A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 01

Et campus ubi Troja fuit.…the plain where Troy once stood.

We have our arts, the ancients had theirs. We could not make a galley with three benches of oars, but we can build ships with a hundred pieces of cannon. We cannot raise obelisks a hundred feet high in a single piece, but our meridians are more exact. The byssus is unknown to us, but the stuffs of Lyons are more valuable. The Capitol was worthy of admiration, the church of St. Peter is larger and more beautiful. The Louvre is a masterpiece when compared with the palace of Persepolis, the situation and ruins of which do but tell of a vast monument to barbaric wealth. Rameau's music is probably better than that of Timotheus; and there is not a picture presented at Paris in the Hall of Apollo (salon d'Apollon) which does not excel the paintings dug out of Herculaneum.

APIS

Was the ox Apis worshipped at Memphis as a god, as a symbol, or as an ox? It is likely that the fanatics regarded him as a god, the wise as merely a symbol, and that the more stupid part of the people worshipped the ox. Did Cambyses do right in killing this ox with his own hand? Why not? He showed to the imbecile that their god might be put on the spit without nature's arming herself to avenge the sacrilege. The Egyptians have been much extolled. I have not heard of a more miserable people. There must always have been in their character, and in their government, some radical vice which has constantly made vile slaves of them. Let it be granted that in times almost unknown they conquered the earth; but in historical times they have been subjugated by all who have chosen to take the trouble – by the Assyrians, by the Greeks, by the Romans, by the Arabs, by the Mamelukes, by the Turks, by all, in short, but our crusaders, who were even more ill-advised than the Egyptians were cowardly. It was the Mameluke militia that beat the French under St. Louis. There are, perhaps, but two things tolerable in this nation; the first is, that those who worshipped an ox never sought to compel those who adored an ape to change their religion; the second, that they have always hatched chickens in ovens.

We are told of their pyramids; but they are monuments of an enslaved people. The whole nation must have been set to work on them, or those unsightly masses could never have been raised. And for what use were they? To preserve in a small chamber the mummy of some prince, or governor, or intendant, which his soul was to reanimate at the end of a thousand years. But if they looked forward to this resurrection of the body, why did they take out the brains before embalming them? Were the Egyptians to be resuscitated without brains?

APOCALYPSE

SECTION I

Justin the Martyr, who wrote about the year 270 of the Christian era, was the first who spoke of the Apocalypse; he attributes it to the apostle John the Evangelist. In his dialogue with Tryphon, that Jew asks him if he does not believe that Jerusalem is one day to be re-established? Justin answers that he believes it, as all Christians do who think aright. "There was among us," says he, "a certain person named John, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus; he foretold that the faithful shall pass a thousand years in Jerusalem."

The belief in this reign of a thousand years was long prevalent among the Christians. This period was also in great credit among the Gentiles. The souls of the Egyptians returned to their bodies at the end of a thousand years; and, according to Virgil, the souls in purgatory were exorcised for the same space of time —et mille per annos. The New Jerusalem of a thousand years was to have twelve gates, in memory of the twelve apostles; its form was to be square; its length, breadth, and height were each to be a thousand stadii —i. e., five hundred leagues; so that the houses were to be five hundred leagues high. It would be rather disagreeable to live in the upper story; but we find all this in the twenty-first chapter of the Apocalypse.

If Justin was the first who attributed the Apocalypse to St. John, some persons have rejected his testimony; because in the same dialogue with the Jew Tryphon he says that, according to the relation of the apostles, Jesus Christ, when he went into the Jordan, made the water boil, which, however, is not to be found in any writing of the apostles.

The same St. Justin confidently cites the oracles of Sibyls; he moreover pretends to have seen the remains of the places in which the seventy-two interpreters were confined in the Egyptian pharos, in Herod's time. The testimony of a man who had had the misfortune to see these places seems to indicate that he might possibly have been confined there himself.

St. Irenæus, who comes afterwards, and who also believed in the reign of a thousand years, tells us that he learned from an old man that St. John wrote the Apocalypse. But St. Irenæus is reproached with having written that there should be but four gospels, because there are but four quarters of the world, and four cardinal points, and Ezekiel saw but four animals. He calls this reasoning a demonstration. It must be confessed that Irenæus's method of demonstrating is quite worthy of Justin's power of sight.

Clement of Alexandria, in his "Electa" mentions only an Apocalypse of St. Peter, to which great importance was attached. Tertullian, a great partisan of the thousand years' reign, not only assures us that St. John foretold this resurrection and reign of a thousand years in the city of Jerusalem, but also asserts that this Jerusalem was already beginning to form itself in the air, where it had been seen by all the Christians of Palestine, and even by the Pagans, at the latter end of the night, for forty nights successively; but, unfortunately, the city always disappeared as soon as it was daylight.

Origen, in his preface to St. John's Gospel, and in his homilies, quotes the oracles of the Apocalypse, but he likewise quotes the oracles of Sibyls. And St. Dionysius of Alexandria, who wrote about the middle of the third century, says, in one of his fragments preserved by Eusebius, that nearly all the doctors rejected the Apocalypse as a book devoid of reason, and that this book was composed, not by St. John, but by one Cerinthus, who made use of a great name to give more weight to his reveries.

The Council of Laodicea, held in 360, did not reckon the Apocalypse among the canonical books. It is very singular that Laodicea, one of the churches to which the Apocalypse was addressed, should have rejected a treasure designed for itself, and that the bishop of Ephesus, who attended the council, should also have rejected this book of St. John, who was buried at Ephesus.

It was visible to all eyes that St. John was continually turning about in his grave, causing a constant rising and falling of the earth. Yet the same persons who were sure that St. John was not quite dead were also sure that he had not written the Apocalypse. But those who were for the thousand years' reign were unshaken in their opinion. Sulpicius Severus, in his "Sacred History," book xi., treats as mad and impious those who did not receive the Apocalypse. At length, after numerous oppositions of council to council, the opinion of Sulpicius Severus prevailed. The matter having been thus cleared up, the Church came to the decision, from which there is no appeal, that the Apocalypse is incontestably St. John's.

Every Christian communion has applied to itself the prophecies contained in this book. The English have found in it the revolutions of Great Britain; the Lutherans, the troubles of Germany; the French reformers, the reign of Charles IX., and the regency of Catherine de Medici, and they are all equally right. Bossuet and Newton have both commented on the Apocalypse, yet, after all, the eloquent declamations of the one, and the sublime discoveries of the other, have done them greater honor than their commentaries.

SECTION II

Two great men, but very different in their greatness, have commented on the Apocalypse in the seventeenth century: Newton, to whom such a study was very ill suited, and Bossuet, who was better fitted for the undertaking. Both gave additional weapons to their enemies, by their commentaries, and, as has elsewhere been said, the former consoled mankind for his superiority over them, while the latter made his enemies rejoice.

The Catholics and the Protestants have both explained the Apocalypse in their favor, and have each found in it exactly what has accorded with their interests. They have made wonderful commentaries on the great beast with seven heads and ten horns, with the hair of a leopard, the feet of a bear, the throat of a lion, the strength of a dragon, and to buy and sell it was necessary to have the character and number of the beast, which number was 666.

Bossuet finds that this beast was evidently the Emperor Diocletian, by making an acrostic of his name. Grotius believed that it was Trajan. A curate of St. Sulpice, named La Chétardie, known from some strange adventures, proves that the beast was Julian. Jurieu proves that the beast is the pope. One preacher has demonstrated that it was Louis XIV. A good Catholic has demonstrated that it was William, king of England. It is not easy to make them all agree.

There have been warm disputes concerning the stars which fell from heaven to earth, and the sun and moon, which were struck with darkness in their third parts.

There are several opinions respecting the book that the angel made the author of the Apocalypse eat, which book was sweet to the mouth and bitter to the stomach. Jurieu asserted that the books of his adversary were designated thereby, and his argument was retorted upon himself.

There have been disputes about this verse: "And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder; and I heard the voice of harpers harping on their harps."

It is quite clear that it would have been better to have respected the Apocalypse than to have commented upon it.

Camus, bishop of Bellay, printed in the last century a large book against the monks, which an unfrocked monk abridged. It was entitled "Apocalypse," because in it he exposed the dangers and defects of the monastic life; and "Melito's Apocalypse" ("Apocalypse de Méliton?"), because Melito, bishop of Sardis, in the second century, had passed for a prophet. This bishop's work has none of the obscurities of St. John's Apocalypse. Nothing was ever clearer. The bishop is like a magistrate saying to an attorney, "You are a forger and a cheat – do you comprehend me?"

The bishop of Bellay computes, in his Apocalypse or Revelations, that there were in his time ninety-eight orders of monks endowed or mendicant, living at the expense of the people, without employing themselves in the smallest labor. He reckoned six hundred thousand monks in Europe. The calculation was a little strained; but it is certain that the real number of the monks was rather too large.

He assures us that the monks are enemies to the bishops, curates, and magistrates; that, among the privileges granted to the Cordeliers, the sixth privilege is the certainty of being saved, whatever horrible crime you may have committed, provided you belong to the Order of St. Francis; that the monks are like apes; the higher they climb, the plainer you see their posteriors; that the name of monk has become so infamous and execrable that it is regarded by the monks themselves as a foul reproach and the most violent insult that can be offered them.

My dear reader, whoever you are, minister or magistrate, consider attentively the following short extract from our bishop's book:

"Figure to yourself the convent of the Escorial or of Monte Cassino, where the cœnobites have everything necessary, useful, delightful, superfluous and superabundant – since they have their yearly revenue of a hundred and fifty thousand, four hundred thousand, or five hundred thousand crowns; and judge whether Monsieur l'Abbé has wherewithal to allow himself and those under him to sleep after dinner.

"Then imagine an artisan or laborer, with no dependence except on the work of his hands, and burdened with a large family, toiling like a slave every day and at all seasons, to feed them with the bread of sorrow and the water of tears; and say, which of the two conditions is pre-eminent in poverty."

This is a passage from the "Episcopal Apocalypse" which needs no commentary. All that is wanted is an angel to come and fill his cup with the wine of the monks, to slake the thirst of the laborers who plow, sow, and reap, for the monasteries.

But this prelate, instead of writing a useful book, only composed a satire. Consistently with his dignity, he should have stated the good as well as evil. He should have acknowledged that the Benedictines have produced many good works, and that the Jesuits have rendered great services to literature. He might have blessed the brethren of La Charité, and those of the Redemption of the Captives. Our first duty is to be just. Camus gave too much scope to his imagination. St. François de Sales advised him to write moral romances; but he abused the advice.

ANTI-TRINITARIANS

These are heretics who might pass for other than Christians. However, they acknowledge Jesus as Saviour and Mediator; but they dare to maintain that nothing is more contrary to right reason than what is taught among Christians concerning the Trinity of persons in one only divine essence, of whom the second is begotten by the first, and the third proceeds from the other two; that this unintelligible doctrine is not to be found in any part of Scripture; that no passage can be produced which authorizes it; or to which, without in any wise departing from the spirit of the text, a sense cannot be given more clear, more natural, or more conformable to common notions, and to primitive and immutable truths; that to maintain, as the orthodox do, that in the divine essence there are several distinct persons, and that the Eternal is not the only true God, but that the Son and the Holy Ghost must be joined with Him, is to introduce into the Church of Christ an error the most gross and dangerous, since it is openly to favor polytheism; that it implies a contradiction, to say that there is but one God, and that, nevertheless, there are three persons, each of which is truly God; that this distinction, of one in essence, and three in person, was never in Scripture; that it is manifestly false, since it is certain that there are no fewer essences than persons, nor persons than essences; that the three persons of the Trinity are either three different substances, or accidents of the divine essence, or that essence itself without distinction; that, in the first place, you make three Gods; that, in the second, God is composed of accidents; you adore accidents, and metamorphose accidents into persons; that, in the third, you unfoundedly and to no purpose divide an indivisible subject, and distinguish into three that which within itself has no distinction; that if it be said that the three personalities are neither different substances in the divine essence, nor accidents of that essence, it will be difficult to persuade ourselves that they are anything at all; that it must not be believed that the most rigid and decided Trinitarians have themselves any clear idea of the way in which the three hypostases subsist in God, without dividing His substance, and consequently without multiplying it; that St. Augustine himself, after advancing on this subject a thousand reasonings alike dark and false, was forced to confess that nothing intelligible could be said about the matter; they then repeat the passage by this father, which is, indeed, a very singular one: "When," says he, "it is asked what are the three, the language of man fails and terms are wanting to express them." "Three persons, has, however, been said – not for the purpose of expressing anything, but in order to say something and not remain mute." "Dictum est tres personæ, non ut aliquid diceretur, sed ne taceretur".– De Trinit. lib. v. cap. 9; that modern theologians have cleared up this matter no better; that, when they are asked what they understand by the word person, they explain themselves only by saying that it is a certain incomprehensible distinction by which are distinguished in one nature only, a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost; that the explanation which they give of the terms begetting and proceeding, is no more satisfactory, since it reduces itself to saying that these terms indicate certain incomprehensible relations existing among the three persons of the Trinity; that it may be hence gathered that the state of the question between them and the orthodox is to know whether there are in God three distinctions, of which no one has any definite idea, and among which there are certain relations of which no one has any more idea.

From all this they conclude that it would be wiser to abide by the testimony of the apostles, who never spoke of the Trinity, and to banish from religion forever all terms which are not in the scriptures – as trinity, person, essence, hypostasis, hypostatic and personal union, incarnation, generation, proceeding, and many others of the same kind; which being absolutely devoid of meaning, since they are represented by no real existence in nature, can excite in the understanding none but false, vague, obscure, and undefinable notions.

To this article let us add what Calmet says in his dissertation on the following passage of the Epistle of John the Evangelist: "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one; and there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, the water and the blood; and these three are one." Calmet acknowledges that these two verses are not in any ancient bible; indeed, it would be very strange if St. John had spoken of the Trinity in a letter, and said not a word about it in his Gospel. We find no trace of this dogma, either in the canonical or in the apocryphal gospels. All these reasons and many others might excuse the anti-trinitarians, if the councils had not decided. But as the heretics pay no regard to councils, we know not what measures to take to confound them. Let us content ourselves with believing and wishing them to believe.

APOCRYPHA – APOCRYPHAL

(FROM THE GREEK WORD SIGNIFYING HIDDEN.)

It has been very well remarked that the divine writings might, at one and the same time, be sacred and apocryphal; sacred, because they had undoubtedly been dictated by God Himself; apocryphal, because they were hidden from the nations, and even from the Jewish people.

That they were hidden from the nations before the translation executed at Alexandria, under the Ptolemies, is an acknowledged truth. Josephus declares it in the answer to Appian, which he wrote after Appian's death; and his declaration has not less strength because he seeks to strengthen it by a fable. He says in his history that the Jewish books being all-divine, no foreign historian or poet had ever dared to speak of them. And, immediately after assuring us that no one had ever dared to mention the Jewish laws, he adds that the historian Theopompus, having only intended to insert something concerning them in his history, God struck him with madness for thirty days; but that, having been informed in a dream that he was mad only because he had wished to know divine things and make them known to the profane, he asked pardon of God, who restored him to his senses.

Josephus in the same passage also relates that a poet named Theodectes, having said a few words about the Jews in his tragedies, became blind, and that God did not restore his sight until he had done penance.

As for the Jewish people, it is certain that there was a time when they could not read the divine writings; for it is said in the Second Book of Kings (chap, xxii., ver. 8), and in the Second Book of Chronicles (chap, xxxiv., ver. 14), that in the reign of Josias they were unknown, and that a single copy was accidentally found in the house of the high priest Hilkiah.

The twelve tribes which were dispersed by Shalmaneser have never re-appeared; and their books, if they had any, have been lost with them. The two tribes which were in slavery at Babylon and allowed to return at the end of seventy years, returned without their books, or at least they were very scarce and very defective, since Esdras was obliged to restore them. But although during the Babylonian captivity these books were apocryphal, that is, hidden or unknown to the people, they were constantly sacred – they bore the stamp of divinity – they were, as all the world agrees, the only monument of truth upon earth.

We now give the name of apocrypha to those books which are not worthy of belief; so subject are languages to change! Catholics and Protestants agree in regarding as apocryphal in this sense, and in rejecting, the prayer of Manasseh, king of Judah, contained in the Second Book of Kings; the Third and Fourth Books of Maccabees; the Fourth Book of Esdras; although these books were incontestably written by Jews. But it is denied that the authors were inspired by God, like the Jews.

The other books, rejected by the Protestants only, and consequently considered by them as not inspired by God Himself, are the Book of Wisdom, though it is written in the same style as the Proverbs; Ecclesiasticus, though the style is still the same; the first two books of Maccabees, though written by a Jew, But they do not believe this Jew to have been inspired by God – Tobit – although the story is edifying. The judicious and profound Calmet affirms that a part of this book was written by Tobit the father, and a part by Tobit the son; and that a third author added the conclusion of the last chapter, which says that Tobit the younger expired at the age of one hundred and twenty-seven years, and that he died rejoicing over the destruction of Nineveh.

The same Calmet, at the end of his preface, has these words: "Neither the story itself, nor the manner in which it is told, bears any fabulous or fictitious character. If all Scripture histories, containing anything of the marvellous or extraordinary, were to be rejected, where is the sacred book which is to be preserved?"

Judith is another book rejected by the Protestants, although Luther himself declares that "this book is beautiful, good, holy, useful, the language of a holy poet and a prophet animated by the Holy Spirit, that had been his instructor," etc.

It is indeed hard to discover at what time Judith's adventure happened, or where the town of Bethulia was. The degree of sanctity in Judith's action has also been disputed; but the book having been declared canonical by the Council of Trent, all disputes are at an end.

Other books are Baruch, although it is written in the style of all the other prophets; Esther, of which the Protestants reject only some additions after the tenth chapter. They admit all the rest of the book; yet no one knows who King Ahasuerus was, although he is the principal person in the story; Daniel, in which the Protestants retrench Susannah's adventure and that of the children in the furnace; but they retain Nebuchadnezzar's dream and his grazing with the beasts.

On the Life of Moses, an Apocryphal Book of the Highest Antiquity.

The ancient book which contains the life and death of Moses seems to have been written at the time of the Babylonian captivity. It was then that the Jews began to know the names given to the angels by the Chaldæans and Persians.

Here we see the names of Zinguiel, Samael, Tsakon, Lakah, and many others of which the Jews had made no mention.

The book of the death of Moses seems to have been written later. It is known that the Jews had several very ancient lives of Moses and other books, independently of the Pentateuch. In them he was called Moni, not Moses; and it is asserted that mo signified water, and ni the particle of. He was called by the general name of Melk. He received those of Joakim, Adamosi, Thetmosi; and it has been thought that he was the same person whom Mane then calls Ozarziph.

Some of these old Hebrew manuscripts were withdrawn from their covering of dust in the cabinets of the Jews about the year 1517. The learned Gilbert Gaumin, who was a perfect master of their language, translated them into Latin about the year 1535. They were afterwards printed and dedicated to Cardinal Bérule. The copies have become extremely scarce.