THE EQUINOX
Silence, then, to the Pharisees of the new synagogue!
Silence to the hateful traditions of the Schools, to the arrogance
of Presbyterianism, to the absurdity of Jansenism, and to all
those shameful and superstitious interpretations of the
eternal dogma, so justly stigmatized by the pitiless genius of
Voltaire!
Voltaire and Napoleon died Catholics.1_ And do you know
what the Catholicism of the future must be?
It will be the dogma of the Gospel, tried like gold by the
critical acid of Voltaire, and realized, in the kingdom of the
world, by the genius of the Christian Napoleon.
Those who will not march will be dragged or trampled by
events.
Immense calamities may again hang over the world. The
armies of the Apocalypse may, perhaps, one day, unchain the
four scourges. The sanctuary will be cleansed. Rigid and
holy poverty will send forth its apostles to uphold what
staggers, lift up again what is broken, and anoint all wounds
with sacred oils.
Those two blood-hungered monsters, despotism and
anarchy, will tear themselves to pieces, and annihilate each
other, after having mutually sustained each other for a little
while, by the embrace of their struggle itself.
And the government of the future will be that whose
model is shown to us in nature, by the family, and in the
religious world bythe pastoral hierarchy. The elect shall
reign with Jesus Christ during a thousand years, say the
1 “T do not say that Voltaire died a good Catholic, but he died a Catholic.”
—E.L. Christian authors unanimously hold that, like all ‘heretics, he repented
on his death-bed, and died blaspheming. What on earth does it matter? Life,
not death, reveals the soul— TRANS.
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