A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 02 · Voltaire
SECTION II.
It is sometimes very dangerous to make a book. Silhouète, before he could suspect that he should one day be comptroller-general of the finances, published a translation of Warburton's "Alliance of Church and State," and his father-in-law, Astuce the physician, gave to the public the "Memoirs," in which the author of the Pentateuch might have found all the astonishing things which happened so long before his time. The very day that Silhouète came into office, some good friend of his sought out a copy of each of these books by the father-in-law and son-in-law, in order to denounce them to the parliament and have them condemned to the flames, according to custom. They immediately bought up all the copies in the kingdom, whence it is that they are now extremely rare. There is hardly a single philosophical or theological book in which heresies and impieties may not be found by misinterpreting, or adding to, or subtracting from, the sense. Theodore of Mopsuestes ventured to call the "Canticle of Canticles," "a collection of impurities." Grotius pulls it in pieces and represents it as horrid, and Chatillon speaks of it as "a scandalous production." Perhaps it will hardly be believed that Dr. Tamponet one day said to several others: "I would engage to find a multitude of heresies in the Lord's Prayer if this prayer, which we know to have come from the Divine mouth, were now for the first time published by a Jesuit."
I would proceed thus: "Our Father, who art in heaven--" a proposition inclining to heresy, since God is everywhere. Nay, we find in this expression the leaven of Socinianism, for here is nothing at all said of the Trinity. "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven--" another proposition tainted with heresy, for it said again and again in the Scriptures that God reigns eternally. Moreover it is very rash to ask that His will may be done, since nothing is or can be done but by the will of God. "Give us this day our daily bread"--a proposition directly contrary to what Jesus Christ uttered on another occasion: "Take no thought, saying what shall we eat? or what shall we drink?... for after all these things do the Gentiles seek.... But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors--" a rash proposition, which compares man to God, destroys gratuitous predestination, and teaches that God is bound to do to us as we do to others. Besides, how can the author say that we forgive our debtors? We have never forgiven them a single crown. No convent in Europe ever remitted to its farmers the payment of a sou. To dare to say the contrary is a formal heresy.
_Tout ce fatras fat du chauvre en son temps,_ _Linge il devint par l'art des tisserands;_ _Puis en lambeaux des pilons le pressèrent_ _Il fut papier. Cent cerveaux à l'envers_ _De visions à l'envi le chargèrent;_ _Puis on le brûle; il vole dans les airs,_ _Il est fumée aussi bien que la gloire._ _De nos travaux voilà quelle est l'histoire,_ _Tout est fumée, et tout nous fait sentir_ _Ce grand néant qui doit nous engloutir._ This miscellaneous rubbish once was flax, Till made soft linen by the honest weaver; But when at length it dropped from people's backs, 'Twas turned to paper, and became receiver Of all that fifty motley brains could fashion; So now 'tis burned without the least compassion; It now, like glory, terminates in smoke; Thus all our toils are nothing but a joke-- All ends in smoke; each nothing that we follow Tells of the nothing that must all things swallow.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.