed that Scripture is Holy Scripture. For this story is founded only on the authority of those who allege that of the Seventy, which shows that the Scripture is holy.

Therefore if the tale be true, we find our proof therein, if not we have it elsewhere. Thus those who would ruin the truth of our Religion, founded on Moses, establish it by the same authority by which they attack it. Thus by this providence it still exists.

_On Esdras._--The story that the books were burnt with the temple shown to be false by The Book of Maccabees. _Jeremiah gave them the law._

The story that he recited the whole by heart. Josephus and Esdras note _that he read the book_. Baronius, Ann. 180. _Nullus penitus Hebræorum antiquorum reperitur qui tradiderit libros periisse et per Esdram esse restitutos, nisi in IV. Esdræ._

The story that he changed the letters.

Philo, _in Vita Moysis_: _Illa lingua ac charactere quo antiquitus scripta est lex, sic permansit usque ad LXX_.

Josephus says the Law was in Hebrew when it was translated by the Seventy.

Under Antiochus and Vespasian, when they wished to abolish the books, and when there was no prophet, they could not do so. And under the Babylonians when there had been no persecution, and when there were so many prophets, would they have allowed them to be burnt?

Josephus derides the Greeks who would not allow....

Tertullian.--_Perinde potuit abolefactam eam violentia cataclysmi in spiritu rursus reformare, quemadmodum et Hierosolymis Babylonia expugnatione deletis, omne instrumentum Judaicæ literaturæ per Esdram constat restauratum._ Lib. I. _De Cultu femin._ cap. iii.

He says that Noah might as easily have restored by the spirit the book of Enoch, destroyed by the deluge, as Esdras have restored the Scriptures lost during the Captivity.

Θεὸς ἐν τῇ ἐπὶ Ναβουχοδονόσορ αἰχμαλωσίᾳ τοῦ λαοῦ διαφθαρεισῶν τῶν γραφῶν, ἐνέπνευσε Ἐσδρᾷ τῷ ἱερεῖ ἐκ τῆς φυλῆς Λεοὶ τοῦς τῶν προγεγονότων προφητῶν πάντας ἀναταξάσθαι λόγους, καὶ ἀποκαταστῆσαι τῷ λαῷ τὴν διὰ Μωσέως νομοθησίαν. He alleges this to prove that it is not incredible that the Seventy should have explained the holy Scriptures with that uniformity which we admire in them. Euseb. lib. v. Hist. cap. 8. And he took that from Saint Irenæus.

Saint Hilary in his preface to the Psalms says that Esdras arranged the Psalms in order.

The origin of this tradition comes from the Book of Esdras.

_Deus glorificatus est, et Scripturæ veræ divinæ creditæ sunt, omnibus eandem et eisdem verbis et eisdem nominibus recitantibus ab initio usque ad finem, uti et præsentes gentes cognoscerent quoniam per inspirationem Dei interpretatæ sunt Scripturæ, et non esset mirabile Deum hoc in eis operatum, quando in ea captivitate populi quæ facta est a Nabuchodonosor corruptis Scripturis et post septuaginta annos Judæis descendentibus in regionem suam, et post deinde temporibus Artaxexis Persarum regis inspiravit Hesdræ sacerdoti tribus Levi præteritorum prophetarum omnes rememorare sermones et restituere populo eam legem quæ data est per Moysen._

_Against the Story in Esdras_, II. Maccab. 2. Josephus, _Antiquities_, II. 1.--Cyrus took occasion from the prophecy of Isaiah to release the people. The Jews held property in peace under Cyrus in Babylon, therefore they might well have the Law.

Josephus, in the whole history of Esdras, says not a single word of this restoration.--II. Kings, xvii. 37.

Scripture has provided passages of consolation and warning for every condition of life.

Nature seems to have done the same thing by her two infinities, natural and moral, for we shall always have those who are higher and lower, who are more and less able, who are noble and in low estate, in order to abate our pride, and raise our lowliness.

_Order, against the objection that the Scripture has no order._--The heart has its own order; the mind too has its own, which is by premisses and demonstrations, that of the heart is wholly different. It were absurd to prove that we are worthy of love by putting forth in order the causes of love.

Jesus Christ and Saint Paul use the order of charity, not of the intellect, for they wish to warm, not to teach; the same with Saint Augustine. This order consists mainly in digressions on each point which may illustrate the main end, and keep it ever in view.

God and the Apostles foreseeing that the seed of pride would cause heresies to spring up, and not wishing to give them occasion to arise by defining them, have placed in the Scripture and the prayers of the Church contrary words and sentences to produce their fruit in time.

So in morals he gives charity to produce fruits contrary to lust.

He who knows the will of his master will be beaten with more stripes, because of the power he has by his knowledge. _Qui justus est justificetur adhuc_, because of the power which he has by justice. From him who has received most will the greatest account be demanded, because the aid received has given him greater power.

There is an universal and essential difference between the actions of the will and all other actions.

The will is one of the chief organs of belief, not that it forms belief, but that things are true or false according to the side on which we view them. The will which chooses one side rather than the other turns away the mind from considering the qualities of all that it does not like to see, thus the mind, moving in accord with the will, stays to look at the side it chooses, and so judges by what it sees.

All things work together for good to the elect, even the obscurities of Scripture, which they honour because of what is divinely clear. And all things work together for evil to the reprobate, even what is clear, which they blaspheme because of the obscurities they do not understand.

How many stars have telescopes discovered for us which did not exist for the philosophers of old. Men have roundly taken holy Scripture to task in regard to the great multitude of stars, saying: "We know that there are only a thousand and twenty-two."

The meaning changes according to the words which express it. The meaning receives its dignity from words instead of giving it. We must seek examples of this.

Words differently arranged have different meanings, and meanings differently arranged produce different effects.

_THE PROPHECIES._

The prophecies are the strongest proofs of Jesus Christ. For these therefore God has made the most provision; since the event which has fulfilled them is a miracle existing from the birth of the Church to the end. Therefore God raised up prophets during sixteen hundred years, and during four hundred years afterwards he dispersed all these prophecies with all the Jews, who bore them into all regions of the world. Such was the preparation for the birth of Jesus Christ, whose Gospel exacting belief from every man made it necessary not only that there should be prophecies to inspire this belief, but that these prophecies should be spread throughout the whole world, so that the whole world should embrace it.

_Prophecies._--If one man alone had made a book of predictions concerning Jesus Christ, both as to the time and the manner of his coming, and if Jesus Christ had come in agreement with these prophecies, the fact would have had infinite force.

But in this case there is much more. Here is a succession of men for the space of four thousand years, who without interruption or variation, follow one another in foretelling the same event. Here is a whole people announcing it, existing for four thousand years, to testify in a body their certainty, from which they cannot be diverted by all the threatenings and persecutions brought to bear against them; this is in a far greater degree important.

But it was not enough that the prophecies existed, they needed also distribution through all places, and preservation through all time. And in order that this agreement might not be taken as an effect of chance, it was necessary it should be foretold.

It is much more glorious for the Messiah that they should be spectators and even instruments of his glory, beyond the fact that God had preserved him.

_Proof._--Prophecy with accomplishment.

That which preceded, and that which followed Jesus Christ.

The prophecies concerning the Messiah are mingled with some concerning other matters, so that neither the prophecies of the Messiah should be without proof, nor the special prophecies without fruit.

_Non habemus regem nisi Cæsarem._ Therefore Jesus Christ was the Messiah, because they had no longer any king but a stranger, and because they would have no other.

The eternal kingdom of the race of David, II. Chron., by all the prophecies, and with an oath. And it was not temporally accomplished. Jer. xxxiii. 20.

Zeph. iii. 9.--"I will give my words to the Gentiles, that all may serve me with one consent."

Ezekiel xxxvii 25.--"My servant David shall be their prince for ever."

Exodus iv. 22.--"Israel is my first born."

We might easily think that when the prophets foretold that the sceptre would not depart from Judah until the advent of the eternal king, they spoke to flatter the people, and that their prophecy was proved false by Herod. But to show that this was not their meaning, and that on the contrary they well knew that the temporal kingdom should cease, they said they would be without a king, and without a prince, and for a long time. Hosea iii. 4.

_Prophecies._--That Jesus Christ will sit on the right hand till God has put his enemies under his feet.

Therefore he will not subject them himself.

The time of the first advent was foretold, the time of the second is not so, because the first was to be secret, the second must be glorious, and so manifest that even his enemies will recognise it. But as his first coming was to be obscure, and to be known only of those who searched the Scriptures....

The prophecies must be unintelligible to the wicked, Daniel xii. 10, Hosea xiv. 9, but intelligible to those who are well instructed.

The prophecies which represent him poor, represent him master of the nations.--Is. lii. 16, etc liii. Zech. ix. 9.

The prophecies which foretell the time foretell him only as master of the Gentiles and suffering, and not as in the clouds nor as judge. And those which represent him thus as judge and in glory do not specify the time.

Do you think that the prophecies cited in the Gospel were reported to make you believe? No, but to prevent your believing.

_Prophecies._--The time was foretold by the state of the Jewish people, by the state of the heathen world, by the state of the temple, by the number of years.

It is daring to predict the same affair in so many ways. It was necessary that the four idolatrous or pagan monarchies, the end of the kingdom of Judah, and the seventy weeks should coincide, and all this before the second temple was destroyed.