The Turgot Collection

CHAPTER 18

Religious Liberty “Le conciliateur”

LETTER I

1 May 1754

an it be true what I heard, as I was leaving Paris, that the king intends to renew the old laws against the Protestants, and at the same time to support the Parliament in its cause against the clergy? It seems to me impossible that, by so astounding an inconsistency, the Council should propose to adopt, at the same time, two such opposite extremes, and to take toward both matters in dispute the course which is the least just and the least reasonable. What next? While the bishops are to be permitted to exclude protestants from the rank of citizens, they themselves are to be ordered to dispense divine grace to those whom they consider unworthy of it…!

The king has four parties to content—the Protestants, the Jansenists, the Bishops, and the Parliament. Each party has its prejudices; but it is not prejudices which we have to consider. Favour ought to form no part in the act of our deliberations; justice alone ought to decide. The king should act exactly as he has a right to do. Each party may complain at first that it has not gained more for its own side, but in time each party will bless a settlement which has done equal justice to all.

Now this is what the king would be in the right to do; he ought to say to the Protestants: “I grieve, and shall always grieve, to see you separated from Unity. With the belief in which I rest, that the truth can be found only in the bosom of the Catholic Church, and with the affection I have for you, I cannot see your condition without feeling pain. But, in error though you be, I shall not the less treat you as my children. Submit yourselves to the laws; continue to be useful to the State of which you are members, and you will receive from me the same protection as my other subjects enjoy. My mission is to render justice and happiness to all.”

He ought to say to the Jansenists: “I would that the Church should be without divisions, but it does not belong to me to end them. I would that no one should pronounce anathema against you, but it belongs to me neither to pronounce it nor to suspend it. I am faithful, but I judge not. All that concerns me is to see you tranquilly enjoying your life as citizens. It is only in this connection that I am interested in you. Fear then neither exile, penalty, nor prison. Pray to Heaven that peace be restored to the Church. But evil be to me if these divisions are dragged into the State.”

He ought to say to the bishops: “No one respects your judgments more than I do. I submit myself to your decision; I have no other faith than yours; but I shall never meddle with the affairs of religion, I have no right to exact that all my subjects should believe as I do. Use your example, your exhortations, to convert them, but do not count on my authority. Had I been unfortunate enough not to have been a Christian, should I have had the right to compel you to cease to be so? You have your own laws in dealing with divisions; I leave to you the control of them. But I shall not lend the temporal arm to the spiritual authority. Needlessly will you press me to molest the Protestants and the Jansenists, to exile the one body, to imprison the other, or to deprive them of their charges. I shall reply to you in the same spirit which you admire in Gamaliel: ‘If their doctrine be undoubtedly the work of men, it will, in God’s time, be overthrown.’ Count upon my personal submission as a faithful son of the Church, but, as king, count only on receiving from me the same justice which I owe to all my subjects.”

He ought to say to the Parliament: “My authority and yours should harmonize. I have endowed you with my power, and I have no thought of withdrawing it. But you cannot use it beyond its province. I have myself no power in the spiritual order, my kingdom is not established to save souls. Your own jurisdiction, then, cannot have greater extent. Leave to the bishops the care of terminating the divisions in the Church; make it your care only that my subjects be not troubled in their honor, in their estate, in their life; preserve for them all that belongs to them as citizens. Leave to the Church all that belongs to itself.”

LETTER II

8 May 1764

All civil tolerance. Although all men seem disposed to admit it, we are so accustomed to hear civil tolerance proscribed, that one almost fears, in defending it, to be thought guilty of religious indifference. We have our heart tolerant, but custom has rendered our mind fanatical. This fashion of thinking, too common in France, is perhaps the effect of the approbation lavished on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. We have dishonored religion in order to flatter Louis XIV. It is necessary for me to show, then, that ecclesiastical tolerance is the only one which [the Catholic] religion excludes, and that religion itself proscribes civil intolerance. To prove this I shall not draw upon any reasons, purely human, which, while enlightening the faith of a Christian, are not accepted for guiding it; I shall give as authorities for my statement Jesus Christ and the fathers of the Church.

I have already alluded to Jesus Christ reprehending his apostles, who desired that the fire of heaven should fall upon the Samaritans. Every incident in his recorded life is marked by the same spirit. He does not instruct his disciples to implore the assistance of kings to constrain unbelievers, to employ human authority in order to make converts. He tells them to let grow the tares along with the good grain until the time of harvest, when the master himself will discern them. He performs miracles in order to influence minds, not to subjugate bodies. When his apostles propose to Him to repulse the soldiers coming to seize Him, he replies to them that a legion of angels would be at his command to exterminate his persecutors, but that his “kingdom is not of this world.” He performs a miracle that He may teach them not to confound the rights of God with those of Caesar, the things of heaven with the things of earth…. It was less exterior homage that He demanded than the sacrifice of the heart and the adhesion of the mind. A consent due to fear and self-interest does not make a Christian; it is not by such means that Jesus Christ desired his religion to be spread….

But, it is said, it is not the prince who interferes to decide—he only follows and executes the decisions of the Church. The Council of Trent proscribes the Protestants, the Constitution proscribes the Jansenists; the prince has made these decisions into laws of the State, persons who contravene them infringe the laws of the kingdom and they can be punished, without its being held that the prince has meddled in the affairs of religion. But has the king a right to make a law of the State of the decision of the Council of Trent, or of the Constitution? The first fathers of the Church did not require of the pagan princes to make the gospel a law of the empire. They demanded only the liberty to profess their religion, and they were grateful to the emperors when they had the happiness to obtain that liberty. It is to those early times that we must go back in order to fix the limits of the two powers. When the princes became Christians, the bishops, in order to concern themselves in matters of State, demanded that their decisions should be made laws of the kingdom. The princes, either through zeal or through self-interest, complied with this, imagining to have thereby a greater authority over their subjects. The step was prejudicial to both parties….

But let us go back to the origin of things. We shall see Religion, as she should be, separated from the Government; the Church occupied with the salvation of souls; the empire occupied with the welfare of the people; the one and the other having its laws distinct, as the things of heaven ought to be from the things of earth.

To make an edict of a decision of the Church … is to compel the people to adopt an opinion because it appears truth to us. Is not this overruling consciences? … If the King of France can make of the Council of Trent and of the Constitution laws of his State, has not the King of England the right to establish for himself the supremacy, the Turk the right to establish the Koran, each prince his own religion? This idea revolts us, because in foreign countries we should be the persecuted. Ought it not to revolt us all the same when we would be the persecutors?

“But,” it is said, “the prince would thus be obliged to tolerate in his states all sorts of religion, even those contrary to social good, as human sacrifices, etc.” God forbid that I should advance such a principle! Actions are the only things that interest the State in respect to religion. As for doctrine, or even morals, in the objects of pure speculation, the State ought to be indifferent to them. Actions are either contrary to social welfare or they are not. If they are not contrary, why forbid them to be made acts of religion? If they are contrary they are already proscribed and cannot be authorized. It is indifferent to the State that each day I purify my body by different ablutions; the practice may be superfluous, but it is not dangerous. Kings have no right to hinder it from being made a religious ceremony. But it is another thing to shed human blood. If I preach a religion which permits it, the prince has a right to proscribe me; it is less the religious action than the criminal action that is forbidden. It would be a crime to immolate, because it is already a crime to kill….

Then it is said, “if the king is to permit all religions whose doctrine is not contrary to the good of the State, what a monstrous assemblage of sentiments you would introduce! Do you believe that peace could exist between minds filled with principles so opposed? Is not unity in religion necessary in a government? The fields of our country reek yet with the blood shed in the wars of religion.” I know of how many wars heresies have been the source, but is not this because we have persisted in persecuting them? The man who believes earnestly believes with still more firmness if we would force him to change his belief without convincing him; he then becomes obstinate, his obstinacy kindles his zeal, his zeal inflames him; we wish to convert him, we have made of him a fanatic, a madman. Men, for their opinions, demand only liberty; if you deprive them of it, you place arms in their hand. Give them liberty, they remain quiet, as the Lutherans were at Strasburg. It is then the very unity in religion we would enforce, and not the different opinions we tolerate, that produces trouble and civil wars….

[After a further vindication of the principle of tolerance in all its applications, Turgot sums up the anticipated results from the policy of neutrality he recommends.]

I can easily imagine that each party will at first be ill-pleased at being denied the rights it would usurp, but as it is still gratifying not to lose those rights it possesses, and ought to possess, each party will in time be grateful to the Government for having preserved these…. The bishops will thank the king for having left them masters in the affairs of religion; the Parliament for having confided to it his authority; the Jansenists for having no longer to fear punishment, exile, imprisonment; and, finally, the general public will bless a government so wise, whose authority will be exercised only in allowing each party to enjoy tranquilly its own rights, this being the end for which government is established.

I should finish, but as there have occurred to me some reflections that tend to make these principles more sensibly felt, I feel I ought not to omit them.

First Reflection.—In France we have always proscribed the Inquisition, that odious power which has carried sword and fire into the world of the God of peace and charity. Now, odious as this tribunal is, he who establishes intolerance would not be less odious. If the prisons of the Inquisition were terrible, France itself has had only too many which have echoed the cries of the oppressed conscience. If the former were unjust, why should the latter be authorized? We who condemn with horror the minister of the Church who, by torture, compelled the mind, should we give to our king the right still to subjugate it? We regard with indignation the inflictions which, in Italy and in Spain, obstruct the rights of conscience; the least reflection should prevent our feeling less for the conscience of our own citizens.

Second Reflection.—To justify what I have advanced, let us suppose that these actual disputes had occurred in a country where the prince was neither Jansenist nor constitutionnaire; at Berlin, for example, the King of Prussia, although Protestant, has permitted the Catholics to build a church in his capital. If among them were found some Jansenists to whom the sacraments were refused, should we not be astonished to see that prince entering into their disputes and pretending to dictate their laws to them? We should feel shocked to see the Protestant prince meddling with Catholic affairs. Does the faith of the prince, then, make all the difference? … What we consider the King of Prussia ought to do, is that not the principle for our own kings to follow?

Third Reflection.—It has been usual to compare the salvation of the soul to the health of the body. The bishops themselves style themselves spiritual physicians. Errors are the maladies that affect the mind; those who rule the consciences are established in order to apply the remedies. Let us judge then of the liberty that ought to reign in the sphere of salvation by that liberty which every one must have in order to govern his own health. However excellent a remedy may be, should we not find it rather hard if a prince compelled his subjects to make use of this particular one in preference to all others? Should we not say to him that confidence cannot be prescribed, that each is master of his health, that we cannot cure a man in spite of himself? If the king did more and if the confidence he had in his remedy induced him to order that all physicians in his kingdom should use that remedy on all occasions, would they not have the right to represent to him that no one could better know the utility of a remedy than they could, that its application varies according to different temperaments and conditions, of which they are the best judges, that they cannot all be kept within the same fixed lines, that they would rather suffer a thousand penalties than administer a remedy that they knew might be dangerous? … If, in spite of these just representations, the king persisted in compelling all his subjects to take this remedy, and all the physicians to administer it, even when they believed it dangerous, what should we think of such conduct? I leave to you to make the application of this comparison; I avoid for myself the mixing overmuch things profane with things sacred.

I believe, Sir, that I have thus justified Toleration. There was a time when these principles would have shocked many persons, but we become every day more enlightened, and we learn to distinguish in religion what is essential to it and what men have added. We detest more than ever the Inquisition, we admire the edict of tolerance of the empress-queen. The King of Prussia appears to us wise in having, although a Protestant, accorded to Catholics the free exercise of their religion. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes revolts us; our soldiers murmur when they are employed against the Protestants. The cause of Civil Toleration has been sustained even in some theses of the Faculty of Theology, it is being advocated in many writings; everywhere discussion is tending to establish it. Let us, the one and the other, be happy if we can help toward this end.

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Written 1754. Of Turgot’s writings this was the first that was published. It is noteworthy for having exercised a real influence on the settlement of the question in dispute. Its length is about equal to an octavo pamphlet of forty pages. The extracts we give are sufficient to show the nature of his argument and the spirited manner in which it was developed. The form is that of “Letters of an Ecclesiastic to a Magistrate.” “In 1754,” says du Pont, “after prolonged quarrels between the parliaments and the bishops on the subject of tickets of confession and the refusal of sacraments, it was proposed to the king as a means of contenting both parties to grant to the parliaments the right to compel the bishops to administer the Communion to the Jansenists, and to console the clergy by restoring to them the power of persecuting the Protestants; thus withdrawing from the latter the actual half-tolerance which the Government, now become milder than the law, had been allowing them to enjoy.”