A Protest Against the Auto-da-Fé of September 20, 1761, Lisbon
What was their crime? Only that they were born. They were born Israelites, they celebrated Pesach; that is the only reason that the Portuguese burnt them. Would you believe that while the flames were consuming these innocent victims, the inquisitors and the other savages were chanting our prayers? These pitiless monsters were invoking the God of mercy and kindness, the God of pardon, while committing the most atrocious and barbarous crime, while acting in a way which demons in their rage would not use against their brother demons. Your madness goes so far as to say that we are scattered because our fathers condemned to death him whom you worship. O ye pious tigers, ye fanatical panthers, who despise your sect so much that you have no better way of supporting it than by executioners, cannot you see that it was only the Romans who condemned him? We had not, at that time, the right to inflict death; we were governed by Quirinus, Varus, Pilate. No crucifixion was practised among us. Not a trace of that form of punishment is to be found. Cease, therefore, to punish a whole nation for an event for which it cannot be responsible. Would it be just to go and burn the Pope and all the Monsignori at Rome to-day because the first Romans ravished the Sabines and pillaged the Samnites?
O God, who hast created us all, who desirest not the misfortune of Thy creatures, God, Father of all, God of mercy, accomplish Thou that there be no longer on this globe, on this least of all the worlds, either fanatics or persecutors. Amen.
F. M. A. VOLTAIRE,
in ‘Sermon du Rabin Akib’.