by Jean Meslier
31. THE FIRST ERROR IN ITS DOCTRINE: THE TRINITY OF A SINGLE GOD IN THREE PERSONS, WHICH IT RECOGNIZES AND WORSHIPS.
First, then, the Christian, Apostolic and Roman religion teaches and enjoins the belief that there is only one God, and at the same time it also teaches and enjoins the belief that there are three divine persons, each of which is truly God. Trinum Deum unicumque cum fervore praedicat: for if there are three of them, all of whom are truly God, these are, in fact, three Gods, and if they truly are three Gods, then it is false to say that there is only one God; or, if it is true to say that there is truly only one single God, then it is false to say that that there were truly three, who are God, since ‘one’ and ‘three’ cannot truly be said of one and the same thing. The same Christian religion teaches and enjoins the belief that the first of these supposed divine persons, whom it calls the Father, has begotten the second person, whom it calls the Son, and that these two first persons together produced the third one, which it calls the Holy Spirit, and nevertheless it teaches and enjoins the belief that these three supposed divine persons are in no way dependent on each other, and that none of them is older than the rest, none of them being prior to the rest, which is, again, manifestly absurd, since nothing can get its existence from something else without having a certain dependency on it; and it is necessarily the case that something must exist before it can give existence to something else. If, therefore, the second and third of these supposed divine persons were brought into existence by the first one, then it’s necessarily the case that their existence is dependent on this first person, who would have given them their existence, or who would have begotten and produced them, and it is also necessarily true that this first one, who would have brought the two others into existence, must have existed before He would possibly bring them into existence, since something that doesn’t exist can’t give existence to anything.
If, then, the first person truly did bring the others into existence, and the two others truly did receive their existence from the first one, it necessarily follows that the first one must have existed while the two others didn’t yet exist, and consequently, that they existed, one before the other. Besides, it is repugnant and absurd to say that something that was begotten or produced, wouldn’t have had a beginning: But, according to our Christ-cultists, the second and third divine persons were engendered and produced, therefore they had a beginning: and if they had a beginning, and the first person had none, not having been begotten or produced by anything else, it necessarily follows that the one existed prior to the other, that is, the first existed before the second one, and the second before the third: since it is absurd to say that they were produced from each other, without any dependency on each other, and without any priority, or posteriority with respect to each other. But if that is absurd, it is certainly no less absurd to say that there is truly only one single God and that there are, however, three persons in God. Our Christ-cultists, who aren’t unaware of these absurdities, but who can’t escape them with any good argument, have absolutely no other recourse than to say that one has to piously shut the eyes of human reason, that the mind should be made captive in obedience to Faith, and that one must humbly worship such elevated and venerable mysteries, without trying to understand them. But, since what they call Faith is truly nothing but a principle of errors, illusions, and imposture, as I have already shown, when they tell us that we must piously and blindly submit to everything their Faith teaches and obliges them to believe, it’s as if they said that we must piously and blindly believe and accept all manner of errors, illusions, and imposture, by a principle brimming with errors, illusions, and imposture.
Just consider how one of our famous Roman God-Christ cultists speaks of this blind submission to their Faith, on the occasion of this supposed mystery of their God in three persons:
Nothing here is human, nothing here is carnal, let reason be captivated under the yoke of Faith, to adore the mysteries that it cannot understand. A God who is the same thing as his Son, but who is not the same person as Him. A son who resides in his Father, and a Father in His Son, and who are really distinct from each other; a Son who receives all, and even existence from his Father, without indigency, dependency, or posteriority, a Father who gives and communicates all that He is to His son, without giving him his beginning, without losing anything of what He gives to His Son. Co-eternal, co-substantial, and working with him by the same Omnipotence; in pursuit of such truths, reason gets lost[491].
There is good reason here to say that reason gets lost, because one must indeed have lost it, and have completely renounced its lights, to maintain such absurd propositions as those. But this is, nevertheless, one of the main points of the doctrine of our God-Christ-cultists, even they are not unaware that reason gets lost amid the absurdities of these fine, so-called mysteries, and still, they prefer to lose their reason than to go against their Faith by following the lights of their reason: for them, as Montaigne says[492], this give them a reason to believe, when they find something incredible, and according to them, it’s all the more in keeping with reason, for it to be contrary to human reason; but that is the very thing that most clearly shows their blindness and the falseness of their doctrine.
Our God-Christ-cultists openly blame and condemn the blindness of the ancient pagans, who recognized and worshiped many Gods. They laugh at what they said about the genealogies of their Gods, their births, marriages, and reproduction. But they fail to notice that they say things that are far more ridiculous and absurd than anything the Pagans ever said about their Gods; for if the Pagans recognized and worshiped many Gods, they never said that they all had the same nature, the same power, and the same divinity; naively and without mystery, they attributed to each its own nature, its own power, its own will, its own inclinations, and its own Divinity; but our God-Christ-cultists, in recognizing by name only one single God, allow Him to be three in effect, to which, nevertheless, they attribute only one and the same nature, the same power, and the same Divinity; which is certainly far more absurd than what the Pagans said about the plurality of the Gods.
If these same pagans believed that there were Goddesses as well as Gods, and that these Gods and Goddesses were married and made babies, there was nothing unnatural in that, for they never imagined that the gods had no bodies or sensations. And, since they believed that they had bodies and sensations like humans, we shouldn’t be surprised if they believed that there were both male and female Gods and Goddesses: for if there really were any, why wouldn’t there be both sexes among them? There was no more reason to deny than to recognize either possibility, and if we assume, as the as the pagans did, that there really are God and Goddesses, then why wouldn’t they marry each other? And why wouldn’t they enjoy their pleasures together, these Gods and Goddesses, in producing children, and in the same way people do it? There would certainly be nothing ridiculous or absurd in this doctrine and belief of the Pagans, if the basis of their doctrine and belief were true, i.e., if it were true that there really were Gods.
32. THE SECOND ERROR: THE INCARNATION OF A GOD-MADE-MAN.
Now, the doctrine and belief of our God-Christ-cultists contains something even more ridiculous and absurd, since, aside from what they say about a God who became three, or of three who are only one, which is already, as I’ve said, a significant absurdity, they say that this triple and unique God has neither body, nor form, nor any shape. They say that the first person of this triple and unique God, whom they call the Father, had begotten all alone, by His own thought and by His own knowledge, a second person; they call him the Son, and he is just like his Father, being also bodiless, formless, and shapeless, then what keeps the first person from being called the father rather than the mother, why the son rather than the daughter? For, if the first truly is a father, rather than a mother, and if the second is truly a son, rather than a daughter, then it’s absolutely necessary for there to be something in both of these two persons that causes the one to be a father and not a
mother, and the other to be a son rather than a daughter. But that could do this unless they are both males and not females? But how will they be males and not females, if they have neither body, form nor any shape? That is not imaginable, it’s self-refuting; but no matter, they say so and they’re always content to say that these two persons, who are thus, bodiless, formless, and shapeless, and which, consequently, can’t be of either, i.e., neither male nor female, are nevertheless a father and a son, and they have produced, by their mutual love, a third person, called the Holy Ghost, which person has no more body, form, or shape than the other two. And so, according to the amazing and holy doctrine and beliefs of our subtle and learned Christ-cultists, there is only one single triple and unique God, who is bodiless and without form, without any shape or color: and in this one triple and unique God, there are, however, three divine persons, all three of which are bodiless, formless, and without any shape whatsoever. It can’t be said that they are of any sex at all, i.e., that they are male or female, and although they are neither male nor female, this hasn’t stopped them from begetting and reproducing themselves, which took place, as our Christ-cultists say, not carnally, but spiritually and in a completely spiritual and mysterious and ineffable manner, i.e., in a way that even our Christ-cultists can neither express nor conceive.
Judge for yourself whether this doctrine and belief is not incomparably more ridiculous and absurd than all those of the ancient pagans? It is, without doubt, incomparably more ridiculous and more absurd: for these ancient Pagans believed, in the ordinary course of nature, in its reproduction, that the Gods could beget many children, and that their children could beget many others, and continue so on from one generation to the next, in all the ages. And, according to their principles, there was nothing ridiculous or absurd in their thinking and belief. But for what reason do our Christ-cultists restrict the generative power of their God, the Father, to the generation of a Single Child? Is it because He couldn’t, or did He not want to beget more? Or maybe it wasn’t convenient for Him to have many sons and daughters? It shouldn’t be this last reason, why he only wanted one son, for a multitude of children, when they are all well-born, beautiful, wise, and honest, is an honor and a glory for a father who made them; and there can be no doubt that God the Father would only beget handsome children, who would also be as wise and perfect as He would want them to be, and who would, consequently, have brought honor and glory to their father. Moreover, this divine Father had no reason to fear, as men do, that He would ever see any of His children fall into destitution and poverty, as the sovereign Master and Lord of Heaven and Earth, He could give them all the prerogatives of their divine birth, and He could even give each of them a whole world to govern and to do whatever they wanted with it, reserving this world for Himself, if He found it to be good. So, it doesn’t appear that this would be why He wanted to beget only one single child.
To say that He could not have begotten any other, since His generative power would have been completely exhausted by the production of this first son would be ridiculous and absurd, since it would be ridiculous and absurd to impose such limitations on a power which is supposed to be infinite. But our Christ-cultists say that the potency of the divine Father is infinite, and if it is infinite, then it can never be exhausted by the generation of this first son, and thus they wouldn’t be right to say that His generative power could be exhausted by the generation of a single Son. Really? Is this reproductive power exhausted in men when they beget a single child? Far from it, rather, it’s not even gone when they’ve had 12, or even 15, since many people have had even more than this. Aegyptus, for example, the first king of the kingdom with that name, had 50 sons, whom he married to the 50 daughters of his brother Dardanus. It said that Amurat, the third king of the Turks, had 102 children. Hierome, the King of the Arabs, had 600 kids! It also said that Scieure, the King of the Tartars, left behind 80 male children. It seems also that King Solomon might have had even more than these, since he had no less than 700 wives, who were like so many Queens, and he also had 500 concubines, so that if he only had one child with each of these, he would have been no less than a thousand children. This power of begetting is also not limited in women to a single child, since many women have had more than a dozen children, and many, both in the past and even now, have two or three at once. The Journal historique for May 1709 says that the wife of a London artisan had 3 boys and 3 girls from a single pregnancy. It’s said that a Polish countess, named Margaret, had 36 children in a single litter. Even better, that a Countess from Holland, also named Margaret, having mocked a poor woman, who was burdened with children, then gave birth to as many children as there are days in a year, i.e., 365, who were all married[493].
I won’t even mention many animal species, which usually produce 10 or 12 babies, from a single pregnancy. It seems very clear from all these examples, as well as from daily experience, that the power of reproduction in humans and beasts, is not limited to the conception of a single thing, but that it goes much further; why, then, do our Christ-cultists want to impose such limitations on their God; the sweet, enchanting, and amazing power that it truly is? They can’t give any sound reason why, and this is also why they look foolish, even sillier than the pagans, in their belief in the generation of their Gods.
But why, again, did they not want the second, or the third person of their triple and unique Deity to have, like the first one, the power to beget a son like themselves? If the power to beget a son is a perfection in the first person, then it must also be a perfection and power which is missing in the second or third of these persons, and thus, these two persons, lacking a perfection and a power held by the first one, they will certainly not be equal to each other, as our Christ-cultists claim they are. If, instead, they say that the power of begetting a son is not a perfection, then they shouldn’t ascribe it to the first person any more than the other two, since we should only attribute perfections to a Being who is supposed to be absolutely perfect. Besides, they wouldn’t dare to say that the power to create a divine person is not a perfection. On the other hand, if they say that this first person might well have begotten many sons and daughters, but that it only wanted to beget this one son, and that the two others also had no wish to beget anything more, we might first ask them where they know this is true: for there is no indication in their so-called Holy Scriptures, that any of these supposedly divine persons said anything definitive on the subject. How can our Christ-cultists know either way? They certainly can’t know anything about it, and therefore, all they say on this point is only according to their ideas and their imaginations, which are hollow. Here they show themselves even more ridiculous and daring; for it’s certainly reckless and daring, to speak definitively about the intentions and wishes of the Gods, without knowing what they are. Secondly, it might be said that if these supposed divine persons truly had the power to produce many sons and many daughters, but that they didn’t want to, it would follow that this divine power would be ineffectual in them, and useless; it would be completely ineffective in the third person, who has never begotten anything or produced anyone, and it would be nearly ineffectual in the two others, since they limited it so severely; and thus, this power that they’re supposed to have, of begetting or producing many sons and daughters, would be as it were idle and useless in them, which would be far from a suitable thing to say about divine persons.
Besides, it could be said that it would be a rather clear indication in the person of the Father, that there was only pleasure and contentment in the generation of His son, since He had no wish to beget others, and it would be a clear indication in the three persons that they had no wish for many divine persons, which they might have produced, since they had no desire to bring them into existence, which would have been so glorious and advantageous to have. It’s truly a pity that these divine persons were so disinclined to reproduction, and that they had so little interest in the multiplication of their species: for if they had been so minded, if only to the
same extent that humans love reproducing themselves, and had wished to multiply their divine race, only as much as that of Jacob multiplied in Egypt, and they had wished to give bodies to all their children, or that all these divine children had a wish to be incarnated in human bodies, like the so-called unique son of God the Father, the Earth and the Heavens would now be fully populated with the divine children and divine persons who would be far better to have around than the multitude of vicious and corrupt men who fill the earth with crime and wickedness, and so, no matter how our Christ-cultists want to turn this first and main point of their doctrine, it is still manifestly false, ridiculous, and absurd on this point.
