CHA P. XX.

Whether it is of Service to indulge the People in SUPERSTITION:

UCH is the weakness and perversity of the

SUC

human race, that it is undoubtedly more eligible for them to be subject to every poffible kind of fuperftition, provided it is not of a bloody nature, than to live without religion. Man has always ftood in need of a curb; and though it was certainly very ridiculous to facrifice to fauns, fatyrs, and naïads, yet it was more reasonable and advantageous to adore even those fantastic images of the Deity, than to be giyen up to atheism. An atheift of any capacity and invested with power, would be as dreadful a fcourge to the rest of mankind, as the most bloody enthusiast.

When men have not true notions of the Deity, falfe ideas muft fupply their place, like as in troublesome and calamitous times, we are obliged to trade with base money when good is not to be procured. The heathens were afraid of committing crimes, left they should be punish

ed

ed by their falfe gods. The Malabar dreads the anger of his pagods. Wherever there is a fixed community, religion is neceffary; the laws are a curb upon open crimes, and religion upon. private ones.

But when once men have embraced a pure and holy religion, fuperftition then becomes not only needlefs, but very hurtful. Thofe whom God has been pleafed to nourish with bread, ought not to be fed upon acorns.

Superftition is to religion what aftrology is. to aftronomy, the foolish danghter of a wife mother. These two daughters however have for a long time governed this world with uncontroulable sway..

In those dark and barbarous times amongst us, when there were hardly two feudal lords who had a New-Teftament in their houses, it might be pardonable to prefent the common people with fables; I mean thofe feudal lords, their ignorant wives, and brutish vaffals. They were then made to believe, that St. Chriftopher carried the child Jefus on his fhoulders from one fide of the river to the other: they were entertained with ftories of witches and witchcraft; they readily believed that St. Genou cured s

L5

cured the gout, and St. Clara fore eyes. The children believed in hobgoblins, and their fathers in St. Francis' girdle; and relicks swarmed out of number.

The common people have continued to be infected with the ruft of these fuperftitions, even after religion became more enlightened. It is well known that when Mr. de Noailles, bishop of Chalons, ordered the pretended relick of the holy navel to be taken away and thrown into the fire, the whole city of Chalons joined in a profecution against him; but he, who had refoJution equal to his piety, foon brought the people of his diocefe to believe, that one may adore Jefus Chrift in fpirit and in truth, without hav ing his navel in a church.

Thofe whom we call Janfenifts were not a little inftrumental in rooting out by degrees, from the minds of the greatest part of the nation, the many abfurd notions which were the difgrace of our holy religion. And it no longer continued to be thought sufficient to repeat the prayer of thirty days to the bleffed Virgin, to obtain whatever one fhould afk, and fin with impunity.

At

At length, the lower kind of people began to imagine, that it was not St. Genevieve who gave rain or caused it to cease, but God himself, who difpofed the elements according to his good will and pleasure. The monks have been aftonished to find their faints no longer perform miracles; and if the writers of the life of St. Francis Xavier were to come again into the world, they would not venture to affert that their faint raised nine people from the dead; that he was at one and the fame time, both on the fea and on fhore; or that a crab brought him his crucifix, which he had dropped out of his hand into the water.

It has happened much the fame with regard to excommunications. . Our French historians. tell us, that when king Robert was excommunicated by pope Gregory V. for having married the princess Bertha, who was his god-mother, his domeftics threw all the victuals that came from his table out of the windows, and that his. queen Bertha was delivered of a goofe, as a punishment for this inceftuous alliance. It is not likely that the pages of the prefence to a king of France now-a-days, would throw his dinner into the ftreets if he fhould be excom◄ municated,; nor would it be very readily beL 6 lieved,

lieved, that the queen was brought to bed of a bird.

If there are fome few Convulfionists yet to be met with in an obfcure corner of the town, it is a kind of loufy disease that infects only the dregs of the people. Reafon is every day. making her way into the tradesman's countinghouse, as well as into the palaces of our nobility. It behoves us then to cultivate the fruits of this reafon, more especially as it is impoffible to prevent them from sprouting forth. France, after having been enlightened by a Pascal, a Nicole, an Arnaud, a Boffuet, a Defcartes, a Gaffendi, a Bayle, a Fontenelle, and other bright geniuffes, like them, is no longer to be governed as in the times of Garaffe and Mênot,

If the mafters of error, I mean the great mafters who were fo long time prayed to and reverenced for brutalizing the human species, were at prefent to enjoin us to believe that the feed muft rot in the earth before it can sprout, . that this earth continues immoveable on its bafis, without revolving about the fun; that the tides are not the natural effect of gravitation;

that