The Works of Voltaire, Vol. IV of XLIII.: Romances, Vol. III of III, and A Treatise on Toleration. — Voltaire — John Shaqi
The Works of Voltaire, Vol. IV of XLIII.: Romances, Vol. III of III, and A Treatise on Toleration.
Voltaire · en
I do not mean by this to insinuate that those who are of a different
faith to the prince under whose government they live should have
an equal share in the places of profits and honor with those who
are of the established religion of the state. In England the
Roman Catholics, who are in general looked upon to be friends to
the Pretender, are excluded from all civil posts, and are even
double-taxed; but then, in every other respect, they enjoy the
prerogatives of citizens.
Some of our bishops in France have been suspected of thinking
that their honor and interest is concerned in not suffering any
Protestants within their diocese, and that this is the principal
obstacle to allowing of toleration amongst us; but this I cannot
believe. The episcopal body in France is composed of persons of
quality, who think and act in a manner suitable to their high
birth; and as envy itself must confess that they are generous and
charitable, they therefore certainly cannot think that those whom
they thus drive out of their diocese would become converts in any
other country, but great honor would redound from the conversion
of them at home; nor would the prelate be any loser by it in his
temporals, seeing that the greater the number of the inhabitants, the
greater is the value of the land.
A certain Polish bishop had a farmer who was an Anabaptist, and a
receiver of his rents who was a Socinian. Some person proposed to
the bishop to prosecute the latter in the spiritual court for not
believing in transubstantiation, and to turn the other out of his
farm because he would not have his son christened till he was fifteen
years of age; the prelate very prudently replied that though he made
no doubt of their being eternally damned in the next world, yet he
found them extremely necessary to him in this.
Let us now for a while quit our own little sphere, and take a survey
of the rest of the globe. The Grand Seignior peaceably rules over
subjects of twenty different religions; upwards of two hundred
thousand Greeks live unmolested within the walls of Constantinople;
the mufti himself nominates the Greek patriarch, and presents him
to the Emperor, and, at the same time, allows the residence of a
Latin patriarch. The Sultan appoints Latin bishops for some of the
Greek isles. The form used on this occasion is as follows:[11] “I
command such a one to go and reside as bishop in the Isle of Chios,
according to the ancient custom and idle ceremonies of those people.”
The Ottoman Empire swarms with Jacobins, Nestorians, Monothelites,
Cophti, Christians of St. John, Guebres, and Banians; and the Turkish
annals do not furnish us with one single instance of a rebellion
occasioned by any of these different sects.