Christians who inhabit Rome, in place of two millions of Jovians* who filled it in Trajan's time, firmly believe that the Jews meet in their synagogues on a Saturday, for the purpose of blaspheming. A Cordelier has no hesitation in applying the epithet of blasphemer to a Dominican, who says that the Holy Virgin was born in original sin; notwithstanding that the Dominicans have a bull from the Pope which permits them to teach the maculate conception in their convents, and that, besides this bull, they have in their forum the express declaration of St. Thomas Aquinas. The first origin of the schism of three-fourths of Switzerland, and a part of Lower Germany, was a quarrel in the cathedral church of Frankfort, between a Cordelier, whose name I forget, and a Dominican named Vigand. Both were drunk, according to the custom of that day. The drunken Cordelier, who was preaching, thanked God that he was not a Jacobin, swearing that it was necessary to exterminate the blaspheming Jacobins, who believed that the Holy Virgin had been born in mortal sin, and delivered from sin only by the merits of her son. The drunken Jacobin cried out: "Thou hast lied; thou thyself art a blasphemer." The Cordelier, descending from the pulpit with a great iron crucifix in his hand, laid it about his adversary, and left him almost dead upon the spot. To revenge this outrage, the Dominicans worked many miracles in Germany and Switzerland; these miracles were designed to prove their faith. They at length found means to imprint the marks of our Lord Jesus Christ on one of their lay brethren, named Jetzer. This operation was performed at Berne by the Holy Virgin herself; but she borrowed the hand of the subprior, who dressed himself in female attire, and put a glory round his head. The poor little lay brother, exposed all bloody_to the veneration of the people, on the altar of the Dominicans at Berne, at last cried out murder! sacrilege! The monks, in order to quiet him * Jovians, worshippers of Jupiter. as quickly as possible, administered to him a host sprinkled with corrosive sublimate; but the excess of the dose made him discharge the host from his stomach.* The monks then accused him, to the bishop of Lausanne, of horrible sacrilege. The indignant people of Berne in their turn accused the monks; and four of them were burned at Berne, on the 13th of May, 1509, at the Marsilly-gate. Such was the termination of this abominable affair, which determined the people of Berne to choose a religion, bad indeed in Catholic eyes, but which delivered them from the Cordeliers and the Jacobins. The number of similar sacrileges is incredible. Such are the effects of party spirit. The Jesuits maintained, for a hundred years, that the Jansenists were blasphemers, and proved it by a thousand lettres-de-cachet; the Jansenists, by upwards of four thousand volumes, demonstrated that it was the Jesuits who blasphemed. The writer of the " Gazettes Ecclésiastiques," pretends that all honest men blaspheme against him; while he himself blasphemes from his garret on high against every honest man in the kingdom. The gazette-writer's publisher blasphemes in return, and complains that he is starving. He would find it better to be honest and polite. One thing equally remarkable and consoling is, that never, in any country of the earth, among the wildest idolators, has any man been considered as a blasphemer for acknowledging one supreme, eternal, and allpowerful God. It certainly was not for having acknowledged this truth that Socrates was condemned to the hemlock; for the doctrine of a Supreme God was announced in all the Grecian mysteries. It was a faction that destroyed Socrates; he was accused, at a venture, See the Travels of Burnet, bishop of Salisbury; the History of the Dominicans of Berne, by Abraham Ruchat, professor at Lausanne; and the Procès-verbal of the Commemoration of the Dominicans, and the original of the process, preserved in the library at Berne. The same fact is related in the Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations. May it be related everywhere! It was unknown in France twenty years ago. VOL. 11. E of not recognising the secondary gods, and on this point it was that he was accused as a blasphemer. The first Christians were accused of blasphemy for the same reason; but the partisans of the ancient religion of the empire, the Jovians, who reproached the primitive Christians with blasphemy, were at length condemned as blasphemers themselves, under Theodosius II. doDryden says This side to day, to-morrow t'other burns, BODY. BODY and matter are here the same thing, although there is hardly any such thing as a synonyme in the most rigorous sense of the word. There have been persons who by this word body have understood spirit also. They have said spirit originally signifies breath; only a body can breathe; therefore body and spirit may, after all, be the same thing. In this sense, La Fontaine said to the celebrated duke de la Rochefoucault: J'entens les esprits corps et pétris de matière. In the same sense, he says to madame Sablière :— Je subtiliserais un morceau de matière, Quintessence d'atôme, extrait de la lumière, Je ne sais quoi plus vif et plus subtil encor. . ... No one thought of harassing good monsieur La Fontaine, or bringing him to trial for his expressions. Were a poor philosopher, or even a poet, to say as much now-a-days, how many would there be to fall on him! How many scribblers to sell their extracts for sixpence! How many knaves, for the sole purpose of making mischief, to cry philosopher! peripatetic! dis * The illustration in this article is peculiarly lively and piquant, and as ably exposes the folly of modern persecution as of that which has passed away. The extent of the interested ignorance and barbarity may not be so great, but the sacred principle of social justice is equally violated.-T. $ ciple of Gassendi! pupil of Locke and the primitive fathers! damnable!* As we know not what a spirit is, so also we are ignorant of what a body is: we see various properties, but what is the subject in which those properties reside? There is nothing but body, said Democritus and Epicurus; there is no such thing as body, said the disciples of Zeno, of Elia. Berkeley, bishop of Cloyne, is the last who, by a hundred captious sophisms, has pretended to prove that bodies do not exist. They have, says he, neither colour, not smell, nor heat; all these modalities are in your sensations, not in the objects. He might have spared himself the trouble of proving this truth, for it was already sufficiently known. But from thence he passes to extent and solidity, which are essential to body; and thinks he proves that there is no extent in a piece of green cloth, because the cloth is not in reality green, the sensation of green being in ourselves only; therefore the sensation of extent is likewise in ourselves only. Having thus destroyed extent, he concludes that solidity, which is attached to it, falls of itself; and therefore that there is nothing in the world but our ideas. So that, according to this doctor, ten thousand men killed by ten thousand cannon-shots, are in reality nothing more than ten thousand apprehensions of our understanding: and when a female becomes pregnant, it is only one idea lodged in another idea, from which a third idea will be produced. Surely, the bishop of Cloyne might have saved himself from falling into this excessive absurdity. He thinks he shows that there is no extent, because a body * It might be concluded from this passage that a Constitutional Society" existed in Paris, to whom Voltaire made these applications; and in a general sense there was such a body; for corrupt society always produces weak and bigoted alarmists, and interested pettifoggers to make use of them. Progressive freedom, however, will brush off these vermin in due course, to meet the contempt of posterity, in common with inquisitors, witch-finders, and the similar excrement of former days. It appears as if the body politic, like the body natural, possessed its nauseous secretions," and these are of them."-T. has appeared to him four times as large through a glass as to his naked eye, and four times as small through another glass. Hence he concludes, that, since a body cannot be at the same time four feet, sixteen feet, and but one foot in extent, there is no extent; therefore there is nothing. He had only to take any measure, and say of whatever extent this body may appear to me to be, it extends to so many of these measures. He might very easily see that extent and solidity were quite different from sound, colour, taste, smell, &c. It is quite clear that these are sensations excited in us by the configuration of parts; but extent is not a sensation. When this lighted coal goes out, I am no longer warm; when the air is no longer struck, I cease to hear; when this rose withers, I no longer smell it: but the coal, the air, and the rose, have extent without me. Berkeley's paradox is not worth refuting. Thus argued Zeno and Parmenides of old; and very clever they were: they would prove to you that a tortoise went along as swift as Achilles, for there was no such thing as motion: they discussed a hundred other questions equally important. Most of the Greeks made philosophy a juggle; and they transmitted their art to our schoolmen. Bayle himself was occasionally one of the set, and embroidered cobwebs like the rest. In his article Zeno, against the divisible extent of matter and the contiguity of bodies, he ventures to say what would not be tolerated in six months' geome trician. any It is worth knowing how Berkeley was drawn into this paradox. A long while ago, I had some conversation with him; and he told me that his opinion originated in our being unable to conceive what the subject of this extension is; and certainly, in his book, he triumphs, when he asks Hylas what this subject, this substratum, this substance, is? It is the extended body, answers Hylas. Then the bishop, under the name of Philonous, laughs at him: and poor Hylas, finding that he has said that extension is the subject of extension, and has therefore talked nonsense, remains quite confused, acknowledges that he understands no |