Abstract
The most widely disseminated and typical of the early eighteenth-century clandestine deistic works is one which is known in three different versions and goes under a variety of titles. The commonest, and the most appropriate for the content, is ‘Examen de la religion’, which was used after 1760 for printed editions. Another is ‘Doutes sur la religion’, sometimes with the insincere addition ‘dont on cherche l’eclaircissement de bonne foi’ (the purpose being not to resolve any doubts, but to increase them). Manuscript copies are found in libraries throughout France.1 Its history is similar to that of the Militaire philosophe’s Difficultés; having been copied and revised anonymously for many years, it was published during the philosophes’ campaign against the Church. One publication was due to Voltaire, in his Evangile de la raison, in 1764.
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References
Michel Mauduit, Analyse de I’Evangile selon l’ordre historique de la concorde, avec des dissertations sur les lieux difficiles, first published in 1694
Lahontan, the title of whose Dialogues refers to ‘un savage de bon sens qui a voyage’. If so the Examen was written, or perhaps revised, after 1703.
Wade, Clandestine Organization, Pt. II, Ch. 4. Like the Examen, the Analyse was published by Voltaire, in 1763 or 1764
Wade, Clandestine Organization, Pt. I, Ch. I. Written before 1716, it was published in 1768
James O’Higgins, S. J.; see his Yves de Vallone: The Making of an Esprit-Fort (The Hague, 1982 )
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D. P. Walker, The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment (Chicago, 1964), Ch. V, especially pp. 77–78.
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© 1984 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague
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Betts, C.J. (1984). The Examen de la Religion and Other Clandestine Works. In: Early Deism in France. Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idees / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 104. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6116-6_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6116-6_11
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