A Memoir- the Testament

by Jean Meslier

  But these moral maxims are completely opposed to everything I just mentioned: for it’s obviously by natural right and it’s obviously harmonious with right reason, and it’s obviously in keeping with natural justice and equity to repel evils and to defend oneself when attacked unjustly; it is also in step with natural rights, right reason, and natural equity and justice to preserve one’s own body, life, and goods, against those who unjustly try to take them from us. And, just as it is natural to hate evil, it is also natural to hate those who unjustly do evil to us. But these maxims of Christian morality run directly against all these natural rights, and consequently they are false, and it is an error to teach them and ordain their practice, since they are against every natural right, and they clearly tend to the overturning of justice and the oppression of the poor and the weak, and since they are against the proper government of men. I remember reading somewhere that this is why the Emperor Julian, called the Apostate, who left the Christian religion, was unable to believe that a Religion which, by its precepts and moral maxims, tended to overturn all natural justice and equity, could be true.

  But these maxims of Christian morality tend, not only to ruin all justice; but they also clearly tend to favor the wicked and to encourage the oppression of the good and weak by the wicked: for, on one hand, is it not clearly to favor the wicked to say that we should not seek to avenge the injuries and mistreatment they unjustly do to us? It is not to favor them to say that we should not resist them, that we should let them do as they like, even letting oneself be robbed, when they feel like taking what we have? It is not to favor them, to say that we should love them and do good to them for all the evil they do to us? Certainly, it is too much in their favor to authorize their malice and wickedness; it gives them free rein to harshly attack the good and the weak, it gives them free rein to carry on with impunity and without fear, to do as they please. On the other hand, is it not plainly also to expose good men, the good and the weak alike to injury, insults, and mistreatment from the wicked, who could wish nothing better than the promotion of these fine maxims, to freely harm and harshly attack the just, the good, and the weak, on the pretext that they would not dare or intend to avenge themselves, or even to defend oneself against them, as they should in fact do? Certainly, it is to expose them to the injuries and insults of the wicked, and it is, in a way, to intend for the good to offer themselves as prey to the wicked, and to their enemies. For, as the good could never follow or practice those maxims without allowing the wicked to freely do as they please, to do as they like, to say that the good must follow these maxims is like someone telling them that they should let the wicked do what they want; which manifestly tends, as I have said, to an overturning of order and justice, and consequently those maxims are false and harmful to the true public interest.

  It is very true that there are certain cases and times when it is better to peacefully endure some offence, some insult, and some injustice than to avenge it, and when it is better to grant something to the wicked than to stand firm every time. It is well known that it is sometimes prudent to choose a lesser evil to avoid a greater one; that this is sometimes needed to acquire peace when it can't be had otherwise. But generally speaking, according to the maxims of Christian morality, we should let the wicked do as they please, that we should let them rob or, mistreat us, even tear us apart, and if the occasion arises, let them burn us alive, and with this even to love the wicked who do these things, wishing them well, and treating them well, and all this on the pretext of a greater perfection of virtue, and on the vain and deceptive hope of a greater eternal reward, which will never come: these are ridiculous and absurd errors, errors against common sense, contrary to nature and right reason, harmful to good men and detrimental to the State and to the proper governing of men, which calls for good people to be left alone and the wicked to be severely reprimanded and punished for their wickedness.

  This is also why it was ordained by the ancient Law of Moses, which our Christ-cultists take to be a divine law, this is, I repeat, why it was ordained by this law to the closest relatives of he who would have been wickedly killed by some wicked enemy, to severely avenge the death of their relative upon the man who wickedly killed him. Consider what this Law says. If someone, being wickedly struck, dies of a blow he received, then his death must be avenged by the death of he who struck him: the closest relative of he who was killed will kill the murderer at the nearest opportunity, and if he did the deed from hatred or in an ambush, then the nearest relative of the victim must avenge his death with the murderer and will butcher him the first chance he has. Cognatus occisi statim ut invenerit eum jugulabit. And these other words from the same law: propinquus occisi homicidam interficiet, statim ut aprehenderit cum interficiet. Which law, being manifestly contrary to the maxims of Christian morality mentioned above, shows even more clearly how false they are: and thus, the Christian religion, clearly containing flaws in its doctrine and morality, as I have demonstrated by all these last arguments and reasons, it plainly follows that it is false, and that, therefore, it is not of divine institution, as our Christ-cultists would like us to believe. This is the fifth demonstration that I had to give you.

  42. THE SIXTH PROOF OF THE VANITY AND FALSENESS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, TAKEN FROM THE ABUSES, THE UNJUST VEXATIONS, AND THE TYRANNY OF THE POWERFUL, WHICH IT ALLOWS AND AUTHORIZES.

  Here is another demonstration, which will be the sixth one. It relates to the abuses, the unjust vexations, and even the tyranny that it allows, approves, and authorizes by the powerful of the Earth, to the great harm of the public good, and the common good of peoples and individuals; from which I form this argument: a religion which allows, approves, and even authorizes abuses contrary to justice and the good government of men, and which even authorizes the tyranny of the powerful, to the harm of the people, cannot be true, nor can it truly be divinely instituted, since any divine laws and ordinances should be just and equitable, and since any divine religion, would criticize and condemn all that is contrary to justice and the good government of men. And the Christian religion allows, approves and authorizes many abuses which are contrary to justice, to right reason and the good government of men, and in addition, it allows and authorizes many unjust vexations, and even the tyranny of Kings and the powerful, to the great scandal and harm of the people, who are unhappy and miserable under the yoke of their hard and cruel domination. This is easy to demonstrate. I will begin with the abuses, and I will point out five or six of them.

  43. THE FIRST ABUSE: THE GREAT AND ENORMOUS DISPROPORTIONALITY BETWEEN THE ESTATES AND CONDITIONS OF MEN, WHO ARE ALL EQUAL BY NATURE.

  THE FIRST ABUSE.

  The first is the massive disparity that we see everywhere between the estates and conditions of men, some of whom even seem to have been born only for tyrannical domination over others, and to always have their pleasures and contentment in life, while the rest seem to be born only to be miserable, wretched, and vile slaves, and to spend their whole lives moaning in pain and misery; which mismatch is completely unjust, since it is in no way based on the merit of the former or the unworthiness of the latter, and it is odious, since it only inspires and maintains the pride, superbia, ambition, vanity, arrogance, and pride of the former, and in the rest, int only breeds hatred, envy, anger, desires for vengeance, complaints, grumbling, all the passions which become the source and cause of an infinity of evils and wickedness in the world; which evils and wickedness would certainly vanish, if men established a proper proportion among themselves, and such that it would only be necessary to establish and maintain a proper subordination among them, and not to tyrannically dominate each other.

  All men are equal by nature, they are all equally entitled to live and walk on the Earth, and to enjoy their natural liberty and a share of the goods of the Earth, working usefully together, to gain all that is necessary and useful for life; but, since they live in society, and since a society or the community of men, cannot be well ordered, or even, if well ord
ered, cannot be kept in good order without a certain interdependence and mutual subordination, it is absolutely necessary for the good of human Society, for there to be a dependence and subordination among them. But this dependence and subordination among them must also be just and well proportioned; i.e., it must not go so far that it raises some too much or presses others too far down, or flatters some represses others, nor gives too much to some and leaves nothing for the rest, nor, finally, should it put all the goods and pleasures to one side and on the other all the pains, care, anxiety, sorrow, and displeasure, so far that such a dependence and subordination would be manifestly unjust, abhorrent, and against the law of nature itself: which a wise Author of the last century aptly observed in his Characters[648]: “Set authority, pleasures, and idleness on one side, and subjection, care, and misery on the other: either these things are displaced by the malice of men or God is not God. A too great mismatch, as there now is among men, is their own handiwork, and the law of the strongest.”

  “We all have,” says Seneca[649], “the same birth and the same origin, there is none who is more noble than others, except maybe for he who has a mind that is superior and more capable of virtue and the lettered sciences. Nature,” he says, “bears all of us as relatives and allies when she begets us with the same nature and to the same ends. Therefore,” he adds, “all these epithets and titles like King, Prince, Monarch, Potentate, Noble, subject, vassal, servant, freedman, slave, are only names conceived by ambition, and born of tyranny and injustice.

  Even our Christ-cultists can’t contradict the view of this Pagan Philosopher, since even their Religion requires them to consider and love each other as brothers, and expressly forbids them to seek to imperiously dominate each other. This is clear from the direct words of their Jesus Christ to his disciples.

  “You know”, he told them[650], “that the Princes of the Gentiles lord it over them and that the mighty act through authority, but you,” he told them, “will not act this way. Whoever among you, would be the greatest, will be the least of all, and the servant of all, let he among you who would be first, be last of all...Do not use,” he also told them[651], these vain epithets like Master or Mister, for you all have one single Master, and you are all brothers.” And according to this precept of Christ, based in this case on natural justice and equity, the apostle St. James represented powerfully to his colleagues that they ought to have, in this respect, no respect for persons, but that they should treat everyone equally. “My brothers,” he said, “the faith[652] you have in Christ forbids you to be a respecter of persons. For if a man,” he said, “enters your gathering with a gold ring on his hand, dressed finely, and a poor and badly dressed one also comes in, and, looking at the richly dressed one, you say: ‘Sit in his honorable spot,’ and to the poor one you say ‘Keep standing there, or sit over here at our feet,’ are you not differentiating the two, and forming a judgment from unrighteous thoughts? Hear me, my brothers,” he said, “if you fulfill the precept of charity, which says to love your neighbor as yourself, you do well; but if you are a respecter of persons, you sin, and become breakers of the Law.

  It is, therefore, a clear and severe abuse in the Christian Religion to see, as we do, not only an unjust and odious respect of persons, but also such an enormous, unfair, and odious disproportion between the different estates and conditions of men. But let us also consider where this abuse comes from, and what might be its origin and cause. Here is what a judicious author says about it.

  44. ON THE ORIGIN OF THE NOBILITY.

  To wit:

  If we consider[653] the origin of the Nobility and of the Royal Greatness, and if we trace the Genealogy of the Princes and Potentates, and we go all the way back, we will find that the first parents of those who so loudly proclaim their nobility, were only bloodthirsty and cruel men, oppressors, tyrants, traitors, betrayers of the public trust, thieves, parricides, in a word, the original Nobility was only wickedness, backed by force, and impiety accompanied by dignity. What has been done up to now by making nobility successive, either by heredity or by election or otherwise, but to perpetuate an exorbitant power and honor, acquired and expanded by the worst of vices, by practices unworthy of humans, and of which their own authors have always been ashamed. This is why the most unjust attacks and the most violent usurpations have been, and still are, covered with the specious pretext of justice and virtue, and why the term “conquest” is applied to that which is literally nothing but sheer robbery. These unjust and cruel usurpers pretend to uphold the liberties and rights of the people, along with their religion and their laws, while at bottom they are the worst tyrants in the world, lying hypocrites, atheists and outcasts. That is true, not only of some, but of all the houses that have distinguished themselves in the world. What were the four famous first Monarchies but so many empires of bandits, so many States composed of adventurers, pirates, and thieves, with brute force as the only apologia for their brigandry. Diomedes so aptly told this to Alexander, called the Great. “I’m called a pirate[654], because I cross the seas with a single ship, while you are called an emperor, because you do the same thing with a powerful navy; if you were alone and captive, like me, you would be considered a robber, and I would be respected as an emperor, if I were at the head of a large army. The whole difference between us lies in the fact that you cause more harm than me. Poverty drove me to steal, while nothing obliges you to do the same, other than insufferable pride and insatiable greed. If fortune had been more favorable to me, I might have been a more honest man, whereas your continual progress makes you more wicked by the day.” Alexander, admiring the boldness of this man and the resolution of his mind, gave him a commander’s role in his army, so that he could rob and plunder with authority from then on.

  The same author continues:

  But let’s consider things further along, beginning with the Assyrian empire which Ninus created through bloodshed and carnage, by the ruin and destruction of all its neighbors, and which Semiramis, his wife, perpetuated by the same methods. This woman, of whom antiquity said so much, asked her husband for a 15-day mandate to rule. When her request was granted, she took the royal clothing and, having mounted the throne, she ordered the guards to depose and kill her husband; when her orders were carried out, she succeeded to the empire, added Ethiopia to its other states, made war in India, and was ultimately killed by her son Nicias, after having surrounded Babylon with a magnificent wall. Thus, the Assyrian monarchy was founded on parricide, massacres, and bloodshed.

  Arbaces made it pass to the Medes by the same methods, and killed Sardanapalus, the last and most effeminate of Assyrian kings, in the company of his concubines, in this way the sovereign power passed from hand to hand through betrayal and carnage, until Cyrus, King of Persia, transferred it to his own country.

  Cambyses, son of Cyrus, began the second universal Monarchy, and added to it the ruin of many kingdoms, shoring up his empire with the blood of his brother and his son; but ultimately, the scepter was transferred to the Macedonians by means of Alexander the Great, who shed no less blood and committed no less shocking crimes. From Alexander the monarchy passed to the Romans. What need is there to dwell on the scandalous birth of Romulus and Remus, the twin children of an incestuous vestal? What good would it do to mention their equally scandalous birth, since they were raised by a prostitute, who has been called a she-wolf, because of her excessive lasciviousness? What good would it do to recount the details of the horrible fratricide committed by Romulus on his brother Remus, or the famous abduction of the women and girls of the Sabines[655]? It would seem odious to tell of the detestable murder of Titus Latius, the good old Captain of the Sabines, and several other cruel massacres. And yet, these horrid crimes were the basis of the greatness and of the Roman nobility, which was then so formidable to all the earth. The progress of this latter power reflected its origins; the Government passed through various revolutions until the reign of Augustus, where it acquired the title of fourth universal Monarchy.


  Although this prince was though the best and most righteous prince on earth, he nevertheless based his throne on the blood of his parents, and he sacrificed his children to his uncle for political reasons, and to imitate the ingratitude of other princes, he barbarically kills the children of his father, who had adopted him to succeed him in the empire, he didn’t even spare the glorious names of Antony and Cleopatra, who were so close to him, and who had enabled him to commit such monstrosity. I will not share the abominable vices and misdeeds of Nero, Domitian, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Galen, and similar crowned monsters. History itself blushes at the telling of such prodigious impiety, and the very names of these Princes have been and will be odious to all posterity. If we go on from these powerful empires to less considerable kingdoms, we will find the same vices there. The histories, both ancient and modern, are full of these sorts of tragedies. The first kingdom of the Greeks owed its birth only to the parricide of Dardanus, and the empire of the Amazons began only with the barbaric slaughter of by these women of their husbands. All ages and all nations provide examples of this nature, and the highest dignities have always been acquired by the highest forms of injustice.

  This is certainly true source and the true origin of this whole proud and prideful nobility and grandeur, which is met with in the powerful and in the earth’s nobles; and that being the case, far from glorying, as they do, in such criminal and odious origins, if they truly thought about it, they would be ashamed of it.