Superstition In All Ages (1732) | Page 2

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