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Weights and measures differ as much as customs; so that which is correct in the fauxbourgh of Montmatre, is otherwise in the abbey of St. Denis. The Lord pity us!

CYRUS.

people, who, alluding to inviduals of a rank superior to their own, say, we know the gentlemen, but the gentlemen know not us. It is the same with Alexander, in the narratives of the Jews. No historian of Alexander has mixed up his name with that of the Jews; but Josephus fails MANY learned men, and Rollin among not to assert, that Alexander came to pay the number, in an age in which reason is his respects at Jerusalem; that he worcultivated, have assured us, that Javan, shipped, I know not what Jewish pontiff, who is supposed to be the father of the called Jaddus, who had formerly preGreeks, was the grandson of Noah. Idicted to him the conquest of Persia in a believe it precisely as I believe that dream. Petty people are often visionary Persius was the founder of the kingdom in this way: the great dream less of their of Persia, and Niger of Nigritia. The greatness. only thing which grieves me is, that the Greeks have never known anything of Noah, the venerable author of their race. I have elsewhere noted my astonishment and chagrin, that our father Adam should be absolutely unknown to everybody from Japan to the Straits of Le Maire, except to a small people to whom he was known too late. The science of genealogy is doubtless in the highest degree certain, but exceedingly difficult.

When Tarik conquered Spain, the vanquished said they had foretold it. They would have said the same thing to Gengis, to Tamerlane, and to Mahomet II.

God forbid that I should compare the Jewish prophets to the predictors of good fortune, who pay their court to conquerors by foretelling them that which has come to pass. I merely observe, that the Jews produce some testimony from their nation, in respect to the actions of Cyrus, about one hundred and sixty years before he was born.

It is neither upon Javan, upon Noah, or upon Adam, that my doubts fall at present; it is upon Cyrus, and I seek It is said, in the forty-fifth chapter of not which of the fables in regard to him Isaiah, "Thus saith the Lord to his anis preferable, that of Herodotus, of Cte-nointed (his Christ) Cyrus, whose sias, of Xenophon, of Diodorus, or of right hand I have holden to subdue naJustin, all of which contradict one ano- tions before him; and I will loosen the ther. Neither do I ask why it is obsti- loins of kings, to open before him the nately determined to give the name of two-leaved gates: and the gates shall not Cyrus to a barbarian called Khosrou; be shut. I will go before thee, and make and those of Cyropolis and Persepolis, the crooked places straight: I will break to cities which never bore them. in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron. And I will give thee the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I the Lord, who call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel," &c.

I drop all which has been said of the Grand Cyrus, including the romance of that name, and the travels which the Scottish Ramsay made him undertake; and simply inquire into some instructions of his to the Jews, of which that people make mention.

I remark, in the first place, that no author has said a word of the Jews in the history of Cyrus; and that the Jews alone venture to notice themselves, in speaking of this prince.

They resemble, in some degree, certain

Some learned men have scarcely been able to digest the fact of the Lord honoring with the name of his Christ an idolate, of the religion of Zoroaster. They even dare to say, that the Jews, in the manner of all the weak who flatter the powerful, invented predictions in favour of Cyrus.

These learned persons respect Daniel

DANTE.

titled "The Travels of Cyrus," consist The pleasantry of the romance, elin its discovery of a Messiah everywher

no more than Isaiah, but treat all the prophecies attributed to the latter with similar contempt to that manifested by St. Jerome for the adventures of Susan--at Memphis, at Babylon, at Ecbatana,

nah, of Bell and the Dragon, and of the three children in the fiery furnace.

and at Tyre, as at Jerusalem; and as author having been a quaker, an anamuch in Plato as in the gospel. The baptist, an anglican, and a presbyterian, had finally become a Fenelonist at Cam

The sages in question seem not to be penetrated with sufficient esteem for the prophets. Many of them even pretend, that to clearly see the future is metaphy-bray, under the illustrious author of sically impossible. To see that which is Telemachus. Having since been made not, say they, is a contradiction in terms; preceptor to the child of a great nobleand as the future exists not, it consequently cannot be seen. They add, that and govern the universe; and, in conseman, he thought himself born to instruct frauds of this nature abound in all na-quence, gives lessons to Cyrus, in order tions; and, finally, that everything is to be doubted which is recorded in ancient history.

They observe, that if there was ever a formal prophecy, it is that of the discovery of America in the tragedy of Seneca :

Venient annis

Secula seris quibus oceanus
Vincula rerum laxet, et ingens
Pateat Tellus, &c.

A time may arrive when ocean will loosen the chains of nature, and lay open a vast world.-The four stars of the southern pole are advanced still more clearly in Dante, yet no one takes either Seneca or Dante for diviners.

As to Cyrus, it is difficult to know whether he died nobly or had his head cut off by Tomyris; but I am anxious, I confess, that the learned men who have cut off the head of Cyrus may be right. It is not amiss, that these illustrious robbers on the highway of nations, who pillage and deluge the earth with blood, should be occasionally chastised.

the most orthodox theologian in existto render him at once the best king and

ence.

the grace of congruity.
These two rare qualities appear to lack

Ramsay leads his pupil to the school of Zoroaster, and then to that of the young Jew Daniel, the greatest philosopher that ever existed. He not only explained science, but discovered and interpreted dreams, which is the acme of human even such as had been forgotten, which none but him could ever accomplish. It might be expected that Daniel would present the beautiful Susannah to the prince, it being in the natural manner of romance; but he did nothing of the kind.

conversation with Nebuchadnezzar, during Cyrus, in return, has some very long the time that he was an ox; during which transformation, Ramsay makes Nebuchadnezzar ruminate like a profound theologian.

whom this work was composed, preHow astonishing that the prince, for ferred the chase and the opera to perus

Cyrus has always been the subject of remark, Xenophon began and Ramsay unfortunately ended. Lastly, to showing it! the sad fate which sometimes attends heroes, Danchet has made him the subject of a tragedy.

This tragedy is entirely unknown: the Cyropedia of Xenophon is more popular, because it is in Greek. The Travels of Cyrus are less so, although printed in French and English, and wonderfully erudite.

DANTE.

Dante. The Italians call him divine, You wish to become acquainted with but it is a mysterious divinity; few men understand his oracles; and although there are commentators, that may be an additional reason why he is little comprehended. His reputation will last,

because he is little read. Twenty pointed things in him are known by rote, which spare people the trouble of being acquainted with the remainder.

that he composed his divine comedy of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.

[Voltaire here enters into a description of the Inferno, which it is unnecessary to The divine Dante was an unfortunate insert, after the various translations into person. Imagine not that he was divine English. The conclusion, however, exin his own day: no one is a prophet athibiting our author's usual vivacity, is home. It is true he was a prior, but not retained.] a prior of monks, but a prior of Florence; >that is to say, one of its senators.

Is all this in the comic style? No. In the heroic manner? No. What then He was born in 1260, when the arts is the taste of this poem? An exceeding began to flourish in his native land. wild one; but it contains verses so happy Florence, like Athens, abounded in great-and piquant, that it has not lain dormant ness, wit, levity, inconstancy, and faction. The white faction was in great credit; it was called after a Signora Bianca. The opposing party was called the blacks, in contradistinction. These two parties sufficed not for the Florentines; they had also Guelphs and Ghibelines. The greater part of the whites were Ghibelines, attached to the party of the emperors; the blacks, on the other hand, sided with the Guelphs, the partisans of the popes.

All these factions loved liberty, but did all they could to destroy it. Pope Boniface VIII. wished to profit by these divisions, in order to annihilate the power of the emperors in Italy. He declared Charles de Valois, brother of Philip the fair, King of France, his vicar in Italy. The vicar came well armed, and chased away the whites and the Ghibelines, and made himself detested by blacks and by Guelphs. Dante was a white and a Ghibeline; he was driven away among the first, and his house rased to the ground. We may judge if he could be, for the remainder of his life, favourable towards the French interest and to the popes. It is said, however, that he took Journey to Paris, and, to relieve his chagrin, turned theologian, and disputed vigorously in the schools. It is added, that the Emperor Henry VIII. did nothing for him, Ghibeline as he was; and that he repaired to Frederick of Arragon, King of Sicily, and returned as poor as he went. He subsequently died in poverty at Ravenna, at the age of fifty-six.

It was during these various peregrinations

for four centuries, and never will be laid aside. A poem, moreover, which puts popes into hell excites attention; and the sagacity of commentators is exhausted in correctly ascertaining who it is that Dante has damned; it being, of course, of the first consequence not to be deceived in a matter so important.

A chair and a lecture have been founded with a view to the exposition of this classic author. You ask me why the Inquisition acquiesces. I reply, that in Italy the Inquisition understand raillery, and know that raillery in verse never does any harm.

DAVID.

We are called upon to reverence David as a prophet, as a king, as the ancestor of the holy spouse of Mary, as a man who merited the mercy of God from his penitence.

I will boldly assert that the article DAVID, which raised up so many enemies to Bayle, the first author of a dictionary of facts and of reasonings, deserves not the strange noise which was made about it. It was not David that people were anxious to defend, but Bayle whom they were solicitous to destroy. Certain preachers of Holland, his mortal enemies, were so far blinded by their enmity, as to blame him for having praised popes whom he thought meritorious, and for having refuted the unjust calumny with which they had been assailed.

This absurd and shameful piece of

injustice was signed by a dozen theolo

massacred all the inhabitants, men, wo

gians, on the 20th December, 1698, in the same consistory in which they pre-men, and children at the breast.—Ad tended to take up the defence of King why the children at the breast? Fr David. A great proof that the condemna- fear, says the text, these children shoul tion of Bayle arose from personal feelings, carry the news to King Achish, who wa is supplied by the fact of that which hap- } deceived into a belief that these expedi pened in 1761, to Mr. Peter Anet, in tions were undertaken against the IsraelLondon. The doctors Chandler and ites, by an absolute lie on the part of Palmer having delivered funeral sermons David. on the death of King George II. in which they compared him to King David, Mr. { Anet, who regarded not this comparison as honourable to the deceased monarch, published his famous dissertation, entitled "The History of the Man after God's own Heart." In that work, he makes it Ishbosheth succeeds his father Saul, clear that George II. a king much more and David makes war upon him. Fipowerful than David, did not fall intonally, Ishbosheth is assassinated. the errors of the Jewish sovereign, and consequently could not display the penitence which was the origin of the comparison.

He follows, step by step, the books of Kings, examines the conduct of David with more severity than Bayle, and on it founds an opinion, that the Holy Spirit praises not actions of the nature of those attributed to David. The English author, in fact, judges the King of Judah upon the notions of justice and injustice which prevail at the present time.

He cannot approve of the assembly of a band of robbers by David, to the amount of four hundred; of his being armed with the sword of Goliah, by the high priest Abimelech, from whom he received hallowed bread.

He could not think well of the expedition of David against the farmer Nabal, in order to destroy his abode with fire and sword, because Nabal refused contributions to his troop of robbers; or of the death of Nabal a few days afterwards, the widow of whom David immediately espoused.

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He condemned his conduct to King Achish, the possessor of a few villages in the district of Gath. David, at the head of five or six hundred banditti, made inroads upon the allies of his benefactor Achish. He pillaged the whole of them, {

Again: Saul loses a battle, and wishes his armourbearer to slay him, who refuses; he wounds himself, but not effectually, and at his own desire a young man despatches him, who, carrying the news to David, is massacred for his pains.

David, now possessed of the sole dominion, surprised the little town or village of Rabbah, and puts all the inhabitants to death by the most extraordinary devices-sawing them asunder, destroying them with harrows and axes of iron, and burning them in brick-kilns.

After these expeditions, there was a famine in the country for three years. In fact, from this mode of making war, countries must necessarily be badly cultivated. The Lord was consulted as to the causes of the famine. The answer was easy in a country which produces corn with difficulty, when labourers are baked in brick-kilns and sawed into pieces, few people remain to cultivate the earth. The Lord, however, replied, that it was because Saul has formerly slain some Gibeonites.

What is David's speedy remedy? He assembles the Gibeonites, informs them that Saul had committed a great sin in inaking war upon them, and that Saul not being like him, a man after God's own heart, it would be proper to punish him in his posterity. He therefore makes them a present of seven grandsons of Saul to be hanged, who were accordingly hanged, because there had been a farmine

Mr. Anet is so just as not to insist upon the adultery with Bathsheba, and the murder of her husband, as these crime

were pardoned in consequence of the repentance of David. They were horrible and abominable, but being remitted by the Lord, the English author absolves them also.

No one complained in England of the author, and the parliament took little interest in the history of a kingling of a petty district in Syria.

Let justice be done to Father Calmet; he has kept within bounds in his dictionary of the Bible, in the article DAVID. "We pretend not," said he, "to approve of the conduct of David; but it is to be believed that this excess of cruelty was committed before his repentance on the score of Bathsheba." Possibly, he repented of all his crimes at the same time, which were sufficiently numerous.

were written; but I am certain that it was neither Polybius nor Tacitus.

I shall not speak here of the murder of Uriah, and of the adultery with Bathsheba; these facts being sufficiently well known. The ways of God are not the ways of man, since he permitted the descent of Jesus Christ from this very Bathsheba, everything being rendered pure by so holy a mystery.

I ask not now how Jurieu had the audacity to persecute the wise Bayle for not approving all the actions of the good King David. I only inquire, why a man like Jurieu is suffered to molest a man like Bayle?

DECRETALS.

LETTERS of the popes, which regulate points of doctrine and discipline, and which have the force of law in the Latin

Besides the genuine ones collected by Denis le Petit, there is a collection of false ones, the author of which, as well as the date, is unknown. It was an Archbishop of Mayence, called Riculphus, who cir

Let us here ask, what appears to us to be an important question. May we not exhibit a portion of contempt in the arti-church. cle DAVID, and treat of his person and glory with the respect due to the sacred books? It is the interest of mankind that crime should in no case be sanctified. { What signifies what he is called, who massacres the wives and children of his allies;culated it in France, about the end of the who hangs the grandchildren of his king; who saws his unhappy captives in two; tears them to pieces with harrows, or burns them in brick-kilns? These actions we judge, and not the letters which compose the name of the criminal. His name neither augments nor diminishes the criminality.

The more David is revered after his reconciliation with God, the more are his previous qualities condemnable.

If a young peasant, in searching after she-asses, finds a kingdom, it is no common affair. If another peasant cures his king of insanity by a tune on the harp, that is still more extraordinary. But when this petty player on the harp becomes king, because he meets a village priest in secret, who pours a bottle of olive oil on is head, the affair is more marvellous still.

I know nothing either of the writers of these marvels, or of the time in which they

eighth century; he had also brought to Worms an epistle of Pope Gregory, which had never before been heard of; but no vestige of the latter is at present remain{ing, while the false decretals, as we shall see, have met with the greatest success for eight centuries.

This collection bears the name of Isidore Mercator, and comprehends an infinite number of decrees falsely ascribed to the popes, from Clement I. down to Siricus. The false donation of Constantine; the council of Rome under Sylvester; the letter of Athanasius to Mark; that of Anastasius to the bishops of Germany and Burgundy; that of Sixtus III. to the Orientals; that of Leo I. relating to the privileges of the rural bishops; that of John I. to the Archbishop Zachariah; one of Boniface II. to Eulalia of Alexandria; one of John III. to the bishops of France and Burgandy; one of Gregory, containing a privilege of the

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