For political reasons he pays them in
Saxony; for political reasons he burns them in Paris. But what will
happen? Persecutions make proselytes? Soon France will be full of new
Protestants. At first they will let themselves be hanged, later they in
their turn will hang. There will be civil wars, then will come the St.
Bartholomew; and this corner of the world will be worse than all that
the ancients and moderns have ever told of hell.
Madmen, who have never been able to give worship to the God who made
you! Miscreants, whom the example of the Noachides, the learned Chinese,
the Parsees and all the sages, has never been able to lead! Monsters,
who need superstitions as crows' gizzards need carrion! you have been
told it already, and there is nothing else to tell you--if you have two
religions in your countries, they will cut each other's throat; if you
have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace. Look at the great Turk,
he governs Guebres, Banians, Greek Christians, Nestorians, Romans. The
first who tried to stir up tumult would be impaled; and everyone is
tranquil.
Of all religions, the Christian is without doubt the one which should
inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the
most intolerant of all men. The Christian Church was divided in its
cradle, and was divided even in the persecutions which under the first
emperors it sometimes endured.
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