Part I, Chapter XII, 2

Lastly, to forecasts of the future—which are, naturally, conjectures drawn from past experience, and, supernaturally, divine revelation—the authors of Gentile religion added countless other superstitious methods of divination, partly on the strength of supposed experience, partly of supposed revelation. They made people believe they could discover their fortunes sometimes in the ambiguous or senseless answers of the priests at Delphi, Delos, Ammon, and other famous oracles: answers made ambiguous by design, so they could claim either outcome, or made absurd by the intoxicating fumes of the place, common in sulfurous caves. Sometimes they sought them in the leaves of the Sibyls, some books of whose prophecies enjoyed esteem in the Roman Republic, though the fragments now extant seem to be later inventions, perhaps like those of Nostradamus. Sometimes they sought them in the meaningless utterances of madmen thought possessed by a divine spirit—a possession they called enthusiasm; these kinds of foretelling were called theomancy, or prophecy. Sometimes they sought them in the configuration of the stars at their birth, called horoscopy and counted a part of judicial astrology; sometimes in their own hopes and fears, called thumomancy, or presage; sometimes in the predictions of witches who claimed to converse with the dead, called necromancy, conjuring, and witchcraft, but amounting only to trickery and conspiratorial fraud. Sometimes they sought them in the chance flight or feeding of birds, called augury; sometimes in the entrails of a sacrificed beast, called haruspicy; sometimes in dreams; sometimes in the croaking of ravens or the chatter of birds; sometimes in the features of the face, called metoposcopy, or in the lines of the hand by palmistry, or in chance words, called omens. Sometimes they sought them in monsters or unusual events, such as eclipses, comets, rare meteors, earthquakes, floods, strange births, and the like, called portents and signs because they thought these foretold some great calamity; sometimes in sheer lottery, such as heads or tails, counting holes in a sieve, opening Homer or Virgil at random for a verse, and countless other vain devices. So readily are people drawn to believe anything by those who have won their confidence and know how, with gentleness and skill, to seize upon their fear and ignorance.

The Designs of the Authors of Heathen Religion. Accordingly, the first founders and legislators of Common-wealths among the Gentiles, whose aims were only to keep the people obedient and at peace, everywhere took care, first, to impress on their minds the belief that the religious precepts they issued came not from their own invention but from the commands of some god or other spirit; or else that they themselves were of a nature higher than mere mortals, so that their laws would be more readily accepted. Thus Numa Pompilius claimed to receive the ceremonies he established among the Romans from the nymph Egeria; the first king and founder of the kingdom of Peru claimed that he and his wife were children of the Sun; and Mahomet, to establish his new religion, claimed to converse with the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove. Secondly, they took care to make people believe that the gods were displeased by the very things forbidden by law. Thirdly, they prescribed ceremonies, prayers, sacrifices, and festivals by which people were to believe the gods' anger could be appeased; they taught that defeat in war, widespread disease, earthquakes, and each person's private misery arose from the anger of the gods, and that this anger came from neglect of worship or the omission or mishandling of some required ceremony. And though among the ancient Romans people were not forbidden to deny what the poets wrote of pains and pleasures after this life—indeed several men of great authority and gravity in the state openly ridiculed it in their speeches—that belief was always encouraged more than its opposite.

By these and similar institutions, they achieved their end, the peace of the Common-wealth: ordinary people in misfortune blamed neglect or error in their ceremonies, or their own disobedience to the laws, and were thus less inclined to mutiny against their governors. Entertained by the pomp and diversion of festivals and public games held in honor of the gods, they needed only bread to keep them from discontent, grumbling, and unrest against the state. Thus the Romans, who conquered most of the world then known, had no scruples about tolerating any religion whatever in the city of Rome itself, unless it contained something incompatible with their civil government. We read of no religion forbidden there except that of the Jews, who, as the peculiar Kingdom of God, thought it unlawful to acknowledge subjection to any mortal king or state whatever. Thus the religion of the Gentiles was part of their policy.

The True Religion and the Laws of God's Kingdom Are the Same. But where God himself established religion by supernatural revelation, he also established for himself a peculiar kingdom and gave laws governing conduct not only toward himself but toward one another. Thus in the Kingdom of God, government and civil laws are part of religion; the distinction between temporal and spiritual dominion has no place there. God is, indeed, king of all the earth; yet he may also be king of a particular chosen nation. That is no more incongruous than for the commander of a whole army to have a particular regiment or company of his own. God is king of all the earth by his power, but king of his chosen people by Covenant. I have reserved another place in the discussion that follows to speak more fully of the Kingdom of God, both by nature and by Covenant.

From the way religion spreads, it is not difficult to understand what causes it to dissolve back into its first seeds or principles: merely an opinion that a deity and invisible, supernatural powers exist. These can never be so thoroughly removed from human nature that new religions cannot spring up from them again, cultivated by people who have earned a reputation for that purpose.

For every established religion is founded at first on the faith of a multitude in one person whom they believe not only wise and devoted to their happiness, but holy, one to whom God himself deigns to reveal his will supernaturally. It follows necessarily that if those who govern religion come to be suspected of lacking such wisdom, sincerity, or love, or cannot show any credible sign of divine revelation, the religion they wish to uphold must likewise be suspected and, in the absence of fear of the civil sword, challenged and rejected.

What destroys the reputation for wisdom of someone who founds a religion, or adds to one already founded, is requiring belief in contradictions. Both sides of a contradiction cannot be true. Requiring belief in both therefore shows ignorance, exposing the author on that point and discrediting everything else he proposes as supernatural revelation. A person may indeed receive revelation of many things above natural reason, but of nothing against it.

What destroys a reputation for sincerity is doing or saying things that appear to show that those demanding belief from others do not believe it themselves. Such acts and sayings are called scandalous because they are stumbling blocks that make people fall from the path of religion: injustice, cruelty, profanity, greed, and luxury. For who can believe that someone who habitually acts from any of these roots believes in an invisible power to be feared, with which he terrifies others for lesser offenses?

What destroys a reputation for love is the discovery of private ends, as when the belief demanded from others advances, or seems to advance, the acquisition of dominion, riches, dignity, or secure pleasure for those demanding it, alone or especially. Whatever brings people a benefit for themselves is thought to be done for their own sake, not for love of others.

Lastly, the only testimony people can give of a divine calling is the working of miracles, or true prophecy, itself a miracle, or extraordinary good fortune. Hence religious doctrines received from those who performed such miracles gain no additional credibility from additions by people who prove their calling by no miracle, beyond what local custom and laws have instilled in those brought up under them. As in natural matters people of judgment require natural signs and arguments, so in supernatural matters they require supernatural signs—miracles—before they consent inwardly and from the heart.

All these causes of the weakening of faith are evident in the examples that follow. First, the children of Israel: when Moses, who had proved his calling to them by miracles and by successfully leading them out of Egypt, was absent for only 40 days, they turned from worship of the true God he had commended to them and, setting up (Exod.32 1,2) a golden calf as their god, relapsed into the idolatry of the Egyptians, from whom they had only recently been delivered. Again, after Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and the generation that had seen God's great works in Israel (Judges 2 11) had died, another generation arose and served Baal. Thus when miracles failed, faith failed too.

Again, when Samuel's sons, (1 Sam.8.3) appointed judges in Bersabee by their father, took bribes and judged unjustly, the people of Israel refused any longer to have God as their king in any way other than he was king of other peoples. They therefore cried out to Samuel to choose a king for them after the manner of the nations. Thus when justice failed, faith also failed: to the point that they deposed God from reigning over them.

When Christianity was first established, the oracles ceased throughout the Roman Empire and the number of Christians grew wonderfully every day and everywhere through the preaching of the apostles and evangelists. Much of that success can reasonably be attributed to the contempt the Gentile priests of that time had brought upon themselves by their uncleanness, greed, and intrigues among princes. Likewise, the religion of the Church of Rome was abolished in England and many other parts of Christendom partly for the same reason: as virtue fails among pastors, faith fails among the people. It was also partly because the schoolmen brought Aristotle's philosophy and doctrines into religion, producing so many contradictions and absurdities that they earned the clergy a reputation for both ignorance and fraudulent intent, inclining people to revolt against them, either against the will of their own princes, as in France and Holland, or with their consent, as in England.

Lastly, among the doctrines that the Church of Rome declares necessary for salvation, so many plainly serve the advantage of the Pope and his spiritual subjects residing in the territories of other Christian princes that, were it not for those princes' mutual rivalry, they could exclude all foreign authority without war or trouble as easily as it has been excluded in England. Who does not see whose interests are served by the belief that a king has no authority from Christ unless a bishop crowns him? That a king who is a priest cannot marry? That the question whether a prince was born in lawful marriage must be judged by authority from Rome? That subjects may be released from allegiance if the court of Rome judges their king a heretic? That a king, like Chilperique of France, may be deposed by a pope, like Pope Zachary, without cause, and his kingdom given to one of his subjects? That clergy and members of religious orders, in whatever country, shall be exempt from their king's jurisdiction in criminal cases? Or who does not see who profits from the fees for private masses and the revenues of Purgatory, along with other signs of private interest sufficient to extinguish even the liveliest faith, if, as I have said, the civil magistrate and custom did not sustain it more than any opinion people have of their teachers' holiness, wisdom, or integrity? Thus I may attribute every change of religion in the world to the same cause: displeasing priests, not only among Catholics but even in the church that has most presumed upon its Reformation.

CHAPTER XIII. OF THE NATURAL CONDITION OF MANKIND, AS CONCERNING THEIR HAPPINESS AND MISERY

Finally, there were predictions about the future. Natural predictions are only guesses based on past experience, while supernatural ones are divine revelations. The same people who created the religions of the Gentiles added countless superstitious methods of divination, based partly on supposed experience and partly on supposed revelation. They led people to believe they could discover their fortunes in many ways. Sometimes they looked to the vague or senseless replies of priests at Delphi, Delos, Ammon, and other famous oracles. Those replies were deliberately vague so they could fit either outcome, or nonsensical because of the intoxicating fumes often found in sulfurous caves. Sometimes they looked in the leaves of the Sibyls. Some books of their prophecies were respected during the Roman Republic, though, as with those of Nostradamus perhaps, the surviving fragments seem to have been invented later. Sometimes they listened to the meaningless words of people thought to be mad and possessed by a divine spirit. They called this possession enthusiasm, and counted these methods of foretelling events as theomancy, or prophecy. Sometimes they examined the arrangement of the stars at their birth. This was called horoscopy and considered part of judicial astrology. Sometimes they relied on their own hopes and fears, called thumomancy, or premonition. Sometimes they listened to witches who claimed to speak with the dead. This was called necromancy, conjuring, or witchcraft, but it is only sleight of hand and organized fraud. Sometimes they watched the chance flight or feeding of birds, called augury, or examined the entrails of a sacrificed animal, called aruspicina. Sometimes they relied on dreams, the cawing of ravens, or the chatter of birds. Sometimes they studied the features of the face, called metoposcopy, or the lines of the hand in palmistry. They read chance words as omens. Sometimes they looked to strange creatures or unusual events, such as eclipses, comets, rare meteors, earthquakes, floods, and unusual births. They called these portents and signs because they believed them to foretell some great disaster. Sometimes they used sheer chance, such as tossing a coin, counting holes in a sieve, or randomly choosing verses in Homer and Virgil. There were countless other such empty inventions. People are easily led to believe anything by someone they trust who skillfully and gently takes advantage of their fear and ignorance.

The aims of the founders of heathen religion: The first founders and lawmakers of Common-wealths among the Gentiles aimed only to keep people obedient and at peace. So everywhere they took care, first, to make people believe that their religious rules came not from their own invention but from the commands of some god or other spirit. Alternatively, they claimed to be more than ordinary mortals, so that their laws would be accepted more easily. Thus Numa Pompilius claimed that he received the ceremonies he established among the Romans from the nymph Egeria. The first king and founder of the Kingdom of Peru claimed that he and his wife were children of the sun. Mahomet claimed to speak with the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove when founding his new religion. Second, these founders made people believe that the gods disliked the same things that the laws forbade. Third, they prescribed ceremonies, prayers, sacrifices, and festivals that people believed could appease the gods' anger. They taught that military defeat, widespread disease, earthquakes, and each person's private misfortunes resulted from the gods' anger. They said this anger arose from neglecting worship or forgetting or getting some required ceremony wrong. Among the ancient Romans, people were allowed to deny the poets' accounts of pain and pleasure after death. Several highly respected and serious public figures openly mocked those accounts in their speeches. Even so, belief in them was always encouraged more than disbelief.

Through these and similar practices, the founders achieved their aim of peace in the Common-wealth. Ordinary people blamed their misfortunes on neglected or mistaken ceremonies or on their own disobedience to the laws. They were therefore less likely to rebel against their rulers. Festivals and public games honoring the gods entertained them with spectacle and amusement. Beyond this they needed only bread to keep them from discontent, complaint, and unrest against the state. The Romans, who had conquered most of the known world, had no objection to allowing any religion in Rome itself, unless it was incompatible with civil government. We read of no religion forbidden there except that of the Jews. They regarded themselves as God's own Kingdom and thought it unlawful to submit to any mortal king or state. This shows how the Gentiles' religion was part of their political system.

True religion and the laws of God's Kingdom are the same: Wherever God himself established religion by supernatural revelation, he also established a special Kingdom for himself. He gave laws governing how people should behave toward him and toward each other. In the Kingdom of God, then, political government and civil laws are part of religion. The distinction between temporal and spiritual rule has no place there. God is indeed king of the whole earth, but he can also be king of a particular chosen nation. There is nothing more inconsistent about this than about an army commander having a regiment or company of his own. God rules the whole earth by his power, but he rules his chosen people by Covenant. I have set aside another part of this discussion to speak more fully about the Kingdom of God, both by nature and by Covenant.

The way religion spreads also makes it easy to understand why it can dissolve back into its original seeds or principles. These are simply the belief in a deity and in invisible, supernatural powers. Such beliefs can never be eliminated from human nature so completely that influential people cannot cultivate them into new religions.

Every established religion first rests on the faith of many people in one person. They believe this person is wise, works for their happiness, and is holy, with God revealing his will to him supernaturally. So if the people who govern a religion come to be suspected of lacking wisdom, sincerity, or love, the religion they uphold must also come under suspicion. The same happens if they cannot show any credible sign of divine revelation. Without fear of the civil sword, people will challenge and reject it.

A person who creates or enlarges a religion loses a reputation for wisdom by demanding belief in contradictions. Both sides of a contradiction cannot be true. Demanding belief in both shows ignorance, which discredits that person's other claims to supernatural revelation. Someone may receive revelation about many things beyond natural reason, but not about anything contrary to it.

A person loses a reputation for sincerity by saying or doing things that suggest he does not believe what he asks others to believe. Such acts and words are called scandals because they make people stumble on the path of religion. Examples include injustice, cruelty, irreverence, greed, and excessive luxury. Who could believe that someone who habitually acts from these motives really fears the invisible power with which he frightens others over lesser faults?

A person loses a reputation for love when his private interests are exposed. This happens when the beliefs he asks others to hold help, or seem to help, him in particular to gain power, wealth, status, or secure pleasure. When people benefit from something themselves, others assume they do it for their own sake, not out of love for anyone else.

Finally, the only evidence people can give of a divine calling is miracles, true prophecy—which is also a miracle—or extraordinary success. When people who cannot prove their calling by a miracle add religious teachings to those received from people who performed miracles, their additions win only as much belief as local customs and laws have instilled in their followers. In natural matters, sensible people require natural signs and arguments. In supernatural matters, they require supernatural signs, namely miracles, before they believe sincerely and wholeheartedly.

All these causes of declining faith are clear in the following examples. First, consider the children of Israel. Moses had proved his calling with miracles and had successfully led them out of Egypt. Yet after he had been absent for only 40 days, they abandoned the worship of the true God that he had taught them. They made a golden calf their god (Exod.32 1,2), returning to the idolatry of the Egyptians from whom they had so recently been freed. Later, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and the generation that had seen God's great works in Israel died. A new generation arose and served Baal (Judges 2 11). When the miracles stopped, faith stopped too.

Again, Samuel appointed his sons judges in Bersabee. They took bribes and gave unjust judgments (1 Sam.8.3). The people of Israel then refused to have God as their king in any way different from his rule over other peoples. They demanded that Samuel choose them a king like other nations had. So when justice failed, faith failed too. They even removed God as their ruler.

When Christianity was being established, the oracles ceased throughout the Roman Empire. Christians grew remarkably numerous everywhere, every day, through the preaching of the apostles and evangelists. Much of their success can reasonably be attributed to the contempt that Gentile priests had brought upon themselves. These priests behaved indecently, were greedy, and schemed with princes. For some of the same reasons, the religion of the Church of Rome was abolished in England and many other parts of Christendom. When pastors lack virtue, people lose faith. Another reason was that the Schoolmen brought Aristotle's philosophy and teachings into religion. This produced so many contradictions and absurdities that the clergy gained a reputation for both ignorance and fraud. People were inclined to break away from them, against their rulers' wishes in France and Holland, and with their rulers' wishes in England.

Finally, among the beliefs the Church of Rome declares necessary for salvation, many plainly benefit the Pope and his spiritual subjects living in other Christian rulers' lands. Without rivalry among those rulers, they could exclude all foreign authority without war or difficulty, as easily as it has been excluded in England. Who cannot see who benefits from the belief that a king does not receive his authority from Christ unless a bishop crowns him? Or that a king cannot marry if he is a priest? Or that authorities in Rome must decide whether a prince was born within lawful marriage? Or that subjects may be released from their allegiance if the court of Rome judges their king a heretic? Or that a pope, such as Pope Zachary, may depose a king, such as Chilperique of France, for no reason and give his Kingdom to one of his subjects? Or that clergy and members of religious orders, in any country, are exempt from their king's authority in criminal cases? Who cannot see who profits from fees for private Masses and payments for release from Purgatory? These and other signs of private interest could extinguish even the strongest faith if civil government and custom did not support it more than people's belief in their teachers' holiness, wisdom, or honesty. So I can trace all changes of religion in the world to the same cause: priests whom people find objectionable. That includes not only Catholics, but even the church that most strongly claims to have been reformed.

CHAPTER XIII. ON THE NATURAL CONDITION OF MANKIND, INCLUDING THEIR HAPPINESS AND MISERY