Category: Humour
—————— A TREATISE ON TOLERATION. [In 1762 Jean Calas, a Protestant of Toulouse, was done to death by torture on the wheel on the false charge of having slain his son, a suicide. His widow and children were put to the torture to extort a confession, in utter lack of evidence. V...
SIDRAC.—And for my part, I freely confess I should not understand myself. I _feel_, I _know_, that God has endowed me with the faculties of thinking and speaking, but I can neit...
27. CHAPTER XXV.On the 7th of March, 1763, a council of state being held at Versailles, at which all the great ministers assisted and the chancellor sat as president, M. de Crosne, one of the m...
16. CHAPTER XII.By the divine law, I take to be understood those rules and precepts which have been given to us by God Himself. For example, he ordained that the Jews should eat a lamb dressed...
13. CHAPTER VIII.Among the ancient Romans, from the days of Romulus to those in which the Christians began to dispute with the priests of the empire, we do not find a single instance of any pers...
6. CHAPTER I.The murder of John Calas, committed in Toulouse with the sword of justice, the 9th of March, 1762, is an event which, on account of its singularity, calls for the attention of t...
1. VOLUME IV—————— A TREATISE ON TOLERATION. [In 1762 Jean Calas, a Protestant of Toulouse, was done to death by torture on the wheel on the false charge of having slain his son, a suicide....
9. CHAPTER IV.Some people will have it, that if we were to make use of humanity and indulgence towards our mistaken brethren who pray to God in bad French, it would be putting arms into their...
14. CHAPTER X.Mankind has been too long imposed upon by falsehood; it is therefore time that we should come to the knowledge of the few truths that can be distinguished from amidst the clouds...
26. CHAPTER XXIV.While I was employed in writing this treatise, purely with a desire to make mankind more benevolent and charitable, another author was using his pen to the very contrary purpose...
15. CHAPTER XI.What! it may then be demanded, shall every one be allowed to believe only his own reason, and to think that his reason, whether true or false, should be the guide of his actions...
10. CHAPTER V.Let me for once suppose that a minister equally noble and discerning, that a prelate equally wise and humane, or a prince who is sensible that his interest consists in the incre...
19. CHAPTER XVII.Reverend Father: The following is in obedience to the orders I received from your reverence to lay before you the most effectual means for delivering Jesus and His company from...
24. CHAPTER XXII.It does not require any great art or studied elocution to prove that Christians ought to tolerate one another. Nay, I shall go still farther and say that we ought to look upon a...
22. CHAPTER XX.Such is the weakness and perversity of the human race that it is undoubtedly more eligible for them to be subject to every possible kind of superstition, provided it is not of a...
8. CHAPTER III.When learning began to revive, and the understandings of mankind became more enlightened, there was a general complaint of errors and abuses, and every one acknowledged the comp...
12. CHAPTER VII.The several nations with which history has made us in part acquainted, all considered their different religions as ties by which they were united; it was the association of huma...
21. CHAPTER XIX.In the beginning of the reign of the great Emperor Cam-hi, a mandarin of the city of Canton, hearing a great noise and outcry in the house adjoining that he dwelt in, sent to kn...
20. CHAPTER XVIII.For a government not to have a right to punish men for their errors, it is necessary that those errors should not be crimes; and they are crimes only when they disturb the publi...
23. CHAPTER XXI.Religion is instituted to make us happy in this life and the next. But what is required to make us happy in the life to come? To be just. And in this? To be merciful and forbear...
7. CHAPTER II.If the order of white penitents had been the cause of the punishment of an innocent person, and of the utter ruin and dispersion of a whole family, and of branding them with tha...
18. CHAPTER XVI.An inhabitant of a country village lying at the point of death was visited by a person in good health, who came to insult him in his last moments, with the following speech:
17. CHAPTER XV.It is an impious act to deprive men of liberty in matters of religion, or prevent them from making choice of a God. No God nor man would be pleased with a forced service.—_Apolo...
2. CHAPTER I.There can be no doubt that everything in the world is governed by fatality. My own life is a convincing proof of this doctrine. The earl of Chesterfield, with whom I was a great...
25. CHAPTER XXIII.No longer then do I address myself to men, but to Thee, God of all beings, of all worlds, and of all ages; if it may be permitted weak creatures lost in immensity and impercepti...
3. CHAPTER II.After making many profound observations upon nature (having employed in the research my five senses, my spectacles, and a very large telescope), I said one day to Mr. Sidrac: “U...
4. CHAPTER III.Some time after this conversation between the disconsolate person, whom we shall call Goodman, and the clever anatomist, Mr. Sidrac, the latter, one fine morning, observed his f...
11. CHAPTER VI.The law of nature is that which nature points out to all mankind. You have brought up a child, that child owes you a respect as its parent, and gratitude as its benefactor. You...