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                                  THE
                            THREE IMPOSTORS.



                               TRANSLATED
                    (WITH NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS,)
                  FROM THE FRENCH EDITION OF THE WORK,
                     PUBLISHED AT AMSTERDAM, 1776.



                            RE-PUBLISHED BY
              G. VALE, "BEACON" OFFICE, 3 FRANKLIN-SQUARE,
                               NEW-YORK:
                                 1846.







NOTE BY THE AMERICAN PUBLISHER.


We publish this valuable work, for the reasons contained in the
following Note, of which we approve:--



NOTE BY THE BRITISH PUBLISHER.

The following little book I present to the reader without any
remarks on the different opinions relative to its antiquity; as the
subject is amply discussed in the body of the work, and constitutes
one of its most interesting and attractive features. The Edition
from which the present is translated was brought me from Paris by
a distinguished defender of Civil and Religious Liberty: and as my
friend had an anxiety from a thorough conviction of its interest and
value, to see it published in the English Language, I have from like
feelings brought it before the public; and I am convinced that it is
an excellent antidote to Superstition and Intolerance, and eminently
calculated to promote the cause of Freedom, Justice, and Morality.


J. MYLES.







PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR.


The Translator of the following little treatise deems it necessary to
say a few words as to the object of its publication. It is given to
the world, neither with a view to advocate Scepticism, nor to spread
infidelity, but simply to vindicate the right of private judgment. No
human being is in a position to look into the heart, or to decide
correctly as to the creed or conduct of his fellow mortals; and the
attributes of the Deity are so far beyond the grasp of limited reason,
that man must become a God himself before he can comprehend them. Such
being the case, surely all harsh censure of each other's opinions and
actions ought to be abandoned; and every one should so train himself
as to be enabled to declare with the humane and manly philosopher


    "<DW25> sum, nihil humania me alienum puto."


                                                 Dundee, September 1844.







CONTENTS OF THE PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.


DISQUISITIONS on the book entitled "The Three Impostors."

ANSWER to the dissertation of M. de la Monnoye on the work entitled
"The Three Impostors."

COPY of Part 2d, Vol. 1., Article ix. of "Literary Memoirs," published
at the Hague by Henry du Sauzet, 1716.







                             DISQUISITIONS
                          ON THE BOOK ENTITLED
                          THE THREE IMPOSTORS.


It has long been a disputed point if there was at anytime a book
printed and bearing the title of "The Three Impostors."

M. de la Monnoye, having been informed that a learned German [1]
intended to publish a dissertation the object of which was to prove
that this work had really been printed, wrote a letter, in refutation,
to one of his friends; this letter was given by M. Bayle to M. Basnage
de Bauval, who in February 1694, gave an extract from it in his
"History of the works of celebrated and learned men." At a later
period M. de la Monnoye entered more fully into the subject, in a
letter dated at Paris 16th of June, 1712, and addressed to President
Bouhier, in which letter, he says, will be found an abridged but
complete account of this remarkable book.

He condemns at once the opinion of those who attribute the work
to the Emperor Frederick. The false charge, he says, took its rise
from a passage in the appendix to a discourse concerning Antichrist,
and published by Grotius, wherein he speaks as follows [2]: "Far
be it from me to attribute the book called 'The Three Impostors,'
either to the Pope, or to the opponents of the Pope; long ago the
enemies of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa set abroad the report
of such a book, as having been written by his command; but from that
period nobody has seen it; for which reason I consider it apocryphal."

Colomiez quotes this, page 28 of his "Historical Miscellanies;"
but he adds that there are some blunders--that it was not Frederick
I. (Barbarossa,) on whom they intended to fix the authorship,
but Frederick II. his grandson. This he says, is apparent from the
letters of Pierre des Vignes, the secretary and chancellor of the
second Frederick, and from Matthew Paris; inasmuch as they record,
that this monarch was blamed for having said that the world had been
led aside by "Three Impostors;" but by no means that he had written a
book having such a title. The Emperor denied in the strongest terms,
that he ever made use of any expression to that effect. He detested
the blasphemy with which they charged him, and declared that it was
an atrocious calumny; more shame to Lipsius and other writers who
have condemned him without sufficiently looking into the evidences.

Averroes, nearly a century previous, had jeered at the three religions,
saying [3]; that "the Jewish religion was a law for children; the
Christian religion a law which it was impossible to follow; and the
Mahometan religion a law in favor of swine." [4]

Since then, many people have written with great freedom on this
same subject.

We read in the works of Thomas de Catimpre, that M. Simon de Tournay
had said that "Three Seducers"--Moses, Jesus Christ, and Mahomet,
had "mystified mankind with their doctrines." This is evidently
the M. Simon de Churnay, of whom Matthew Paris relates some other
improprieties, and the same individual whom Polydore Virgil styles
de Turwai, the orthography in both instances having been mismanaged.

Amongst the manuscripts of the Abbe Colbert's library, obtained
possession of by our sovereign in 1732, there is one numbered 2071,
written by Alvaro Pelagius, a Spaniard of the Cordelian order,
bishop of Salves and Algarve, and well known on account of his work,
"The Lamentation of the Church." He states that an individual named
Scotus, of the same order as himself and a Jacobin, was at that time a
prisoner at Lisbon on a charge of blasphemy. Scotus, it would appear,
had said that he considered Moses, Jesus Christ and Mahomet as "Three
Impostors;" for that, the first had deceived the Jews; the second
the Christians; and the third the Saracens. [5]

Gabriel Barlette, in his sermon upon St. Andrew, alludes to Porphyry
in this way; "and therefore the notion of Porphyry is absurd, when
he says that there had existed three individuals who had turned
over the world to their own opinions; the first being Moses amongst
the Jewish people--the second Mahomet, and the third Christ." [6]
A strange chronologist to stamp the era of Christ and Porphyry after
that of Mahomet!

The Manuscripts of the Vatican, quoted by Odomir Rainoldo in the
nineteenth volume of his Ecclesiastical Annals, mention one Jeannin
de Solcia, a canon at Bergame, a doctor of civil and canon law,
known from a decree of Pope Pius II., as Javinus de Solcia. He
was condemned on the 14th November 1459 for having maintained this
impiety--that Moses, Jesus Christ, and Mahomet had ruled the world
at their pleasure. "Mundum pro suarem libito voluntatum rexisse."

John Louis Vivaldo de Mondovi, who wrote in 1506, and amongst whose
works there is a treatise on "The Twelve persecutions of the Church
of God," says, in his chapter upon the sixth persecution, that there
were people who dared to dispute, which of the three law-givers had
been most followed, Jesus Christ, Moses, or Mahomet. [7]

Herman Ristwyk, a Dutchman, burned at the Hague in 1512, sneered at
the Jewish and Christian religions. He does not speak of the Mahometan
creed; but a man who could regard Moses and Jesus Christ as impostors,
could entertain no better opinion of Mahomet.

Now we must turn to an author, name unknown, but accused of
blasphemy against Jesus Christ. The charge was founded upon some
papers discovered at Geneva in 1547, amongst the documents belonging
to M. Gruet. An Italian, named Fausto da Longiano, had begun a work
which he entitled "The Temple of Truth," in which he undertakes
no less than to overturn all religions. "I have," he says, "begun
another work entitled 'The Temple of Truth.' It is probable that I may
divide it into thirty books. In this work will be found the extinction
of all sects--Jews, Christian, Mahometan, and other superstitions;
and matters will be brought back to their first principles."

Now, amongst the letters of Aretino addressed to Fausto, there is
not one to be met with which alludes in any way whatever to this
work. Perhaps it had never been written, and although it had been
published, it must have been a very different book from the one in
question; of which, they pretend that there are some copies in the
libraries in Germany, printed in folio, and written in High Dutch.

Claude Beauregard, better known under his Latin appellation
Berigardus, a professor of philosophy, first at Paris, next at Pisa,
and latterly at Padua, quotes or forges a passage from the work,
"The Three Impostors," in which the miracles which Moses performed in
Egypt are attributed to the superiority of his demon [8] over that
of the Magicians of Pharoah. Giordano Bruno who was burned at Rome,
17th Feb. 1600, was accused of having advanced something much to the
same effect. But although Beauregard and Bruno have indulged in such
reveries, and have thought proper to assert that they quoted from
the work in question, is this a certain proof that they had read
the book? If so they would doubtless have stated whether it was in
manuscript, or in print, and referred to the size and the place where
they found it.

Tentzelius, trusting to one of his friends, a pretended ocular witness,
gives a description of the book, and specifies the number of leaves
and sheets; and attempting to prove in chap. III. of his work that
the ambition of legislators is the only source of all religions,
he gives as examples Moses, Jesus Christ, and Mahomet. Struvius,
after Tentzelius, enters into the same subject, but finding nothing
but what a clever fabulist might invent, he seems much inclined to
disbelieve in the existence of the book.

A journalist at Leipsic, in his "acta eruditarum," dated Jan. 1709,
pp. 36 and 37, gives the following extract from a letter addressed to
him: "Having occasion to be in Saxony I saw, in the Library of M...,
a book entitled "The Three Impostors." It is an 8vo volume, in Latin,
without the name of the printer or the date of its publication;
but to judge from the letter it appears to have been published in
Germany. It was to no purpose that I tried to obtain permission to
read the whole work. The proprietor of the book, a man of sensitive
piety, would not consent to it. I have since learned that a celebrated
professor at Stuttgard had offered a great sum of money for the
volume. Shortly afterwards I went to Nuremberg, and in talking of
this work to M. Andre Mylhdorf, a man respectable alike for his
age, and from his learning, he assured me he had read it, and that
M. Wolfer a clergyman had lent it to him. From the manner in which
he spoke, I thought it might be a copy of the one alluded to above,
and I concluded that it was unquestionably the book referred to;
but not that it was in octavo, nor of so old a date, nor perhaps so
accurate." The writer of the foregoing was able to throw more light
upon the subject and ought to have done so; for it is not enough to
say that he had seen the book--he must produce evidence that he had
seen it, otherwise he ought to be classed with those who promulgate
opinions founded on mere report; in which category we must include
all the authors to whom reference is made in this disquisition.

The first who makes mention of the book as it existed in 1543,
is William Postel, in his treatise on the agreement of the Alcoran
with the doctrines of the Lutherans or the Evangelists. He calls
the work "Anevangelistes," and attempts in it to bring the Lutheran
doctrines into utter disrepute by proving that they lead straightway
to Atheism. To support his argument he instances three or four
productions written, as he says, by Atheists, whom he declares to have
been the first disciples of this new Gospel. He adds, "my opinion
can be vindicated by reference to an infamous pamphlet written by
Villanovanus relative to three works respectively entitled 'The Cymbal
of the World,' 'Pantagruel,' and the 'New Islands;' the authors of
which works were the standard-bearers of the Atheistical party."

This Villanovanus, whom Postel asserts to be the author of the book
"The Three Impostors," was Michel Servetus the son of a notary,
born in 1509, at Villanueva in Aragon, who assumed the name of
Villanovanus, in a preface to a Bible which was printed for him
at Lyons, 1542, by Hugues de la Porte. In France his designation
was Villeneuve, under which title he was impeached, after he had
published at Vienna, in Dauphiny, 1553, (the year before his death)
the work entitled "Christianity restored;" a book extremely rare,
on account of the trouble which they took at Geneva to find out the
copies of the work and get them burned. In the authentic list of the
writings of Servetus, however, we do not find mention made of "The
Three Impostors." Neither Calvin nor Beza, nor Alexander Morus, nor
any other defender of the Huguenot party who wrote against Servetus,
and whose interest it was to justify his punishment, and to convict
him of having written this work, has laid it to his charge. Postel,
an ex-Jesuit, was the first to do so, without grounds.

Florimond de Remond, a councillor in the Senate at Bordeaux, writes
decidedly that he had seen this book in print. His words are;
"James Curio, in his Chronology 1556, asserts that the Palatinate
was filled with scoffers at religion, the Lievanistes, viz. a sect
who considered the Sacred Writings as fabulous, and more especially
those of Moses, the great Lawgiver of God. Is there not a book, 'The
Three Impostors,' defaming the three religions which alone acknowledge
the true God--the Jewish, the Christian, and the Mahometan?--a book
composed in Germany, but printed elsewhere at the exact moment when
these heretics are employing this individual to spread abroad their
doctrines? The very title shows the character of the age which has
dared to publish so impious a treatise. I would have referred to
it unless Osius and Genebrard had spoken to me on the subject. I
recollect that in my earlier days I saw a copy of this work at the
College of Presle. It belonged to Ramus, a man distinguished for his
extraordinary learning, and who was then employed in deep researches
into the mysteries connected with religious belief; which subject he
intended to treat in a philosophical manner. At this time they were
circulating this iniquitous work amongst the learned, who were very
desirous to see it." A curious inquirer into secrets!

Everybody knows Florimond de Remond as an insignificant
scribbler. There are three remarkable sayings in currency against him;
that "he built without money, that he was a judge without principle,
and an author without knowledge. [9]" We know also that he always lent
his name to P. Richeaume, a Jesuite much hated by the Protestants,
who cloaked his own name by assuming that of the councillor of
Bordeaux. Now, if Osius and Genebrard had spoken as decidedly as
Florimond de Remond, there might have been somewhat to rest upon;
but see what Genebrard says in the thirty-ninth page of his answer
to Lambert Danan, printed (octavo) at Paris 1581. [10] "They (his
own party) have not driven Blandratus, nor Alciatus, nor Ochinus
into Mahometanism; nor have they induced Valleus to profess himself
an Atheist; neither have they enticed any one whatever to circulate
the work called "The Three Impostors," wherein Christ the Lord is
alluded to as the second, the other two being Moses and Mahomet."

Is that the way to identify this impious book? and Genebrard, forsooth
had seen it! And can it be, that in the present day people will
attempt to get up regular proof to show that such a work exists? It
is a well known fact that, in all ages, many lies have been palmed
off in reference to books which could never be discovered, although
individuals declare that they had seen them and even went so far as
to mention the places where they had been favoured with their perusal.

It has been said that this work was in the library of M