De Tribus Impostoribus, A. D. 1230: The Three Impostors: Translated (with notes and comments) from a French manuscript of the work written in the year 1716, with a dissertation on the original treatise and a bibliography of the various editions
Religion
De Tribus Impostoribus, A. D. 1230: The Three Impostors: Translated (with notes and comments) from a French manuscript of the work written in the year 1716, with a dissertation on the original treatise and a bibliography of the various editions
De tribus impostoribus -- Bibliography; Rationalism
Now can one conceive that God would maintain a creature, not only
who curses him unceasingly, and who mortally hates him, but even
who endeavors to corrupt his friends, to have the pleasure of
being cursed by a multitude of mouths. How can we comprehend that
God should preserve the Devil to have him do his worst to dethrone
him if he could, and to alienate from his service his elect and his
favorites? What would be the object of God in such conduct? Now what
can we say in speaking of the Devil and Hell. If God does all, and
nothing can be done without him how does it happen that the Devil
hates him, curses him, and takes away his friends? Now he is either
agreeable, or he is not. If he is agreeable, it is certain that the
Devil in cursing him only does what he should, since he can only do
what God wills. Consequently, it is not the Devil, but God in person
who curses himself; a situation to my idea more absurd than ever.
If it is not in accord with his will then it is not true that he
is all powerful. Thus there are two principles, one of Good, the
other of Evil, one which causes one thing and the other that does
quite the contrary. To what does this reasoning lead us? To avow
without contradiction that there is no God such as is conceived,
nor Devil, nor Soul, nor Paradise, such as has been depicted, and
that the Theologians, that is to say, those who relate fables for
truth, are persons of bad faith who maliciously abuse the credulity
of the ignorant by telling them what they please, as if the people
were capable of nothing but chimera or who should be fed with insipid
food in which is found only emptiness, nothingness and folly, and not
a grain of the salt of truth and wisdom. Centuries have passed, one
after the other, in which mankind has been infatuated by these absurd
imaginations which have been combatted; but during all the period
there have also been found sincere minds who have written against the
injustice of the Doctors in Tiaras, Mitres and Gowns, who have kept
mankind in such deplorable blindness which seems to increase every day.
FINIS.
By permission of the Lord Baron de Hohendorf I have compiled this
epitome out of the manuscript Library of his Most August Highness,
Duke Eugene of Sabaudio, in the year 1716.
APPENDICITIS.
A DISEASE COMMON TO NEARLY ALL WORKS OF THIS CHARACTER, AND WHICH
CONDITION IS PAST ALL SURGERY.
Another sketch of Mahomet translated from the "Edition en Suisse,"
1793, and which may interest worshippers of Arabian mysteries evolved
from imaginative brains, tinctured with extracts from "Thory's Ada
Latomorum," and similar works, and embellished with effects from
"Michael Strogoff."
XXII.
Of Mahomet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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