3§o Reading's in European History feel a sublime pleasure in the course of this investigation, and a sublimer one hereafter, when you shall be able to apply your knowledge to the softening of their beds or the throw- ing a morsel of meat into their kettle of vegetables. 386. Vol- taire's views of the rela- tion of church and state. Civil marriage. The Church's regulations regarding usury. Payment of annates to the pope. V. Voltaire and Rousseau In his famous Ha?idy Philosophic Dictionary, a little volume of essays on a variety of themes, published anonymously in 1764, Voltaire gives under the word " law " his ideas of the reform demanded in church and state. It will be noted that he seems here to have no quarrel with religion, but only with what he regards as the encroachments of the clergy on the rights of the state. No law made by the Church should ever have the least force unless expressly sanctioned by the government. It was owing to this precaution that Athens and Rome escaped all religious quarrels. Such religious quarrels are the trait of barbarous nations or such as have become barbarous. The civil magistrate alone may permit or prohibit labor on religious festivals, since it is not the function of the priest to forbid men to cultivate their fields. Everything relating to marriage should depend entirely upon the civil magistrate. The priests should confine them- selves to the august function of blessing the union. Lending money at interest should be regulated entirely by the civil law, since trade is governed by civil law. All ecclesiastics should be subject in every case to the government, since they are subjects of the state. Never should the ridiculous and shameful custom be main- tained of paying to a foreign priest the first year's revenue of land given to a priest by his fellow-citizens. No priest can deprive a citizen of the least of his rights on the ground that the citizen is a sinner, since the priest — him- self a sinner — should pray for other sinners, not judge them.
