Draft translation of an unpublished text published in André Le Breton, Rivarol: Sa vie, ses idées, son talent d’après des documents nouveaux (Paris: Hachette, 1895), pp. 258–9. A brief, ironic piece touching on the relation of sacred authority and secular power.
PDF here.
King: ‘How is it, impostor, that you come to my states to found a false religion?’
Apostle: ‘Sir, my religion is not false; nor could it be.’
‘What! Will you prove your religion to me?’
‘No, Sir, I will preach it.’
‘You will preach it, then, without proving it and, perhaps, without believing it? It is false, then.’
‘Sir, there is no false religion. I appeal here to your ministers. Every religion is a true religion as a poem is truly a poem. If I had come to tell your subjects that “Two and two make four” or that “One ought to be just and good” or some such, then I would be bringing them arithmetic or morals and you would be angry; but I have come to announce that “Two and two make five,” that “I am the son of the sun” and so forth. Therefore, give me protection and money. Let me preach; let us build temples. For it is truly a religion I bring you.’
‘I was wrong. It is clear that you know better than me what a religion is. The philosophers have tricked me. They told me that every religion is false. They are not up to speed with the state of the question. If there were one true religion it would be the same across the earth, like geometry; or, rather, it would not be a religion. It is true that it is the fault of priests of every land to want to prove their religion as one might an action by law or a proportion by geometry. Therefore, philosophers and priests are as wrong as each other. You have enlightened me. It only remains to be seen, then, whether your religion is good or bad, and not whether it is true or false.’
‘Sir, mine is good: for into my dogmas and my mysteries I have mixed all the morals of the Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Persians and so on. In short, the morals that are one and, in consequence, true from one end of the earth to the other. For we speak a great deal of religion when we ought to speak of morals.’
‘This is well and good; but I already have one religion in my states; and I do not wish to raise altar against altar, to divide my subjects, to saddle them with the observance of multiple cults.’
‘In that case, I will offer my services to those peoples who do not yet have any religion, or to those who are open to all: for we apostles are like merchants. We only carry our wares to nations who are entirely lacking or to where there is a high demand. Unless, Sir, I find a way to smuggle myself in despite your prohibitions…’
‘You try. I take care over the execution of my orders. You will be severely punished.’
‘Ah! Here, Sir, I invoke freedom of commerce. It is the very soul of the body politic. If your subjects demand my wares, they will find their way round you.’
‘Now I have caught you in bald sophistry. Peoples demand the wares of which they are in need and sell those for which they have no use. Hindering them in these activities is a relic of archaic barbarism, an absurd tyranny of which—God have mercy—I am not guilty. But in religion, things are not so. Those peoples who already have one do not demand a second; and those who have two do not demand a third. What is more, my subjects are free to believe whatever they please, each in his own way, or to render God whatever tribute; but to preach in public, to found temples, to tithe the people are acts of sovereignty which I will not permit. I would punish a philosopher who toppled our altars—or preached unbelief on the pretext that our present religion has not been demonstrated—just the same.’
‘Sir, then I must part. I want nothing to do with a Prince who reasons. Ah! If only Your Majesty had spurned me from the first I would have slipped into your empire; then you would have persecuted me; if, at last, you had seen me hanged, my success and fame would have been imperishable; and in half a century, I would have had temples.’
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