despise the widow nor the orphan; make restitution of that which does
not belong to you; fly all occasions of sin; carefully keep My
commandments; and honor Mary My very dear mother.
"Such of you who shall not profit by the warnings I give them, such as
shall not believe My words, will, by their obstinacy, bring down My
avenging arm upon their heads; they shall be overwhelmed by
misfortunes, which shall be the forerunners of their final and unhappy
end; after which they shall be cast into everlasting flames, where they
shall suffer endless pains--the just punishment reserved for their
crimes.
"On the other hand, such of you as shall make a holy use of the warnings
of God, given them in this letter, shall appease His wrath, and shall
obtain from Him, after a sincere confession of their faults, the
remission of their sins, how great soever they may be.
"With permission, Bourges, July 30, 1771.
"DE BEAUVOIR, Lieut.-Gen. of Police.
"This letter must be carefully kept, in honor of our Lord Jesus Christ."
N.B.--It must be observed that this piece of absurdity was printed at
Bourges, without there having been, either at Tréguier or at Paimpole,
the smallest pretence that could afford occasion for such an imposture.
However, we will suppose that in a future age some miracle-finder shall
think fit to prove a point in divinity by the appearance of Jesus Christ
on the altar at Paimpole, will he not think himself entitled to quote
Christ's own letter, printed at Bourges "with permission"? Will he not
prove, by facts, that in our time Jesus worked miracles everywhere? Here
is a fine field opened for the Houtevilles and the Abadies.
SECTION III.
_A Fresh Instance of the Most Horrible Superstition._
The thirty conspirators who fell upon the king of Poland, in the night
of November 3, of the present year, 1771, had communicated at the altar
of the Holy Virgin, and had sworn by the Holy Virgin to butcher their
king.
It seems that some one of the conspirators was not entirely in a state
of grace, when he received into his stomach the body of the Holy
Virgin's own Son, together with His blood, under the appearance of
bread; and that while he was taking the oath to kill his king, he had
his god in his mouth for only two of the king's domestics. The guns and
pistols fired at his majesty missed him; he received only a slight
shot-wound in the face, and several sabre-wounds, which were not mortal.
His life would have been at an end, but that humanity at length combated
superstition in the breast of one of the assassins named Kosinski. What
a moment was that when this wretched man said to the bleeding prince:
"You are, however, my king!" "Yes," answered Stanislaus Augustus, "and
your good king, who has never done you any harm." "True," said the
other; "but I have taken an oath to kill you."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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