4 VOLTAIRE. 



indulge in scoffing, no language is too strong to express 

 the reprobation he deserves, if he be in his senses ; for 

 he adds falsehood to a crime so horrible as almost to 

 pass the bounds of belief the frightful act of wilfully 

 rebelling against the Almighty Creator of heaven and 

 earth. This is the first and worst form of the offence. 



Secondly : The like guilt will, to a certain extent, 

 be incurred by him who vents his ribaldry, upon the 

 mere ground of his scepticism. On such a subject 

 doubting is not enough. Unless there is an entire 

 conviction in the mind that the popular belief is utterly 

 groundless in the one case (that of attacking the 

 Deity) that there is a God, in the other (attacking 1 

 Christianity) that there is a foundation for revelation, 

 the guilt of blasphemy is incurred. He must be con- 

 vinced, not merely doubt, or see reason for doubting ; 

 because no one has a right to speculate and take the 

 chances of being innocent ; guiltless if his doubts are 

 well founded, guilty if they are not. The virtuous 

 course here is the safe one. This is the moral of the 

 fable in which the hermit answers the question of the 

 rake, " Where are you, father, if there be not another 

 world ?" with the other question, " And you, my son, if 

 there be?'* We need not go so far as some have done, 

 who on this ground contend that it is safer always 

 to believe than to doubt, because belief must ever, to be 

 of any value, depend on conviction. But we may 

 assuredly hold that the better conduct is that which 

 abstains from attack and offence where the reasons 

 hang in suspense abstains because of the great guilt 

 incurred if the doubts should prove groundless. 



It is a third and lesser degree of this offence if a 



