A Memoir- the Testament

by Jean Meslier

  Similarly, Jesus Christ himself never indicated he wanted to be worshiped in the bread, or in images of dough, and although he did say that he was the Son of God, that he was the living bread that came down from heaven, that he who would eat him would never die, but would have eternal life, and that if one did not eat his flesh, or drink his blood, one would have no life in them, it nevertheless doesn’t seem that he ever said that he himself was God, or that he was supposed to be worshiped as God, far from it, he often called himself the Son of Man, and when a certain fellow once asked him[584]: “Good Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He replied: “Why do you call me good, since God only is good?” He did not, therefore, believe he was God, and didn’t claim that he was thought to be God, nor that he was called God, since he didn’t even approve of people calling him “good”. And after his supposed resurrection, wanting to vanish entirely from his Apostles, he told a woman whom he met: “Go[585] and say to my brothers, I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Here it seems quite apparent that he didn’t believe he was God, since he recognized he had the same God, and the same God as his father, as his Apostles. Besides, he himself also said that he had descended from heaven, not to do his will, but to do the will of God, his Father, who had sent him, and who was greater than him[586]. That being true, he therefore didn’t believe he was God, since he said that his Father was greater than him, and that he didn’t claim to do his own will, but that of God; and if he didn’t believe he was God, then it seems unlikely that he would want to be worshiped in his own person and, consequently even less in bread, or in little feeble images of dough. And as further confirmation of this is the fact that he approved the Law, which forbids the making or worshiping of any image. He said expressly that he had come, not to destroy this law, or to break it, but to fulfill it. If, then, he had come to fulfill it, it wasn’t to try to introduce idols or images of dough for their worship, since this law so clearly and strictly forbade this[587], that those who worshiped idols, or who wanted them worshiped, would have deserved nothing less than death. Besides, Jesus Christ himself also commended that the people carefully make and observe that which their Doctors, Scribes, and Pharisees would tell them and teach them to do, in keeping with this law. For they taught them, in accordance with this Law, not to worship idols, or make any image to worship. And Jesus Christ himself told the people to faithfully observe this Law, and that it was to be observed even to the smallest and least of its points, saying that he[588], who violated the least of its precepts would be the least in the kingdom of heaven. Jota unum aut unus apex non praeteribit a lege donec omnia fiant. With this in mind, it seems unlikely that he would have urged them to do what their law and doctors would have directly forbidden them to do, and therefore it seems unlikely that he would have wished to have himself worshiped in the idols or images of dough; for, this would have been the same thing as him urging them to do what he himself had told them not to do. To this point, it seems, our Roman Christ-cultist idolaters ought to be a little more attentive than they are.

  To which, if we add the fact that it is said in the prophets that the idols would be completely destroyed on a certain day, and this would be at the coming of the Messiah, when this supposed prophecy would come to fruition, there is certainly no reason to think that this Messiah would have wanted to multiply the idols instead of abolishing them. But he would have multiplied them, by adding new idols of dough and flour to the idols of wood and stone and of gold and silver, which men already worshiped, instead of completely destroying them. Our doctors know all of that, they realize the strength and the convincing power of all these arguments and reasoning: for if they didn’t see it, they would only be ignoramuses, and if they do see it, they are clearly prevaricators of the Law, who wickedly take the truth captive, and change the truth into a lie: Veritatem in injustitia detinent... commutaverunt veritatem Dei in mendacium, as their St. Paul[589] says, since against so many strong, clear, and convincing witnesses of truth, they would maintain and teach errors and idolatries, so contrary to the Law that they approve and recognize as having been truly given by God, and which are so contrary to common sense and the lights of right reason; for our Doctors must finally recognize the strength or weakness, the certainty or uncertainty of this argument, of all the Prophets and all the wise, against the idolatry of the Pagans. Here’s their argument and their reasoning.

  All the simulacra and idols of the Pagans are nothing but wood, stone, gold or silver, and are words made by human hands; therefore, they conclude, they are not gods. This argument or reason is either strong or weak, it concludes on a sure truth, or it doesn’t conclude on a sure truth. Similarly, this: the simulacra or idols of the Pagans have no life, feeling, or movement in them, and they can do nobody any good or evil, therefore, they are not Gods. Similarly, this one: the simulacra or idols of the Pagans have eyes and don’t see, they have ears but they can’t hear, mouths but they can’t speak, hands, but can’t do anything, feet, but can’t can walk, therefore, they are not Gods. These arguments, I say, and those reasonings, and all the rest that might be brought to bear, are either strong or weak, their either conclude truly, or they don’t; but our God-Christ-cultists have to agree one way or the other. If they dare to find weakness and uncertainty in these reasonings and arguments of their Prophets, then 1) they are at the same time finding weakness and uncertainty in all the strongest and most convincing reasonings of men: for it is beyond dispute that natural human reason can’t provide stronger or more convincing ones on this matter.

  But, to accuse the strongest and most convincing of human reasonings of weakness and uncertainty is, in a way, to destroy the very reason, or at least, is to completely destroy all certainty and all assurance of truth, and it is, consequently, also to destroy any certainty and assurance of truth in matters of Faith and Religion, as well as in any other field of knowledge, which our Christ-cultists wouldn’t want to say, since they claim that the truth their religion is more certain than any other truth, and that they couldn’t claim such a thing if they didn’t assume that human reasoning offered certainty. Secondly, if they accuse these arguments and reasonings of the Prophets and all sensible men of weakness or uncertainty, they must do the same to all the prophets and all sensible men of ignorance or lack of judgment: for it is ignorance and lack of judgment to think one is well founded in reason, when one is not well founded; it’s ignorance and lack of judgment to mistake weak and uncertain reasonings and arguments for the strongest, safest, and most convincing of all reasonings and arguments. But the prophets, and all the most sensible people, reasoning as they did against the idolatry of the Pagans, thought they were well grounded in reason, and they thought they clearly demonstrated the vanity of the idols and falseness of the Pagan Gods, by the strongest, surest, and most convincing possible witnesses of truth; so, if their arguments and reasonings on this subject are weak and uncertain, then it was ignorance and lack of judgment in them to produce, as they have done, for such sure reasonings and arguments; and, since our Christ-cultists still claim that these prophets were speaking at that time by the inspiration of God Himself, it would follow that God Himself must only have inspired them with weak and uncertain arguments, and even that He might have been unable to inspire them with stronger ones: for, if He could have inspired stronger and more convincing ones, He would certainly have done so; and since God inspired them with no other ones, there would be reason to say and to think that He was, in fact, unable to inspire them with any but weak and uncertain arguments, but our Christ-cultists wouldn’t dare suggest this: therefore, in spite of themselves, they have to recognize the power and certainty of these reasonings and arguments from their Prophets, against the idolatry of the Pagans and against the falseness of their Gods, and if they recognize their power and certainty, then they also have to recognize that these same arguments and these same reasonings are equally conclusive, with equal power and evidentiary force, against themselves and their idolatry, as aga
inst the Pagans and their idolatries, and in addition, they must also recognize that these same arguments equally demonstrate the vanity of their idols and the falseness of their Gods of dough and flour, as they demonstrate the vanity of the Pagan idols, the falseness of their Gods of wood and stone, and of their Gods of gold and silver. And the obvious reason for this is that the idols or the Gods of dough and flour are also the works of the hands of men, just like the Gods of wood and stone the Gods of gold and silver. And if our Christ-cultists or make or fashion for their Gods from dough eyes and ears, nostrils and a mouth, hands and feet, they would be just as useless to them as they are to the Gods of wood and stone and the Gods of gold and silver, since they wouldn’t see with their eyes, they wouldn’t hear with their ears, they wouldn’t breathe with their nostrils, they wouldn’t speak with their mouths, they couldn’t do anything with their hands, and they wouldn’t walk with their feet, any more than the Gods of wood and stone and the Gods of gold and silver, of which the Prophets spoke, and thus it is evident that the dough-Gods worshiped by our Roman Christ-cultists, are in this respect in no better condition than are the gods of the Pagans. And there would be no idolater on Earth who, prostrating themselves before those idols of plaster or stone, gold or silver, copper or brass, couldn’t say, as well as the Angelic Doctor: I worship you with devotion, O supreme Deity, you who are truly hidden beneath these forms, adoro te devote latens Deitas, quae sub his figuris vere latitas. Which clearly tends to justify all sorts of idolatry.

  But it might be said that, in certain other respects, the Pagan idols would be in better condition, and would be preferable to those of the Christians, not only because they are firmer and stronger in themselves, and are made of richer and more precious materials, but also because they are of a form, a size, and a shape that is more noble and advantageous than those of the Christians. For the Pagan idols, having a majestic form, size, and shape, as for example the large golden statue mentioned above, or a monstrous and hideous one, as some other Pagans worship them, they can, by their form and shape, inspire feelings of fear or respect, at least in the hearts and minds of the ignorant and the simple. But the idols of the Roman Christians, being only weak and vile little images of dough, cannot of themselves inspire in their adorers any feeling of fear, or of veneration; they cannot withstand, so to speak, two moments in the rain or wind, and the smallest creatures on earth can gobble them up. This is also why the Priests continually and very carefully keep them packed in boxes, for fear, as I said, that the wind might carry them away, or that rats and mice will get at them; by which it is clear that our idolatrous Christ-cultists are far crazier, more ridiculous, and more insane than the Pagans, who worship idols of wood and stone, or idols of gold or silver; so that if these arguments and reasonings of the Prophets must clearly show to the Pagans the vanity and falseness of their gods of wood and stone, and their gods of gold and silver, then with all the more reason must they show our idolatrous Christ-cultists the vanity and falseness of their gods of dough, and really ought to be ashamed to worship, as they do, Gods who melt right away in the rain, and which let themselves be immediately be carried off by the wind, and which immediately let themselves be eaten by rats and mice.

  Our God-Christ-cultist idolaters can’t claim, here, to elude the force of this argument, by distinguishing and separating, as they would like to do, the substance; they can’t claim to say here, to hide their shame, that it isn’t the bread or dough that they worship in their so-called sacrament, that the bread or the dough are no longer there, and that only the accidents remain, i.e., the visible appearances and species, but that all their substance is changed into the body and blood of their Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, and consequently, they are not idolaters, like the Pagans who only worship images or statues of wood or stones, or gold and silver, and not the true God; they cannot, I say, resort to such vain arguments, to try to cover the shame of their idolatry; because it’s obvious that it was only a case of say, as they do, that the substance of the bread and wine would change into the body and blood of their Christ, and that his soul and his divinity would, by concomitance, be present in this so-called holy sacrament, it would be no less easy for all the Pagan idolaters to say that the substance of the wood and the stone, that the substance of the gold or silver images and statues, which they worship, were really changed in the body and blood, the soul and divinity of their God Jupiter, for example, or the divinity of their God Mars, their God Mercury, their God Apollo, their God Aesculapius… and so on. And the Divinity of their Goddess Cybele, of their Goddess Juno, of their Goddess Ceres, of their Goddess Minerva, of their Goddess Diana, or their Goddess Venus… or even to say, if they pleased, that their Deities were truly inside their images, or their statues, conjointly with the substance of the wood and the stone, with the substance of the gold and the silver, of which they were composed, and consequently, they wouldn’t be idolaters either.

  If the Pagans claimed thereby to justify the worship of their idols (and it must, indeed, be for this or a similar reason, that they are led to worship their idols, since it’s not credible that their intention is only to worship wood or stone in their idols, but they claim, no doubt, to worship some Deity which they believe resides in a particular fashion inside the wood, inside the stone, inside the gold or inside the silver, of which their idols are composed) if, I say, these Pagans claimed in this way to justify the cult of their idols, our Christ-cultists wouldn't leave off blaming and condemning them, and even mocking them and their supposed belief. But they must recognize, therefore, that they themselves are culpable, worthy of condemnation, and of shame and confusion, since they themselves say and do what they find worthy of condemnation and confusion in others.

  If, for example, the priests of the idol Bel, which is mentioned in the prophet Daniel, had been possessed of the requisite skill, wisdom, or assiduity to distinguish, like our Christ-cultists, the substance from the accidents, and say that their God Bel only ate the substance of the great quantity of bread, meat, and wine that they gave him every day, and that he left them, their wives, and their children only the accidents to eat, and they were taken at their word, in such a fine and subtle doctrine, they would only have had to secretly eat what was presented to this idol; they could have made a good living; they and their wives and children, of the generous leftovers from their God, and that in the sight of everyone, without any risk; they would certainly have better covered their deception and wouldn’t have had to be caught in the fraud, as they were, and wouldn’t have had the displeasure of paying for it in so tragically. It seems that, in those days, the secret wasn’t yet known, of how to trick humans with complete impunity.

  But, as this supposedly fine secret is only a chimerical invention and fiction of the human mind, and as this fiction manifestly tends only to justify all manner of idolatry and to lead to similar imposture, and as there is no impostor on earth who couldn’t take advantage of this or any similar fiction, if it were taken into consideration, and they could even use it so advantageously and with no less self-assurance as an honest man; and that this chimerical fiction would completely annihilate all the power and proof of the argument, or the reasoning of the Prophets, to demonstrate the vanity of the cult of their idols (which argument remains the strongest, most convincing, and most conclusive one that is possible to give on this matter) it is in no way credible that an omnipotent God, who is also infinitely kind, infinitely wise, would intend, by this means, or in this manner, wish to be worshiped by humans, since this would obviously show an intention of leading them into error, and to allow them to equally worship Him in stone, plaster, gold, silver, or, if one likes, any of the accidents, or visible appearances of these sorts of things, as to worship Him in bread and wine, since there is no denying, even in the view of our Christ-cultists, that God could not equally insert Himself and hide in wood and stone, in plaster, or in gold, or in silver, and in anything else, as He would insert Himself and hide in the bread and wine, or in
their visible accidents and appearances.

  But, according to the testimony of these Prophets, which our Christ-cultists cannot dismiss, God would have clearly and consistently testified that He would not have Himself worshiped, or that anyone should worship Him in wood, or in stone, in gold, or in silver, or in any other such thing, or even in any form or shape, or in any image of that which is in the sky, on the earth, or in the waters. All that is evident from the same testimonies that our Christ-cultists can’t dismiss, therefore it is not credible; it shouldn’t even be believed that He would have wanted Himself worshiped in the bread, or under any image of dough, since He would have given direct instructions never to worship Him under any form or shape. And it’s for this same reason that we should also refuse to accept that He would have ever intended to incarnate and become human, or take, in any way, the form or shape of a human, since He forbade, He directly forbade all worship of Himself in any form or shape whatsoever.

  This is why the Apostle St. Paul saw as crazy and foolish those who would trade, as he said, the glory of the incorruptible God for the image of corruptible man, or for the shapes of birds, beasts, or quadrupeds, and saying[590] that they would be exchanging the truth of God for a lie -- Commutaverunt veritatem Dei in mendacium. And since, according to the witness of this same law, thought Divine, God forbade, or would have expressly forbidden, even on pain of death, the eating of blood and human flesh, it is not credible that the same God, in Christ, would really have wanted to give men his flesh to eat and his blood to drink, since he so clearly and strictly forbade the eating of blood, and commanded the perpetual observance of this law[591] carnem cum sanguine non comedetis, sanguinem universae carnis non comedetis;[592] quicumque comederit illum interibit, anima quae ederit sanguinem peribit de populis suis[593]. Hoc solum cave ne sanguinem comedas[594]. And this too: Mandavit in aeternum testamentum suum[595]. Legitimum sempiternum erit vobis in cunctis generationibus vestris[596]. All these testimonies and reasonings are clear and obvious, and clearly show that the Christian religion is false, and that it teaches errors, of a sort most ridiculous and absurd than those of paganism. To which, if we add that all those idolatries of the Gods of dough and flour are only based, as I’ve said, on a few empty and ambiguous words said by a wretched and miserable fanatic, there is also reason to be shocked that such idolatry should have been established and maintained, as happened among the peoples, where there are so many intelligent and enlightened men. But, as for the ambiguity of these words, which is even shown by our Christ-cultists, since they have not yet been able to come to any agreement on the meaning of these words of their divine Christ, and as some of them give them a meaning opposite to that which the others claim to give them, and as Jesus Christ himself declared his disciples sufficiently, that he meant them in a different sense than them, when he told them on this occasion that the words he told them, were spirit and life, i.e., that they should understand them in a spiritual and figurative sense, and not in the sense proper to the words themselves, as they understood them. Besides, it’s well known that his custom was to always to speak in parables, which are obscure and figurative speeches, and therefore also ambiguous speeches, which may be understood in various ways.