De tribus impostoribus; Rationalism; Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632-1677
any connection with this work, his enemies, who made so much clamour
against his dialogues concerning the Trinity and Polygamy, would not
have spared him. But how can we reconcile Browne and Genebrard who
consider Ochinus as a Mahometan, and at the same time declare that he
was neither a disciple of Moses, nor of Jesus Christ, nor of Mahomet!
Naude, by a strange mistake attributes the work to Villeneuve,
a comparatively ignorant writer, and Ernstius declares that at
Rome he had learned from Campannelle, that Muret, a polished and
accomplished author, had written the work more than two centuries after
Villaneuve. Ernstius is mistaken. Campannelle also refutes himself,
for in the preface to his work, "Atheism overthrown," and still more
explicitly in his discourse, "Paganism indefensible," he affirms
that this work came from Germany, but that it was the composition of
Muret; a statement entirely opposite to that of Florimond de Remond
alluded to before, which holds that the work was written in Germany
but published elsewhere. Muret has therefore been falsely accused,
and stands in need of no apology. They have judged of his religion
from his life. The Huguenot party, vexed that after embracing their
doctrines he had abandoned them forever, did not spare him on this
occasion, and Beza, in his "Ecclesiastical History," reproaches
him with two crimes, the second being Atheism. Julius Scaliger,
nettled by a jeu d'esprit of Muret's against him, has been led to do
him injustice [14]. "Muret," he says maliciously, "would have been
a better Christian if he had believed in God; I am aware that he
tried to persuade others to do so." In this way have originated false
impressions against Muret. Instead of respecting his exemplary piety,
of which he gave striking evidence in the last years of his existence,
they set themselves half a century after his death, to blacken his
character by accusing him of crimes which were unknown to his most
avowed enemies, and with which, in his life-time, we are certain that
he never was charged. Some ignorant writers who possess no critical
acumen, have impeached without any reason whatever the first individual
who occurred to their memory. Stephen Dolet of Orleans, Frances Pucci
of Florence, John Milton of London, and Merula, a renegade Mahometan,
have done so; they have accused Peter Aretin, merely because he was
a fearless and licentious writer, without reflecting that he was an
uncultivated man, of no learning and scarcely master of his native
tongue. For similar reasons they have blamed Poggio and others, and
have even gone so far back as Boccaccio, most likely on account of
the third tale in his Decameron, where he recounts the fable of three
similar rings, of which he makes a dangerous application to the Jewish,
Christian, and Mahometan religions, as if insinuating that they might
be embraced indifferently, since it was impossible to decide which
of them ought to have the preference. Neither have these writers
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