A Memoir- the Testament

by Jean Meslier

  Consider what Montaigne[211] said:

  Antiquity thought, as I believe, that it could do something for the divine grandeur, to assimilate it to man, to dress it up with his faculties, making a gift of his best humors and most shameful needs, offering it our meat to eat, and our dances, mummeries, and strength to cheer it, our clothing to wear, and houses to dwell in, caressing it with the scents of incense and the sounds of music, festivals and bouquets, and, to adapt it to our vicious passions, flattering its justice with an inhuman vengeance, rejoicing in the ruin and dissipation of things created and preserved by it, as Tiberius Sempronius did, when he had burned, as a sacrifice to Vulcan, the riches and weapons pillaged and won from his enemies in Sardinia. And Aemilius Paulus those of Macedonia to Mars and Minerva. And Alexander, having reached the Indian Ocean, cast into the sea, in Thetis’s honor, many great golden vessels; in addition to filling her altar with a slaughter not only of innocent beasts, but of men also, as several nations, including our own, used to do so often; and I think that none of them hasn’t done the same... The Get consider themselves to be immortal, and think that death is only a journey to their God Zamolxis. Every five years they dispatch some of themselves to him, to ask him for what they need… Amestris, the mother of Xerxes, having grown old, once had 14 youths from the best families of Persia buried alive according to the religion of the country, to gratify some Supreme God or other. And even today, the idolaters of Femixtitan are cemented with the blood of little children, and only delight in the sacrifice of these infantile and pure souls; a justice thirsty for innocent blood. Likewise, the Carthaginians sacrificed their own children to Saturn, and those who had none bought them, since parents were required to observe this task with a cheerful and content countenance.

  The Peruvians[212] sacrificed to their Gods what they held to be the most beautiful and best: gold, silver, grain, wax, and animals. They regularly made a sacrifice of a hundred sheep of various colors, with different ceremonies. They sacrificed a sheared sheep to the Sun every day, and burned it dressed in a red gown. But there was nothing more horrid than the human sacrifices, which happened in Peru and even more so in Mexico. In Peru they sacrificed children, between the ages of 14 and 10, for the prosperity of their Inca in his wars, and on the day of his coronation the number of children sacrificed was 200. They also sacrificed a great number of girls, who were taken from the monasteries for the service of the Inca. When this Inca was seriously ill, and beyond hope of recovery, they sacrificed his son to the Sun or rather to their god Viracoca, begging him to take him instead of his father. But the Mexicans only sacrificed war captives, they made them kneel before the doors of their temple, then the priest went around them with the idol of their God, displaying it, and said to each of them: behold your God; after which they were led to the place where they would be sacrificed, and there six large priests, set aside for this ministry, which acted so bizarrely that they seemed more like Devils than men.

  According to the report of the ambassadors of the King of Mexico[213], this prince had 50,000 of his prisoners sacrificed to the gods annually, and kept his wars with certain neighboring nations going, to maintain his stock for the sacrifices.

  According to Montaigne, Amurat, in the conquest of the Isthmus, immolated 600 young Greek men to the soul of his father, so that this blood would serve as propitiation in atonement of the sins of the deceased. The Chinese sacrificed not only to their Gods, but also to devils, anyone they knew who had been wicked and reprobate, so that, they said, no evil would come to them and their goods. Those of Calicut did likewise; those of Martingue worshipped devils, although they recognized them as the authors of all evil, and offered them sacrifices, and built temples to them, even more than to the Creator. The Japanese also worshiped the Devil, as also those in America, and made sacrifices to him, not to obtain some favor from them, but to keep them from doing them any evil. Our ancient Gauls, the inhabitants of our France, were, in this regard, no wiser than other nations, since they sacrificed men to their Gods. Those who were beset by grievous diseases sacrificed men, or they took vows to do so, and such sacrifices were carried out by the Druids, who were their priests in those times, and were persuaded that the Gods could be appeased by the life of a man, to save that of another, sometimes they burned them alive, sometimes they put them to death with arrows. This is why, when one of them was in the throes of disease, they called and brought to their side some of these Druids in order to sacrifice them to Drye, the infernal god and the enemy of life, someone who deserved death, or for their fault some poor miserable victim, believing that this God, greedy for human blood, would be satisfied by the death of such a man, and the life of the sick one would be prolonged. About which Plutarch[214] so aptly says that it would have been better for men never to have known anything about the Gods, than to believe, as they did, that there were some who feasted and were greedy for human blood. As Montaigne puts it[215]:

  It was indeed a strange fancy of men to wish to repay the divine generosity with our affliction, as did the Carthaginians, who sacrificed their own children to Saturn; and those that had none, purchased children and had them burned alive, while the father and mother had to observe this cruel ceremony with a cheerful and happy face. And like the Spartans, who regaled their Diana with the tormenting of young boys, whom they had whipped in her honor, often to death. Religion, being capable of inspiring so much and such cruel wickedness in men, tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum. It was a savage humor to wish to gratify the architect by the tearing down of his building, and to wish to take away the punishment coming to the guilty by punishing the innocent, and which poor Iphigenia discharged with her death, and by her immolation, the Greek army from the offenses they had committed: and these two fine and generous souls of the two Decii, the father and son, should throw themselves headlong into the thickest of the enemy, for the Gods’ favor in Roman affairs:

  What could it be, on this occasion? what could be this monstrous iniquity of the Gods, to not be appeased in favor of the Roman people except by the death of these two great men? Quae fuit tanta Deorum iniquitas ut placari populo Romano non passent nisi taies viri occidissent? How insane are men to believe that the Gods could not be appeased except by the violent death of the innocent? What insanity, I say, and what blindness in them to have such thoughts and to fervently believe to carry out so many and so execrable cruelties? See, however, what religion inspires, see what the mania of belief in the Gods causes, so true it is to say that Religion even often teaches wickedness to men and that it often makes them, on the pretext of piety, commit impious and detestable actions, following this statement of Lucretius[216]: quae saepius olim Religio peperit scelerosa atque impia facta, and this other which I already cited, tantum potuit Religio suadere malorum. Plutarch was quite right to say that it would have been far better for men never to have had any knowledge of the Gods, with as much folly and wretchedness as they are led to on the pretext of honoring, fearing, and serving them. Those who make them worship are the cause of all these detestable evils; we must not be astonished, as it is written, that it’s from the very prophets of Jerusalem that corruption has spread all over the Earth[217]: A prophetis enim Jerusalem egressa est pollutio super omnem terram.

  Our Christ-cultists are still not quite free from this mad persuasion of the virtue and efficaciousness of these cruel sacrifices; for even though they no longer do such things, yet they do approve of those who once did them, and of the Law that ordained them; and they also believe they were delivered from sin and restored to the good graces of their God by the infinite merits of the blood of their savior God Jesus Christ, who was, they say, delivered and who offered himself as a sacrifice on the tree of the cross for the atonement of their sins. This is why they say that this allegedly divine Savior has washed them in his blood from the filth of their sins[218], Lavit nos a peccatis nostris in sanguine suo. And that he has reconciled them to God by the merits of his blood and his death, and they even go on to say that, ac
cording to this law, which they regard as divine, all must be purified by blood, and there would have been no remission for men without the shedding of the blood of their divine Savior. Omnia, they say, in sanguine secundum Iegem mundantur et sine sanguinis effusions non fit remissio. Attributing to their God Himself the will to sacrifice his divine son in this way, by the hands of the very men who had so grievously offended him by their sins, in order to appease Himself with respect to them, for all their offenses against Him, and which they might ever commit against Him; and if it were, as I have just said, such a great folly for the pagans to believe that the gods could only be appeased with respect to the guilty by punishing those who were not guilty, as Montaigne says, what manner of folly is it for our Christians to believe that God the Father would only be appeased with respect to men on condition of the punishment and bloody death of His divine Son? That He would not be appeased with regard to them, if they had not persecuted, outraged and shamelessly, unworthily, and cruelly put His dear and only divine son to death, He who was their God and their Savior? What a nonsensical way to think! And if it was such monstrous iniquity for God to refuse to be appeased with regard to sinful men except by the punishment and bloody and shameful death of His innocent and divine son, what folly, I say, it to even think such a thing! Words fail to express the outrageousness of such folly. Here, though, is what religion makes our Christ-cultists believe, and while it no longer requires, as it once did, those cruel and bloody sacrifices, it does still require them to approve the accidents and revere the one which is cruelly made in the person of a God, and requires them to believe the most absurd and the most ridiculous things imaginable, as I will show more fully in what follows.

  25. THE SUPPOSED COMMANDMENT THAT GOD SUPPOSEDLY GAVE ABRAHAM TO SACRIFICE HIS SON TO HIM.

  Let's return to the first so-called commandment which God supposedly gave to Abraham, that of sacrificing his only son: that, I say, should not appear terribly strange for our Christ-cultists, of course, since they believe that this same God commanded his own divine Son to immolate himself for the salvation of men, and since they believe that this command was truly fulfilled. But at bottom, this supposed command was nothing horrible; how is it that a Father, or anyone else with any common sense, could imagine that such an inspiration, or that such a command could originate with a God, that is, a Being who is infinitely perfect, infinitely good, and infinitely wise. That would not be conceivable, except that we do see superstition inspiring the cruelest and most inhumane feelings in men, and that there is nothing that men would be incapable of doing blindly under this vain, under this false, and under this miserable pretext of religion, since by doing even the most shameful and detestable deeds, they imagine that in so doing they are doing the most praiseworthy and excellent virtues. We have an example of this in Abraham himself, who without deliberation or hesitation on such a dream or vision, if you please, immediately set out to carry out this supposed commandment, by skillfully giving, or rather stupidly and indiscreetly giving, a specious pious turn, to an act that would make a monster of him.

  Consider the words he’s thought to have spoken to his son on this affair, after preparing for the sacrifice[219]:

  My son, I pleaded so long with God for you, and have taken all possible care of you since you came to the world, and I thought it would be the utmost fulfillment of my wishes to see you reach a full age, and to leave you at my death as the heir of all I own, but since God, after giving you to me, now wants me to lose you, so be generous and let me offer you to him in sacrifice; grant Him, my son, this obedience and honor, to show him our gratitude for the favors He has given us in peace, and assistance He has given us in war. Since you are only born to die, what end could be more glorious for you than to be offered in sacrifice by your own father to the sovereign Master of the Universe: instead of ending your life by sickness in a bed, or by a war-wound, or by some other among all the accidents to which men are subject, He judges you worthy to place your soul in his hands among the prayers and sacrifices, to be his forever? Then, you will be a consolation in my old age by procuring God's aid for me, in place of what I would have expected from you, after having been raised so carefully.

  Isaac, who was the worthy son of such an amazing father, heard this speech, not only without astonishment, but even joyously, and responded that he would have been unworthy of being born if he refused to obey his will, especially when it was in conformity with that of God. At this he threw himself on the altar to be sacrificed, and this great sacrifice, said the Jewish historian Josephus, would have gone forward, if God hadn’t prevented it.

  Now that’s certainly a fine and favorable interpretation; there’s a rather beautiful and favorable pretext to religiously and piously execute a commandment and an action of this nature; but also consider how ignorant and stupid people will let themselves to be gulled, mistaking evil for good, when it’s dressed up in the least semblance of virtue and piety. This is how our pious Christ-cultists cover with the prettiest semblances of piety, all the vain and superstitious practices and ceremonies of their Religion, it’s by these words of vain and deceitful piety, that they exalt above all the pretended holiness of their mysteries and of their sacraments. It is by similar vain and absurd interpretations that they turn their supposedly holy Scriptures any way they please, making them mean whatever they want; by which they find mysteries where there are none, by which they find that black things are actually white, and white things actually black; and they mainly do this by the subtle invention of their mystical and figurative senses, from which they make, as it were, a saddle that fits every horse, or a shoe that fits all feet, like the sandal of Theramenes: for by this subtle invention of their spiritual and mystical sense, they attribute, as I’ve said, whatever meaning they please to their so-called holy Scriptures, and make them speak allegorically and figuratively as they please, like children who make bells say whatever they want, when the hear them ringing.

  But as it would appear nonsensical to people who are made for seriously thoughts to care about the words children attribute to ringing bells, or to the content of their chatter when they’re playing, it would also be madness for wise and enlightened men to pause seriously at the vain explanations and the vain interpretations which our Christ-cultists bring, mystically, allegorically, and figuratively to their supposedly holy Scriptures, since these sorts of explanations and interpretations are not, at bottom, anything but fictions of their minds, and hollow imaginations.

  If a man, for example, today presumed to say that God gave him a direct commandment, similar to what is said to have been given to this Abraham, whom I’ve spoken about, i.e., to sacrifice his son to Him, should he consult our most pious Christ-cultists about it, no doubt but all of them would regard this fancy with sheer horror, as an illusion, a devilish temptation, and a damnable thought, that they would insist that this man reject it and warn him to be on guard against it. And if, despite this warning, the man was so reckless as to actually go through with this supposed commandment of God’s, I leave you to think of what someone would say to such a man and what the justice system would do with him: and by that, judge whether they should be regarded as divine revelations, those which command this sort of sacrifices. But if, nowadays, even our Christ-cultists were absolutely made to see such a vision, such a fancy, or such a revelation, as an illusion and a temptation of the Devil, and that they themselves should consider it an abomination and a crime worthy of exemplary punishment by a Father, who would be so insane as to butcher their own child on the pretext of offering him to God in sacrifice, on the pretext that God gave him a direct commandment, then how can they look at this commandment of Abraham’s as truly divine, which was supposed to have been given to him by God to sacrifice his son to Him! And how can they consider his blind obedience on this point as the greatest action and the most heroic deed, and consequently as the one most worthy of the graces and blessings of God? This is contradictory and self-refuting, and there would be no need to say an
ything else about it, to show the falsehood of these supposed divine revelations, since, moreover, it is noted in many of these above-mentioned, so-called holy books of the Prophets, that God began to criticize these kinds of cruel and bloody sacrifices: read what it says in the prophet Isaiah, who spoke to the Jews, as if God Himself were addressing them. “What have I to do?” he said in the person of God, “what have I to do with the multitude of your victims? I am sick of your holocausts, I am disgusted by the fat and blood of your cattle, your sheep, your calves, your lambs, and your goats[220]. Offer me no more such vain sacrifices, your incenses are an abomination to me; I hate your feasts and solemnities and I will no longer endure them. The same thing is found, in nearly the same terms, in the prophet Jeremiah[221], in the prophet Amos[222], and in the Psalm of King David, which our Christ-cultists sing every day in their churches, it’s said that God spoke to the same people in this way: “Do you think,” He told them, “that I will eat the flesh of bulls and that I will drink their blood?” As if He had asked them, “How can it be that you have such a vulgar opinion of a God, as to believe that He would eat the flesh of bulls and goats, and drink their blood? Sacrifice,” He told them, “by giving your praise to God, vow to the Lord faithfully, and invoke me in the day of your affliction, by this you will glorify me,” He told them, “and I will sustain you in your needs.” Now these supposedly divine revelations, are certainly vastly different from those God gave to Abraham and Moses, since here He condemns and rejects the same things He established in the ones He gave to them. Why would we find such a great change in a Being who is immutable and infinitely perfect? Did He decide, after a thousand years, to fix something He Himself did badly? Can one say of Him what is usually said of a fickle man, that he does things, then immediately undoes them, and that he takes back what he left, destroys, repeats, quod super amisit? Let our Christ-cultists think this through, if they will, we’ll overlook this folly, if they like, otherwise, they must recognize, with us, the vanity and falseness of the above-mentioned divine revelations, since they contradict and cancel each other out, and since they are so ill-suited to the sovereign Majesty and the infinite perfection of a God. Far wiser was Numa Pompilius, second King of the Romans[223], who, to peacefully and agreeably amuse his people, instituted sacrifices of nothing but wine, of milk, of wheat and other such slight things, accompanied by dances and pleasant songs.