第25章 LETTER 4(3)
The charge of corrupting history,in the cause of religion,has been always committed to the most famous champions,and greatest saints of each church;and,if I was not more afraid of tiring,than of scandalising your lordship,I could quote to you examples of modern churchmen who have endeavored to justify foul language by the New Testament,and cruelty by the Old;nay,what is execrable beyond imagination,and what strikes horror into every mind that entertains due sentiments of the Supreme Being,God himself has been cited for rallying and insulting Adam after his fall.In other cases this charge belongs to the pedants of every nation,and the tools of every party.What accusations of idolatry and superstition have not been brought,and aggravated against Mahometans?Those wretched Christians who returned from those wars,so improperly called the holy wars,rumored these stories about the West;and you may find,in some of the old chroniclers and romance writers,as well as poets,the Saracens called Paynims;though surely they were much further off from any suspicion of polytheism,than those who called them by that name.When Mahomet the Second took Constantinople in the fifteenth century,the Mahometans began to be a little better,and but a little better known,than they had been before,to these parts of the world.But their religion,as well as their customs and manners,was strangely misrepresented by the Greek refugees that fled from the Turks:and the terror and hatred which this people had inspired by the rapidity of their conquests,and by their ferocity,made all these misrepresentations universally pass for truths.
Many such instances may be collected from Maraccio's refutation of the Koran,and Relandus has published a very valuable treatise on purpose to refute these calumnies,and to justify the Mahometans.Does not this example incline your lordship to think,that the heathens and the Arians,and other heretics,would not appear quite so absurd in their opinions,nor so abominable in their practice,as the orthodox Christians have represented them;if some Relandus could arise,with the materials necessary to their justification in his hands?He who reflects on the circumstances that attended letters,from the time when Constantine instead of uniting the characters of emperor and sovereign pontiff in himself when he became Christian,as they were united in him and all the other emperors in the Pagan system of government,gave so much independent wealth and power to the clergy,and the means of acquiring so much more:he who carries these reflections on through all the latter empire,and through those ages of ignorance and superstition,wherein it was hard to say which was greatest,the tyranny of the clergy or the servility of the laity:he who considers the extreme severity,for instance of the laws made by Theodosius in order to stifle every writing that the orthodox clergy,that is,the clergy then in fashion disliked;or the character and influence of such a priest as Gregory called the great,who proclaimed war to all heathen learning in order to promote Christian verity;and flattered Brunehault,and abetted Phocas:he who considers all these things,I say,will not be at a loss to find the reasons why history,both that which was written before,and a great part of that which has been written since the Christian era,is come to us so imperfect and so corrupt.
When the imperfection is due to a total want of memorials,either because none were originally written,or because they have been lost by devastations of countries,extirpations of people,and other accidents in a long course of time;or because zeal,malice,and policy have joined their endeavors to destroy them purposely;we must be content to remain in our ignorance,and there is no great harm in that.Secure from being deceived,I can submit to be uninformed.But when there is not a total want of memorials,when some have been lost or destroyed,and others have been preserved and propagated,then we are in danger of being deceived:and therefore he must be very implicit indeed who receives for true the history of any religion or nation,and much more that of any sect or party,without having the means of confronting it with some other history.A reasonable man will not be thus implicit.He will not establish the truth of history on single,but on concurrent testimony.
If there be none such,he will doubt absolutely:if there be a little such,he will proportion his assent or dissent accordingly.A small gleam of light,borrowed from foreign anecdotes,serves often to discover a whole system of falsehood:and even they who corrupt history frequently betray themselves by their ignorance or inadvertency.Examples whereof I could easily produce.
Upon the whole matter,in all these cases we cannot be deceived essentially,unless we please;and therefore there is no reason to establish Pyrrhonism,that we may avoid the ridicule of credulity.