NUMBER 58.

A Dialogue between Monsier Jurieu and a Burgomaster of Rotterda

MONSIEUR Jurieu, the famous French minister, after a long and intimate friendship with the great Mr. Bayle, fell into as outrageous a hatred against him. That divine was a man of great vanity, and violent passion, and could not bear the eminent and growing reputation of Mons. Bayle. He therefore began to fall upon some of Mr. Bayle's principles, and Jure Theologorum, attacked his orthodoxy. Mr. Bayle defended himself; his answer was strong and lively; Mr. Jurieu was visibly defeated, and enraged at his defeat. He did upon this occasion a very scandalous and very shameful thing, but very usual with zealous divines, when truth and laymen are too hard for them, or even when they are affronted one with another. He appealed for revenge to the civil power, and presented an angry and scolding petition to the magistrates of Rotterdam to silence Mr. Bayle. Upon this subject I have formed the following dialogue between Mr. Jurieu and a Burgomaster of that city.

Jurieu. You are sensible, sir, how Mr. Bayle has exposed me in his late book: I have here drawn up a request to the magistracy to silence him from writing, and in the mean time I will answer him. I beg, sir, you will countenance this my petition.

Burgomaster. I wish, Mr. Jurieu, that you would command me to serve you in any reasonable thing. Sure you will not desire me to help to tie Mr. Bayle's hands till you give him the strapado.

Jur. Sir, his hands ought to be tied: he is an advocate for atheism. Burg. Convince me of that, and I shall think worse of him than I do at present.

Jur. Have you never read his letters upon the comet ?

Burg. Yes, and value them; and have heard you an hundred times commend them.

Jur. I did not then see the venom of them.

Burg. How could it so long escape the penetration of Mr. Jurieu ? Jur. I was weak enough then to have an esteem for the author. Burg. I hope you had a greater for religion.

Jur. I believed him a religious man.

Burg. And were angry with him before you saw any irreligion in

him.

Jur. I own that my friendship made me partial.

Burg. And is not anger as apt as friendship to make men partial? Passion is an ill guide; and if it give new lights, they are too generally false lights.

Jur. Not passion, but God has given me new lights.

Burg. What has God told you that Mr. Bayle is an atheist?
Jur. No; his book tells me so.

Burg. But you used to have very different thoughts of that book.

Jur. I have owned it: but God has given me wisdom to see my mistake.

Burg. So then you have discovered Mr. Bayle's atheism by revelation. And to deal ingenuously with you, Mr. Jurieu, I shall never make the same discovery till I have the same revelation.

Jur. Sir, you make yourself merry with revelation.

Burg. No, I don't; I only suspect that this thirst of vengeance does not come from revelation. Stick to your first text. Say that Mr. Bayle has exposed you; and therefore he is an atheist, and all his works are atheistical. Is there not something very criminal too, and offensive, in his great fame and reputation ?

Jur. Permit me, sir, to say, that I envy him not for his works and his character, by which I suffer no eclipse. I am only sorry, upon the score of religion, that so ill a man should have so many admirers, and that yourself should be one of them.

Burg. I am one; I admire him, as he is a great genius; and I reverence him as one of the best men that I ever knew, and the most free from pride and passion.

Jur. He deceives you: he is a calm bitter enemy to Jesus Christ. Burg. I doubt, sir, that your intemperate resentment deceives you : I wish that the retained advocates for Jesus Christ had less bitterness, or at least would with-hold the fierceness of their Christian zeal from breaking out against the best Christians. What other article of the Christian faith has Mr. Bayle violated, besides that of daring to thwart the opinion of the Reverend Mr. Jurieu ?

Jur. You astonish me, sir: has he not written an apology for atheism? an impious elaborate apology?

Burg. No, I know that he has not: he has too much good sense to be an atheist, and too much virtue to like atheism. He has, if you please, proved unanswerably, that a sensible atheist, governed by the laws of nature, and by the maxims and convenience of ease, is a better member of society than a mad and mischievous enthusiast, who plagues, persecutes, robs and kills his fellow creatures, in obedience to the precepts of a false religion. A proposition as certain and evident as that good is better than evil.

Jur. This discourse penetrates me with grief. No atheist can be good.

Burg. Have I said that he is? But thus you run away with things. I only affirm, that worse is not so good as better. Mr. Bayle has said no more; and is not therefore an atheist.

Jur. Sir, do but comply, you and your brethren, with my petition for silencing him, and I undertake to prove him one. Burg. This is putting the proof upon us. You would have us treat him as an atheist, and will perhaps fetch your first and best argument from that treatment, to prove him an atheist: I know your warm temper, and dare say that this argument of Mr. Bayle's atheism would soon be published all over Europe, and be made to justify the worst things that your zeal and resentiment could say of him.

Jur. Nothing too bad can be said of an atheist, nor done to him. Burg. I never saw an atheist: but if we were to punish every man whom the angry enthusiasts call so, we must take them for our magis

trates, and become only their inquisitors. A fine employment for magistrates, to exercise the whip and the sword for the clergy.

Jur. Ought not the magistrate to employ the sword for the defence of religion?

Burg. Yes, when religion is attacked by the sword.

Jur. Is there no remedy for speaking and writing against religion? Burg. Yes, that of speaking and writing; and for this purpose are the clergy appointed and maintained. These are the only arms which

the gospel and common sense give you.

Jur. Sir, I must beg your pardon: preaching and writing have no efficacy upon hardened and reprobate hearts. Where reproof is ineffectual, we must have recourse to severity and human terrors.

Burg. Human terrors may indeed bring men under the power of the clergy; and that is the only use the clergy do or can make of them. But it is a contradiction, to say that ever human terrors made a Christian the grace of God can only do that. Now, will you say that fury and dungeons teach men Christianity; or that the grace of God is to be whipped or tortured into a man?

Jur. No; but they may be the means of humbling audacious sinners, and of begetting in them a sense of religion and submission.

Burg. That word submission has a shrewd meaning. But as to religion, if that is to be propagated by such means, there is little or no use of a clergy, but only of prisons, lictors, torturers, and executioners. And a troop of dragoons may do as well, or better, than a troop of ministers, when their admonitions are ineffectual.

Jur. I mean no such thing.

Burg. What then do you mean?

Jur. Only that you should restrain notorious gainsayers, and punish blasphemers.

Burg. That is, every man who gainsays and blasphemes your opin jons.

Jur. True, if you mean my orthodox opinions.

Burg. That is the same thing. Every man thinks his opinions orthodox. Now in asking for this restraint and punishment, do you consider the consequences of what you ask? You really ask for an inquisition.

Jur. You grievously mistake me, Sir: I abhor the inquisition.

Burg. The Popish inquisition you do; but do you disclaim an inquisition of your own, or an inquisition in behalf of your religion? Jur. You may perceive, Sir, I only seek to have restraint laid upon Mr. Bayle.

Burg. Suppose that restraint will not do: What must be done next? Jur. Your own polity will tell you that. You must punish him— ⚫he disobeys the magistrate.

Burg. This is very casuistical; but let us see the end of it. Suppose that this punishment proves still too weak, and he still goes on? Jur. Your government affords you a remedy.

Burg. Yes, we can put him to death. So that here is a restraint, punishment, and death, for religion, or for a question about religion. What is an inquisition, if this be not?

Jur. There will be no occasion of going so far.

Burg. But you say we must go so far, if there be occasion; and we actually see that there is almost always occasion. No severity but the last severity will do in these cases. The very beginning implies the extremity; so that whoever calls for any punishment in matters of religion and speculation, calls for the highest punishment; and Mr. Jurieu, a Protestant divine, who bas fled from the persecution in France, where no religion but the Popish is tolerated, and has taken sanctuary in Holland, where all religions are tolerated, calls upon the Dutch magistrates for persecution against a brother refugee, and a professed Calvinist, after having for many years, and by many books, reproached the French government in the bitterest terms, for persecuting the Calvinists. How will you reconcile this contradiction in your conduct?

Jur. Easily, by maintaining that the Popish religion is a false religion, and ours the true.

Burg. The Papists make the same compliment to themselves, and the same charge against you. I am a Protestant, and I protest against persecution, as well as against other parts of Popery. I think that every religion which persecutes, is a false religion; or rather, that every persecutor is a Papist; and that every hardship or restraint for religious notions, is persecution.

Jur. You carry this reasoning very far. I hope you will allow the Christian religion to take care of itself.

Burg. Yes, by all means that are Christian: but you may as easily unite the spirit of Christianity to the spirit of Paganism, as preserve Christianity by the fierce and wicked ways that were taken to preserve Paganism. Neither Christ, nor his apostles, ever applied to the magistrate to fall upon unbelievers with the civil sword, nor even to stop their mouths.

Jur. They needed not; they had miracles to support them; and they would not apply to unbelieving magistrates.

Burg. And how came you, without miracles, to apply to us? As you shew neither miracles nor infallibility, we know you liable to be mistaken; as we are sure we should be if we practise severities for a religion which forbids them, and became mighty without them. Jur. Religion had then no connection with the civil power. Burg. Nor wanted it, nor claimed it.

Jur. The world, sir, is much altered since.

Burg. Not for the worse, I hope, having had the gospel so long in it, and after so great expense to the people for preaching it. I hope you do not find the present race of Christians more abandoned and untractable than the first Christians found the Pagans.

Jur. Sir, I am sorry to say we have not now such extraordinary assistances as they had then, nor such plentiful effusions of the divine Spirit.

Burg. Assistances of money and revenues you have had, I am sure, enough; but the assistance of the sword, and the effusion of blood, will make no amends for the want of the assistance and effusion of the peaceable Spirit of God.

Jur. I am far from saying that it does: but I cannot help saying that the power of the magistrate has had a great share in extending Christianity; and God has shewn that he approved the zeal of the first Christian emperors, by the success which he gave them.

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NUMBER 59.

Dialogue between Mr. Jurieu, and a Burgomaster, (continued.)

Burg. THE persecuting Christian emperors had much such success against Paganism, as Lewis XIV. has had against Calvinism, and got it by the same wicked methods. Mahomet had greater success than either; and it is a particular article of the Mahometan religion, that God blesses every thing that succeeds.

Jur. No such argument can be used in behalf of a false religion.

Burg. Every whit as much, as in behalf of false and barbarous measures, taken to propagate the true. Every man thinks his own religion the true religion; and every religious successful mischief that every man does, has, according to your argument the divine approbation. So that here, out of the mouth of Mr. Jurieu, is a defence of all the pious barbarities and slaughters that ever were committed in the world.

Jur. Sir, I am against all barbarities.

Burg. Yes; when they fall upon yourself or your party; but when they are exercised for you against others, they are wholesome severities. If the Duke of Guise hanged a Hugonot, you cry it was persecution and barbarity; and so say I. But if Dr. Calvin burned Servetus, it was the just doom of a heretic; nay, it was God's judgment upon heresy; and just so argued the Duke of Guise. Now to me both the Doctor and the Duke were persecutors and barbarians in those instances. But thus sects butcher and burn one another, and practise and condemn the same thing.

Jur. Pray, sir, consider, the consequences of this reasoning. You put the wolves upon the same foot with the lambs of Christ; as to the defence and security of their flocks.

Burg. Every persecutor is a wolf. Did you ever see a lamb devour a kid? Did you ever see a lamb armed with fangs and claws, and nourished with blood?

Jur. No. But I hope you, that are magistrates, ought to defend us against wolves.

Burg. Without all doubt. But do not you persuade us to mistake men for wolves, and friends for enemies?

Jur. No. But I maintain Mr. Bayle to be a wolf.

Burg. Of all men I should never take Mr. Bayle, the philosopher, for a beast of prey. Has he ever torn you, Mr. Jurieu, or threatened to eat you up?

Jur. This is raillery, and not reasoning. Sure you will allow that heretics and sceptics are wolves.

Bur. No, indeed won't I: I have known excellent men of both sorts. I will neither allow them to be wolves, nor suffer wolves to fall upon them.

Jur. Sir, you'll pardon me, if you argue thus, I cannot argue with

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