The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

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. 60